The Go-Between (1971)

"The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there". With those lines, spoken in the present, we are taken back to the summer of 1900 when a 12 year old boy (Dominic Guard) spends the summer at his aristocratic schoolmate's family estate where he develops a crush on his friend's older sister (Julie Christie) who coldly manipulates him into carrying messages to her lover (Alan Bates), a farmer and therefore because of the class system forbidden to her. The effect of this situation is traumatic and destroys his life, leaving him a barren lonely adult. The two lovers fail to see how unprepared the boy is to carry this burden because as a child, their passion is beyond his ken of understanding. Christie is lovely so it's easy to see how a young boy could fall under her spell but still her using him seems unspeakably cruel and even to the end, she romanticizes the situation, failing to see how she has destroyed him. Joseph Losey directs from Harold Pinter's script of the L.P. Hartley novel and as they proved with THE SERVANT and ACCIDENT, they're a perfect match for this kind of examination of upper class ennui and corruption. With Michael Redgrave, Margaret Leighton (in an Oscar nominated performance), Edward Fox and Michael Gough. The music is by Michel Legrand.