The Browning Version (1951, Anthony Asquith) (Patreon)

60/100

Second viewing, last seen 1997. Since then, I've come to greatly admire Rattigan, thanks to Mamet's Winslow Boy and Davies' Deep Blue Sea; while this is generally considered to be his finest play, I submit that it's really just his most nakedly sentimental—a straightforward exercise in pathos, expertly crafted but a tad easy. What's most rewarding is the way that "Crock" slowly expands from two dimensions into three, demonstrating a self-awareness that one wouldn't have initially suspected him of possessing; Redgrave leans heavily into fuddy-duddy stereotype early on (with an additional layer of exasperation for viewers who know him primarily as The Lady Vanishes' brash, fast-talking slickster), which allows him to underplay the confessional scenes. There's something terribly poignant about a lifelong teacher whose fond memories, toward the end of his career, are of the days in which he deliberately made himself ridiculous in an effort to win students over: "Perhaps they didn't like me as a man, but at least they found me funny as a character." On the other hand, Asquith deliberately shoots Redgrave from behind when he breaks down after receiving the titular Agamemnon, but can't (or at least doesn't) stop him from shifting into profile so that we do see a few tears, which kinda ruins the effect. Basic problems are as I'd dimly remembered, mostly involving the borderline misogynistic treatment of Mrs. Crocker-Harris—I can imagine a carefully calibrated performance that works against the text, but Jean Kent makes her unrelentingly hateful, so that it's quite hard to argue when Crock mordantly describes himself as henpecked. And I almost invariably roll my eyes at the Climactic Speech That Begins As Prepared And Then Suddenly Turns Extemporaneous, which is rarely as improbably embraced by the audience as it is here. Though I did appreciate that the beloved departing teacher's speech, predicted by the headmaster to bring down the house if reserved for a finale, amounts to "Yay team."