The Browning Version (1994)

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Revolving around Finney's gaunt tragic performance as a Classics teacher spurned by school and spouse, this update of Terence Rattigan's play is an unexpected masterpiece.

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Review by Michael Brooke on 1st February 2007

If it's unlikely enough that a Tarantino-dominated decade would see a big-screen Terence Rattigan revival, it's even more surprising that it would be spearheaded by Mike Figgis and David Mamet (whose Winslow Boy followed in 1999). Presumably aware that this was the sixth screen adaptation of Rattigan's 1948 one-act psychological drama (following Anthony Asquith's 1951 feature film and four TV versions), Figgis gambled on a present-day update. Although initially jarring to those familiar with the original, this adds extra poignancy to the situation faced by unpopular disciplinarian Classics teacher Andrew Crocker-Harris (Albert Finney). He's already facing redundancy from both career and marriage (to the fickle, grasping Greta Scacchi), but the real-life decline of Latin and Greek powerfully underscores his pervasive fear that he has wasted his life. Finney naturally holds centre stage, but he's given sterling support from Matthew Modine as his love rival (the American accent suggesting cultural as well as personal invasion), Michael Gambon as the callous headmaster and Figgis' regular muse Julian Sands as Crocker-Harris' successor - now, inevitably, a modern languages specialist.

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