THE BROWNING VERSION (BBC PLAY OF THE MONTH 1985)

Available now on BBC Video, this version was first broadcast in a series that brought the world’s best theatrical material to the screen each month, in studio-bound productions with the focus on characterisation and theme.  Rattigan was a popular choice for production, chiefly because his plays were quite recent (in the pantheon oi great drama, that is), and because his style of writing worked extremely well for their intimidate television camera and the use of videotape, which was the standard form of BBC shooting for the mid-80s.

Starring Judi Dench and Ian Holm, as the Crocker-Harris’s, the episode focused on the contrasts in behaviour of the two in a society dedicated to politeness and respectability.  Truth came at a terrible premium, and was often consciously avoided by staff members wanting to protect their pensions.  This is a theme that extends beyond the play’s limited social milieu of a minor boys’ public school in the late 40s, a time when much of Britain still looked back to pre-war attitudes, despite the radical social changes taking place in the Forties.  This is what the production stresses in its decor, a melange of dusty books, previous year’s exam papers, and reports.  The cramped staff conditions allow perhaps twenty per cent of its members to sit, while the rest have to stand.  Crocker-Harris’s (Holm’s) study is a dusty room where the windows are either blocked or so caked with dust that no new light enters inside.  The room is dominated by an ancient desk piled high with papers and an armchair where Crocker-Harris occasionally uses for moments of reflection. The whole scene looks tired, listless and in the need of a good lick of paint.

Yet it will never receive anything so radical, not while the current Headmaster (John Woodvine) is in post.  A superficial man whose main aim seems to be to cultivate an atmosphere of enforced efficiency, especially on public occasions such as Speech Day, he loathes Crocker-Harris for his listlessness and wants him out as soon as possible, even if it means denying him a pension.  Of course, the Head never says anything directly for fear of destroying the atmosphere of false bonhomie, especially on speech days.  Rather he has a way of dressing up bad news as not his responsibility, as if he is conveying it on others’ behalf while he remains impartial.

Crocker-Harris has peopled this environment for the past two decades.  As portrayed by Holm, he cultivates an outlook of extreme reserve, not revealing anything of himself to anyone.  This is the result of a career spent in an environment where survival depends on such traits, even if Crocker-Harris has been emotionally destroyed as a result.  The production makes much of his abilities when he came to the schnozzola - a brilliant classical scholar with a glittering future academically.  But the environment destroys him: he loses that hunger that drives good academics onwards and soon realises he is not cut out for teaching.  Crocker-Harris talks bitterly about his feelings in a conversation with Frank Hunter (Michael Kitchen), a younger colleagues who strenuously tries to befriend Crocker-Harris yet finds advances perpetually rebuffed.

The basic scenario suggests how in s school environment adaptation can soon become impossible, especially for someone whose personal convictions evaporated years ago.  It’s not that Holm’z Crocker-Harris is a bad teacher, or a bad person; but his mind has become so fouled up with inertia that he can neither relate to other people not modify his teaching style.  His is the fate of anyone not believing how self-development occurs because individuals want it to, and with the help of others around them.  Rather he remains suspicious of everyone (whom he believes either ignores him completely or laughs at him behind a facade of respectability).  The only protection is for Crocker-Harris to look and say nothing, even if that strategy alienates Holm further from his colleagues and learners.

Yet Crocker-Harris’s problems are exacerbated by a marriage to Dench’s Millie. She is a complex character, at once pitiable yet thoroughly deserving of what happens to her.  Superficially she maintains a respectable public image as a dutiful schoolmaster’s wife, attending all the right parties and agreeing with everything the Head says.  Yet behind that lies a deeply disappointed women, who has had extramarital love-affairs yet cannot experience any satisfaction from them.  Once Hunter learns how horrible she has been to her husband, he refuses to have anything to do with her.

The climactic moment between husband and wife occurs when Millie discovers that the boy Taplow has bought a going-away present for Crocker-Harris.  Beneath a look of pure hatred, she informs her husband that this has nothing to.do with the learner being fond of his teacher, but a strategy designed to cull favour from the teacher and ensure that the student gets his graces.  According to the logic of this production, this is the moment we understand how a lack of adaptation turns individuals into cruel beasts, offering explanations far from the truth but designed to humiliate their loved ones.  No one can really stoop lower.

Yet Rattigan has not finished yet.  Holm’s Crocker-Harris half-believes what his wife says, but for the first time in years he hits back.  Vowing never to put his wife through emotional hell any more, he spurns her company in the forthcoming vacation and resolves never to visit her parents in Bradford any more.  He does not know what he will do instead: maybe he will visit Frank Hunter instead —- alone.  Holm’s expression does not change, but we understand how he has adapted himself to find an alternative mode of existence.

The production ends on a note of cautious optimism.  He rings the Head and insists on his inalienable right to end the sequence of speeches, not to accept the Head’s demand that Crocker-Harris goes next-to-last.  This may sound unimportant, but Holm’s Crocket-Harris has for the first time willingly defied orders and asserted his own view instead.  As he moves away from the phone, he sighs a little then picks up the book Taplow bought him - a symbol of independence,  as well as a reminder that, contrary to what he had assumed, some learners did appreciate his way of teaching.

The production is very much a period-piece, the product of an era when Britain was dominated by pre-war attitudes.  But that context is only used to reinforce Rattigan’s concern that people should learn to adapt through life so as to remain happy, and listen to others.  No one is as badly disposed as Millie Crocker-Harris, even though in a world dedicated to surfaces they might be reluctant to share their emotions.