you have to get past the time and place and mores of when this film was made. Yes, it seems old fashioned now, with a type of 'British Film' acting that seems arch, but at least we have clear diction and projection, and intelligent dialogue little seen nowadays.
All the performances are first rate, from the 'foot in mouth' gauche newbie teacher who realises his embarrassing mistake, to the repentant Nigel Patrick who puts across genuine regret and regains his humanity and dignity in his insistence to meet up with Crocker-Harris to show some support and kindness to the downtrodden man, and Wilfred Hyde-White doing a wily turn as a most despicable head-master, willing to tread on anybody for his own ends with the smoothness of the arch bureaucrat manipulator.
Jean Kent does a fine wicked-witch, and although you can see that this character has been downtrodden and needs love and redemption as much as Crocker-Harris it is strange that we are manipulated into seeing her as the worst character in the tragedy, maybe Rattigan's homosexuality had something to do with this aspect of the script. But she is presented as cruel, manipulating, and false in public without the redeeming feature of some higher yearning, in the vein of Crocker's poetry and culture, and her search for love without a wider horizon than hanging on to and manipulating her lover, so maybe the character's eviction from the possibility of some kind of paradise is deserved.
But Redgrave towers above them all, and it is a remarkable achievement to get us to feel for this horribly repressed character who attains his own kind of peace and redemption by laying bare his soul in public at the end, and is rewarded by the recognition of the boys, the young seeing genuine honesty before the stunned adults - and the horrible head-master failing to quell the applause put in his true place in the scheme of things at last.
So accept the old-fashioned milieu and be thankful that a Hollywood schmaltz version has not been made, because movies of this bare tearing apart of the human soul and condition are few and far between nowadays, and Redgrave's performance a master class in itself of redemption on earth with dignity and feeling without seeming to act, let alone a million miles away from falling into the trap of over-acting.... brilliant stuff.
All the performances are first rate, from the 'foot in mouth' gauche newbie teacher who realises his embarrassing mistake, to the repentant Nigel Patrick who puts across genuine regret and regains his humanity and dignity in his insistence to meet up with Crocker-Harris to show some support and kindness to the downtrodden man, and Wilfred Hyde-White doing a wily turn as a most despicable head-master, willing to tread on anybody for his own ends with the smoothness of the arch bureaucrat manipulator.
Jean Kent does a fine wicked-witch, and although you can see that this character has been downtrodden and needs love and redemption as much as Crocker-Harris it is strange that we are manipulated into seeing her as the worst character in the tragedy, maybe Rattigan's homosexuality had something to do with this aspect of the script. But she is presented as cruel, manipulating, and false in public without the redeeming feature of some higher yearning, in the vein of Crocker's poetry and culture, and her search for love without a wider horizon than hanging on to and manipulating her lover, so maybe the character's eviction from the possibility of some kind of paradise is deserved.
But Redgrave towers above them all, and it is a remarkable achievement to get us to feel for this horribly repressed character who attains his own kind of peace and redemption by laying bare his soul in public at the end, and is rewarded by the recognition of the boys, the young seeing genuine honesty before the stunned adults - and the horrible head-master failing to quell the applause put in his true place in the scheme of things at last.
So accept the old-fashioned milieu and be thankful that a Hollywood schmaltz version has not been made, because movies of this bare tearing apart of the human soul and condition are few and far between nowadays, and Redgrave's performance a master class in itself of redemption on earth with dignity and feeling without seeming to act, let alone a million miles away from falling into the trap of over-acting.... brilliant stuff.