The Browning Version **** (1951, Michael Redgrave, Jean Kent, Nigel Patrick, Wilfrid Hyde White, Bill Travers, Ronald Howard, Peter Jones, Sarah Lawson) – Classic Movie Review 4,012

Anthony Asquith’s 1951 British drama film The Browning Version is based on the 1948 play by Terence Rattigan and stars Michael Redgrave as an ageing classics master at an English public school forced into retirement by ill health. 

Michael Redgrave’s wonderfully subtle and sharply observed performance as the disillusioned old classics teacher Andrew Crocker-Harris lifts high director Anthony Asquith’s stalwart 1951 version of Terence Rattigan’s extremely touching 1948 70-minute one-act play.

Redgrave plays Andrew Crocker-Harris, the classics master as a posh English boys’ public school, who discovers both his wife’s infidelity and that both his headmaster and pupils despise him, just as he is about to retire because of poor health from a heart ailment. Naturally, he loses interest in both his life and his job in his final days in employment as he confronts his failure as a teacher and husband.

If Redgrave triumphs in a perfect performance, the other performers seem less comfortable, though, with Jean Kent slightly misjudging her performance as the unfaithful, cruel wife Millie Crocker-Harris, and Asquith is left relying too heavily on Redgrave. The movie has a post-war austerity low-budget feel about it, so the production looks rather tatty, though Desmond Dickinson’s black and white cinematography and Carmen Dillon’s set designs help out.

However, the affecting situation, pleasing dialogue and Redgrave’s performance are all still extremely moving, producing a wonderful emotional experience, with the help of Rattigan’s own finely honed adapted screenplay. Brian Smith plays Taplow, the boy who offers Crocker-Harris the titular Browning book.

There are, however, efficient, chilly performances from Nigel Patrick as Crocker-Harris’s fellow schoolmaster and Millie’s lover Frank Hunter, who eventually rejects Millie because her cruelty towards her husband, and Wilfrid Hyde-White as the Headmaster.

It is Sarah Lawson’s film debut (as Betty Carstairs) after graduating from the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London, joining the repertory company at Perth Theatre (1948-49) and making her London West End debut in Jean Cocteau’s play Intimate Relations at the Strand (now Novello) Theatre in 1951.

Also in the cast are Nigel Patrick, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Bill Travers, Ronald Howard, Peter Jones, Brian Smith, Judith Furse, Scott Harrold, Paul Medland, Josephine Middleton and Ivan Samson.

It was remade by Mike Figgis as The Browning Version in 1994 with Albert Finney as Crocker-Harris, Michael Gambon, Matthew Modine, Julian Sands, Greta Scacchi and Ben Silverstone as Taplow.

Sarah Lawson was born on 6 August 1928 and died on 18 August 2023, aged 95. She married actor Patrick Allen in 1960 and thy had two sons. They stayed married until he died on 28 July 2006. Lawson made her film debut in The Browning Version (1951). Allen made his film debut in Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder (1954).

The cast are Michael Redgrave as Andrew Crocker-Harris, Jean Kent as his wife Millie, Nigel Patrick as her lover Frank Hunter, Ronald Howard as Crocker-Harris’s successor Gilbert, 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 Harrold as the Rev Williamson, Paul Medland as Wilson, Ivan Samson as Lord Baxter, and Josephine Middleton as Mrs Frobisher.

The Browning Version was first performed on 8 September 1948 at the Phoenix Theatre, London, starring Eric Portman. It was one of two short plays titled Playbill, together with Harlequinade. Crocker-Harris is believed to be based on Rattigan’s Classics tutor at Harrow School, J W Coke Norris (1874–1961).

Wilfrid Hyde-White attended Marlborough College and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He said: ‘I learned two things at RADA – I can’t act and it doesn’t matter.’

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 4,012

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