1951 Film The Browning Version

It was directed by Anthony Asquith and starred Michael Redgrave. In 1994, the play was filmed again with Albert Finney in the lead.

The Browning Version
Redgrave on the cover of The Criterion Collection DVD release of The Browning Version
Directed by	Anthony Asquith
Written by	Terence Rattigan
Based on	The Browning Version 1948 play by Terence Rattigan
Produced by	Teddy Baird Earl St. John
Starring	Michael Redgrave Jean Kent Nigel Patrick
Cinematography	Desmond Dickinson
Edited by	John D. Guthridge
Music by	Arnold Bax Kenneth Essex (both uncredited stock music)
Distributed by	General Film Distributors (UK) Universal-International (USA)
Release date	15 March 1951
Running time	90 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English

Andrew Crocker-Harris is an ageing Classics master at an English public school, and is forced into retirement by his increasing ill health. The film, in common with the original stage play, follows the schoolmaster's final two days in his post, as he comes to terms with his sense of failure as a teacher, a sense of weakness exacerbated by his wife's infidelity and the realisation that he is despised by both pupils and staff of the school.

The emotional turning point for the cold Crocker-Harris is his pupil Taplow's unexpected parting gift, Robert Browning's translation of the Agamemnon, which he has inscribed with the Greek phrase that translates as "God from afar looks graciously upon a gentle master".

Differences between play and film

Rattigan extends the screenplay far from his own one-act play, which ends on Crocker-Harris's tearful reaction to Taplow's gift. Therefore, the play ends well before Crocker-Harris's farewell speech to the school; the film shows the speech, in which he discards his notes and admits his failings, to be received with enthusiastic applause and cheers by the boys. The film ends with a conversation between Crocker-Harris and Taplow, and the suggestion that Crocker-Harris will complete his translation of the Agamemnon.

• Michael Redgrave as Andrew Crocker-Harris
• Jean Kent as his wife Millie
• Nigel Patrick as her lover Frank Hunter, Andrew's fellow schoolmaster who eventually rejects Millie for her cruelty towards her husband
• Ronald Howard as Gilbert, Crocker-Harris's successor
• Wilfrid Hyde-White as the Headmaster
• Brian Smith as Taplow
• Bill Travers as Fletcher
• Judith Furse as Mrs. Williamson
• Peter Jones as Carstairs
• Sarah Lawson as Betty Carstairs
• Scott Harold as Rev. Williamson
• Paul Medland as Wilson
• Ivan Samson as Lord Baxter
• Josephine Middleton as Mrs. Frobisher

Rattigan and Asquith encountered a lack of enthusiasm from producers to turn the play into a film until they met Earl St John at Rank.

"I started out as manager of a small out-of-town cinema, and I viewed films from the out-of-London angle", said St John. "This experience made me realise that the ordinary people in the remotest places in the country were entitled to see the works of the best modern British playwrights."

Eric Portman originated the role on stage but turned down the film role. Margaret Lockwood was originally meant to play the role of Millie but turned down the part. Jean Kent played it instead. (Kent often stepped into roles originally envisioned for Lockwood.)

The film was shot at Pinewood Studios in 1950 and generally released in April, 1951. The school exteriors were filmed on location at Sherborne School in Sherborne, Dorset.

The Greek text that appears on the blackboard in Crocker-Harris's classroom is the Agamemnon lines 414–9:

πόθῳ δ᾽ ὑπερποντίας
φάσμα δόξει δόμων ἀνάσσειν.
εὐμόρφων δὲ κολοσσῶν
ἔχθεται χάρις ἀνδρί:
ὀμμάτων δ᾽ ἐν ἀχηνίαις
ἔρρει πᾶσ᾽ Ἀφροδίτα.

Apparently a description of Menelaus's despair after his abandonment by Helen, the lines were translated by Robert Browning thus:

"And, through desire of one across the main,
A ghost will seem within the house to reign.
And hateful to the husband is the grace
Of well-shaped statues: from—in place of eyes
Those blanks—all Aphrodite dies."

The film was popular at the British box office.

Won

• Cannes Film Festival
  • Best Actor (Michael Redgrave)
  • Best Screenplay
• Berlin International Film Festival
  • Bronze Berlin Bear (Drama)
  • Small Bronze Plate

Nominated

• Cannes Film Festival – Palme d'Or

• The Browning Version (1994 film), another feature film version starring Albert Finney