The Go-Between

Christie plays a romantic young aristocrat in this exquisitely judged English pastoral drama set at the end of the Victorian era (where the past is indeed a “foreign country”). Seemingly resigned to the overwhelming influence her social class will have on her future, she confides in a schoolboy who visits for the summer holidays.

In L. P. Hartley’s novel, the boy’s narration as an old man frames the story, but Harold Pinter’s brilliant adaptation also uses a flashforward technique to undercut the tale’s nostalgia. Winner of the 1971 Cannes Palme d’Or, its wonderful cast also includes Alan Bates, Edward Fox, Michael Redgrave and Margaret Leighton. Music by Michel Legrand.