Alan Bates, Dominic Guard and Julie Christie

The Go Between 1969

Directed by Joseph Losey

Starring: Alan Bates, Julie Christie and Dominic Guard

Based on the novel by L.P. Hartley

Screenplay by Harold Pinter published in
Collected Screenplays 2

What director Joseph Losey and his screenplay writer Harold Pinter expose beneath the privileged surface of life in a great house is social hypocrisy as well as secret passion. The false values that people live by, using class differences to maintain their power and privilege and never learning from the resulting tragedies.

Losey is perfectly served by his screenplay writer Harold Pinter, who has adapted L.P. Hartley's novel with scrupulous fidelity, yet adds to it his own uncanny skill at depicting people who use words to conceal themselves rather than reveal their meanings. In this guilty setting of privilege and deceit, Pinter is in his element.

Alexander Walker, Evening Standard

Pinter uses his gift for projecting the imminence of disaster through desultory conversation, without falling into self-parody or distorting the form and spirit of LP Hartley's classic novel. It is a very good film indeed.

George Melly, The Observer