Andrew Crocker-Harris, a teacher in a British public school, is approaching retirement. This is not, however, a sentimental "inspirational teacher" film like "Goodbye Mr Chips". James Hilton's character was an elderly man looking back happily on his long years of service to the school and his pupils. Andrew is a comparatively young man (Michael Redgrave was in his early forties at the time), forced by ill-health to retire and take a less arduous, but also less well-paid, position in a less prestigious school.
Moreover, no teacher could be less inspirational than Andrew Crocker-Harris. His less-than-friendly nickname among his pupils is "the croc" (as in crocodile- spelled thus in Rattigan's text, but this could also be heard as "the crock", British slang for broken-down old car). A brilliant scholar at Oxford, he entered the teaching profession in the idealistic belief that he had a vocation to inspire his pupils with his own love of classical literature. The intervening years have disillusioned him. He has become humourless and pedantic; his pupils either dislike him or treat him as a figure of fun and regard his lessons as a bore. His attempts to maintain discipline by using sarcastic ridicule have made him even less popular and given him an even less friendly nickname-"the Himmler of the Lower Fifth". He is unpopular with his colleagues and patronised by his headmaster. His marriage to a younger woman has broken down, and his wife Millie has been having an adulterous affair with one of his colleagues, the young chemistry teacher Frank Hunter.
The plot of Rattigan's play- attractive young married woman, torn between the demands of a dull, unresponsive husband and those of a charming but faithless lover- is similar to that of a number of literary works, notably "Madame Bovary" and "Anna Karenina", but whereas Flaubert and Tolstoy placed the emphasis on the woman, Rattigan is more concerned with the wronged husband. The crisis comes when Taplow, one of Andrew's pupils, unexpectedly gives him a copy of Robert Browning's translation of Aeschylus's "Agamemnon". (Hence the title of the film). Millie spitefully suggests that the boy gave him the book, not out of kindness or love for Greek literature, but as a bribe to secure promotion to a higher class.
Another version of "The Browning Version" was filmed in 1994. Although it starred another great name of the British acting profession, Albert Finney, as Andrew, it was not well received. Possibly the reason is that the forties and fifties have come to be regarded as the official Golden Age of British cinema. The trouble with recognising any age as officially Golden is that it can lead to the works of later periods (and occasionally even of earlier ones) being undervalued. I have always regarded Mike Figgis's film as one of the best British films of the nineties, and actually better than the 1951 version, but the critics treated it as an impertinent attempt to copy a Golden Age masterpiece.
The weakness of Anthony Asquith's version is one that affected a number of Golden Age films, excessive emotional reticence. (I have never, for example, been able to regard "Brief Encounter" as the great film that everyone else tells me it is, for precisely this reason). American films of this period, by contrast, often had a greater emotional honesty. Redgrave is very good early in the film as Andrew the dry-as-dust pedant- perhaps too good, as it makes the later scenes, when a more emotional side to Andrew's character is revealed, less credible. With Finney's interpretation, one can always sense, even in the early scenes, that beneath his crusty exterior Andrew is a man of deep feelings. The fault does not entirely lie with the actors, but also with the director. The scene, for example, where Andrew breaks done in tears after receiving Taplow's gift, was shot mostly from the rear, which seemed to waste much of its potential.
Of the three main characters, I felt that the best in the original film was Nigel Patrick as Frank Hunter (better, I thought, than Matthew Modine in the remake). Frank is everything Andrew is not- handsome, easy-going, popular with both the boys and his colleagues and a gifted teacher. Although he is Millie's seducer, a man happy to carry on an affair with a married woman he does not love, Rattigan (and Patrick) are careful not to paint him as a one-dimensional villain. He is troubled by a guilty conscience about the way in which Andrew has been affected by the affair, and he resolves to end it when he sees how badly Millie treats her husband.
I did not, however, much like Jean Kent as Millie. She came across as too cold, hard and spiteful, and I preferred the way in which Greta Scacchi played the character (renamed Laura) in the later film. In Scacchi's performance one senses, as one does not with Kent, something we are told by Andrew, namely that Millie/Laura is as much to be pitied as he is. She behaves badly towards her husband, but she is a victim, not only of a failed marriage, but also of the way in which she is treated by Frank, with whom she is deeply in love, even though he does not love her. (There is a hint, albeit veiled in very guarded language, that her marriage broke down because Andrew was unable to satisfy her sexually).
When the film was recently given away as a DVD by a British newspaper, it bore on the cover "Certificate U". For those not familiar with the British system of film classification, that means it is suitable for all, including young children. I have nothing against films for all the family, but when a film dealing with adultery is considered to fall within that category it suggests that the subject has not been dealt with as frankly as it might have been. 7/10
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