The Browning Version

A touching,gentle movie,The Browning Version is perhaps hugely under-rated.

The simple tale of an aging school teacher forced into retirement actually contains many poetic metaphors for struggle.Crocker-Harris finds himself at one of life's great crossroads and wrestles with the inner turmoil of the knowledge that his life-work may have been futile.His convictions about language and literature are to be swept aside with the arrival of his successor and his still-beautiful wife,sympathetically played by Greta Scaachi,is as distant as his pupils.

Finney plays this role with a calm and measure that is evidence of a great actor at work.Perhaps only Hopkins could have hoped to have done so well with this role.

The score is excellent and the cinematography elegant.A great "English" film in every sense;my only wish is that it might have been a little longer.Somehow,an epic running time may have yielded the acclaim that it justly deserved.

This is one of those movies that are easy to overlook because of their lack of special effects, bone-rattling audio, and sexual situations. Nevertheless, The Browning Version tells a poignant story of an aging teacher who is being shunted aside in favor of a younger replacement. Albert Finney is wonderful as Crocker-Harris, "the Hitler of the lower sixth," whose health is failing and whose enthusiasm for teaching is gone. Greta Scacchi is equally good as his unfaithful wife. Her nuanced performance is one way in which this version is superior to the much-admired Michael Redgrave issue of 1951. In the latter, Jean Kent plays an unrelenting bitch who cares not a whit for her husband's plight. One cannot, under any circumstances, imagine how the two characters ever got together. In the new rendition, however, one can see how the lovely Miss Scacchi might have fallen for the athletically built Finney. As a result, one can better appreciate the disillusionment and bitterness that inform her character as she contemplates what he has become.

I don't think I have the gift of words to write something that makes brilliant sense. Some movies are good, some movies aren't. This movie is just a superb thing. Everything is done with class. The acting is fine and subtle and the scene where the old teacher gets the book and he starts crying is magnificent. The soundtrack satisfies all my needs with it's romantic melodies and perfect timing. This movie is a must-see.

This was an unexpected jewel of a movie. If you like movies such as "Remains of the Day," you will enjoy this one. Against the backdrop of a traditional boys school in the English countryside, a teacher who is being forced out examines his life. This movie is well-done across the board--the rich if spare script (perfect), the cinematography, a well-integrated score, all perfectly paced. This movie and the characters in it have layers. The acting by Albert Finney and Greta Sacchi is masterful (Michael Gabon is good, too). All that, and it has an honest ending. This movie had my rapt attention from the opening scene, and I am certain to watch it again.

A movie about coming to terms with a life that didn't turn out, at you thought it would, about the importance of little things, when the structure itself is crumbling. I don't know exactly what it was about this movie but it just hit me, where i live. I cried my eyes out, and it colored my emotions for weeks after-wards. It deals with most of the issues that an adult is faced with; marriage, work relations, personal identity, etc., from the viewpoint of an aging teacher, who does what he does, except it isn't really working, as he thought would. Social acceptance and respect is missing, his marriage is on the rocks. In a way he is like a mundane Horatio on the bridge, who keeps fighting, knowing all too well, that the fight is lost, hoping perhaps beyond hope, that one small victory is possible.