The Go-Between (DVD)

It is rare to find a film that lives up to the experience of the book. The Go-Between is one of those singular treats. Set in the long, hot summer of 1900 a young twelve year old boy visits a Norfolk country house, Brandham Hall. Feeling a little out of his depth, Leo Colston, played faultlessly by Dominic Guard, arrives for the summer at his school acquaintance’s large country resicence with all its attendant rules and mores. Coming from a quiet home of reduced circumstances, his mother having been widowed, Leo is especially sensitive to the conventions of upper middle class life and determined to preserve his dignity by not putting a foot wrong. Unsurprisingly in the ...  Read the complete review

I would say, it was a love at first sight: in the opening sequence you see an immense window pane covered with raindrops and hear the soft, sweet sounds of a summer rain that are soon overpowered by a piano leitmotif by the renowned French composer Michel Legrand. I can hardly conceive of a better prologue to the story that follows [1]. The film is based on a novel of the same title by L.P. Hartley, written in 1953. The plot is set in the beginning of the 20th century. Leo (Dominic Guard), a pubescent boy, comes to stay for a while at a mansion of his schoolmate’s ostensibly wealthier family. Soon he becomes inadvertently entangled in a love triangle ...  Read the complete review

This 1970 period drama starring Julia Christie and Alan Bates is often over looked in favour of their other screen partnership in 'Far From the Madding Crowd'. But this film, based on L P Hartley's 1953 novel of the same name, is equally as enchanting and scheduled to be screened in the UK on BBC2 at 12.45pm on Thursday 6th July so try to catch it if you can. It tells the story of 13 year old Leo, who is from a modest family but is invited to spend the summer with his upper-class schoolmate at his family's country house . Set at the turn of the 20th Century in Norfolk, England, the story follows Leo's awakening to the complicated adult world ...  Read the complete review