Director Losey's final collaboration with Harold Pinter is 1971's The Go-Between, an adaptation of L. P. Hartley's novel of the same name. Like two of Losey's previous three collaborations with Pinter, the film critiques the British class system; it is a tragedy born out of snobbery.
The Go-Between concerns an illicit and doomed relationship between Julie Christie's upper class Marian Maudsley, the daughter of the wealthy Maudsley family, with Alan Bates' tenant farmer Ted Burgess. Aware that their love affair is considered shameful and socially unacceptable, they conduct it in secret and it is gradually revealed via the point of view of Leo Colston, a middle-class boy who staying with the Maudsleys, having befriended their son Marcus at school. When Marcus falls ill, Leo befriends the older Marian and is asked to deliver letters between her and Ted. Gradually, both he and the audience realise that the letters are used to arrange meetings between the two lovers. Ultimately, the affair is doomed: when Leo is forced to lead Marian's formidable mother to a barn, she discovers her daughter having sex with Ted; in response to the shame, Ted commits suicide. So traumatised is Leo that he suppresses the memory and grows to adulthood alone, unable to form meaningful romantic relationships. Only later in life, when he is reunited with an elderly Marian and recognises her son as also being Ted's, does he finally realise that there was no shame in the love between the two of them.
Pinter's screenplay remains more or less faithful to Hartley's novel and is an elegant script with fine characterisation, which admirably avoids sneering at the any of the characters. Leo is treated kindly by the Maudsley family, whilst the suitor intended for Marian - Edward Fox's Viscount Hugh Trimingham - is likeable and honourable (Although by contrast Leo's upper class friend Marcus - with whose family Leo stays - encourages him to leave his discarded clothes on the floor for servants to pick up - that is he says, after all, what servants are for). Pinter doesn't give us a world where the lives of two young people are ruined by the class system, but one in which everyone is constrained by it. The young Leo makes an effective protagonist, since Pinter impressively manages to show the events of the film from his point of view; not only does he not realise for a long time the true nature of Marian and Ted's relationship, he has yet to learn what sex is. Pinter also provides a slightly non-linear narrative, with the novel's final sequence featuring the older Leo increasingly interspersed with the main body of the film as it progresses, such that Leo's eventual reunion with Marian takes place within the film's prior structure prior to Ted's death.
Losey assembled an impressive cast that includes Christie, Bates, Fox, Margaret Leighton and Michael Gough, and they all give predictable fine performances, especially Bates. Surrounded by such acting talent, then-newcomer Dominic Guard gives a creditable performance as Leo, the eponymous "go-between". When the innocent, well-meaning young boy finally reads one of the letters he has been carrying between Marian and Ted, Guard conveys how upset he is about the illicit relationship via several dialogue free scenes that rely on facial and physical acting and he gets a great scene with Bates when an angry Leo demands that Ted explains what a lover actually is. Michael Redgrave plays the older Leo with an air of hurt bewilderment at how his life has played out.
Much has been made - quite rightly - of Losey's use of colour in the film, with the lush, verdant colours of the main part of the film giving way to the drab greys of the 1950s sequences; this is an incredibly beautiful film. The Norfolk location filming is sumptuous and cinematographer Gerry Fisher uses hand-held close-ups to bring the audience near to the characters. At times, the camera weaves in and out of the fixtures and fittings of Melton Constable Hall, which was used for the Maudsley house. High-angle and aerial shots look down on the characters as they go about their lives. We don't actually see Marian and Ted together until they are fatefully discovered by Marian's mother; everything else is implied and off-screen. Michel Legrand's soundtrack is dramatic and often unsettling, and Losey deliberately juxtaposes it often with otherwise peaceful scenes to create an unnerving atmosphere at odds with what we see on screen. For all that The Servant is a masterpiece, The Go-Between is perhaps the finest product of the all-too-brief working relationship between Losey and Harold Pinter.