Critics reviews

Pinter and Losey capture the seething unspoken emotions that lurk beneath the green and pleasant surface with aplomb.

There are signs that Pinter himself had become infected by Losey’s tendency to overreach – for the film, though admirable, feels pristine rather than poignant. It does look “hot, and like a slightly faded Renoir or Constable”, as Losey wanted, but it doesn’t move us as much as Hartley’s novel moved Pinter: he could not stop crying when he read it

Oddly, it was two expatriate American directors who perfected the look of that quintessentially English form, the "white linen" period drama. James Ivory made the sub-genre a box-office staple, but it was Joseph Losey who got there first in this adaptation of LP Hartley's drama of innocence lost, scripted by Harold Pinter... Shot by Gerry Fisher, the English rural summer has never seemed so languid or so treacherous.

For Leo, and by extension the audience, the violence of Mrs. Maudley's wrath, the discovery of Marian and Ted having sex, and the guilt he feels at Ted's death (all of which we observe in shorter and shorter moments, vanishing as a half-remembered childhood memory) culminates in the final scene as great tragedy not because all of this has ruined his life, but because his cry for rescue to Marian is answered only by another painful request: to once again fulfil his duties as a postman.