ABSTRACT
The Go-Between, adapted from the novel by L.P.Hartley, directed by Joseph Losey, straddles the world of memory and the dominant/ subservient class relations traditional to turn-of-the-century and prewar Britain. Like Silence, the screenplay moves back and forth in time in what might seem to be flash forwards. The central love story, Marian’s passionate entanglement with the hired man Ted, is framed by Colston, who as a child, acted as her go-between with Ted. Colston, the child, half enamored of Marian, believes he cast a spell on her love, and when, after she becomes pregnant, she is eased into a marriage with Lore Trimmingham, Ted kills himself. The middle-aged Colston, who revisits the aged Marian at her invitation, bears witness to the son she had with Ted and raised as her husband’s, dramatizing a triumph of love over class relations. She represents yet another of Pinter’s women characters who wrest some justice and victory from circumstances that would oppress her as love again returns as a vital center of all else.
