The Browning Version

Forty-three years after the first screen treatment of Terence Rattigan's play about a teacher facing the end of his career, Albert Finney takes on the role of Mr. Crocker-Harris, the Latin teacher forced into early retirement by a heart condition. After teaching in a public school for twenty years, ...more

Versatile Albert Finney is at home in the role of Crocker-Harris, a gruff schoolmaster who requires his high-born brats to recite Aeschylus in the original Greek. When Taplow presents him the Browning version on a soccer field, Finney weeps unsentimentally; his tears contain salt, not sugar. His brilliant performance reminds us all of the unfeeling classroom overlord we hated in our school days but later grew to love in the hurly-burly of everyday life for which he prepared us. Scriptwriter ...more