The Go-Between / The Pumpkin Eater

THE GO-BETWEEN, 1970, Sony Repertory, 118 min. Dir. Joseph Losey. Leo, a 13-year-old boy (Dominic Guard) on the cusp of puberty, goes to stay with his rich friend at their country estate in the summer of 1900. The friend’s older brother is engaged to Marian (Julie Christie), on whom Leo develops a crush. Marian takes a shine to the boy and soon is enlisting him to carry messages to her secret lover, a neighboring tenant farmer named Ted (Alan Bates). As the idyllic summer disappears, Leo grows up, seeing and hearing things he must keep in the strictest confidence. When Ted and Marian’s affair takes a tragic turn, the impact on Leo’s life is overwhelming and will be felt well into adulthood.

THE PUMPKIN EATER, 1964, Sony Repertory, 110 min. Dir. Jack Clayton. Anne Bancroft is a depressed and intelligent upper-middle-class housewife who can’t seem to stop having children, something that is driving her screenwriter husband (Peter Finch) around the bend.