The Browning Version: a review of the film

The Browning Version: a review of the film!

First, I'd like to give credit to Criterion for the excellent job they did on The Browning Version. This 1951 film directed by Anthony Asquith stars Michael Redgrave as Crocker-Harris, headmaster and literature professor at an all boys school in England. In his role as Crocker-Harris, Redgrave is as brittle as they come. None of his students like him and call him names behind his back. A student named Taplow feels sorry for the professor and gets close enough to him to learn that the mean professor is not mean at all, but actually a victim who's taken advantage of by a wife half his age who only married him for personal gain. Crocker-Harris has nothing of love in his life except his love of literature and the Browning Version of a book called Agamemnon.

The Browning version is a  sad film about the regrets most of us have about things we wish we would have done in the past. This has been one of my favorite movies for a long time because of Michael Redgrave's performance as Crocker-Harris who is reduced to playing cuckold to a young wife who only married him for his money.

This is one of the great performances ever, up there with Charles Laughton's performance as Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame and in a way, the roles are similar, only that in The Browning Version, the main character's disfigurement is on the inside. This is a great movie at only an hour and a half.