The Browning Version (1951 film)

The Browning Version
Redgrave on the cover of The Criterion Collection DVD release of The Browning Version
Directed by	Anthony Asquith
Produced by	Teddy Baird Earl St. John
Written by	Terence Rattigan
Starring	Michael Redgrave Jean Kent Nigel Patrick
Music by	Arnold Bax Kenneth Essex (both uncredited )
Cinematography	Desmond Dickinson
Edited by	John D. Guthridge
Distributed by	General Film Distr. (UK) Universal-International (USA)
Release date	1951
Running time	90 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English

The Browning Version is a 1951 British film based on the 1948 play of the same name by Terence Rattigan. It was directed by Anthony Asquith and starred Michael Redgrave.

Andrew Crocker-Harris is an aging Classics master at an English public school, and is forced into retirement by his increasing ill health. The film, in common with the original stage play, follows the schoolmaster's final few days in his post, as he comes to terms with his sense of failure as a teacher, a sense of weakness exacerbated by his wife's infidelity and the realization that he is despised by both pupils and staff of the school.

The emotional turning-point for the cold Crocker-Harris is his pupil Taplow's unexpected parting gift, Robert Browning's translation of the Agamemnon, which he has inscribed with the Greek phrase that translates as "God from afar looks graciously upon a gentle master."

Rattigan extends the screenplay far from his own one-act play, which ends on Crocker-Harris's tearful reaction to Taplow's gift. Therefore, the play ends well before Crocker-Harris's farewell speech to the school; the film shows the speech, in which he discards his notes and admits his failings, to be received with warm applause and cheers by the boys. The film ends with a conversation between Crocker-Harris and Taplow, and the suggestion that Crocker-Harris will complete his translation of the Agamemnon.

Rattigan and Asquith encountered a lack of enthusiasm from producers to turn the play into a film until they met Earl St John at Rank.

"I started out as manager of a small out-of-town cinema, and I viewed films from the out-of-London angle," said St John. "This experience made me realise that the ordinary people in the remotest places in the country were entitled to see the works of the best modern British playwrights."

Margaret Lockwood was originally meant to play the role of Millie.

The film was shot at Pinewood Studios. The school exteriors were filmed on location at the Sherborne School in Sherborne, Dorset.