The Browning Version (1951)
Michael Redgrave: Andrew Crocker-Harris
Photos
Quotes
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Andrew Crocker-Harris : You see, my dear Hunter, she is really quite as much to be pitied as I am. We are both of us interesting subjects for your microscope, hmmm! Oh, both of us needing something from the other to make life supportable for us... and neither of us able to give it. Two kinds of love, hers and mine. Worlds apart! Oh, I know now, but back when I married her, I did not think that they were incompatible, nor, I suppose, did she.
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Andrew Crocker-Harris : I may have been a brilliant scholar, but I was woefully ignorant of the facts of life.
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[Crocker-Harris is making his farewell speech to the whole school. He starts with a very dry, erudite speech but soon abandons it]
Andrew Crocker-Harris : You must excuse me. I had prepared a speech, but I find now that I have nothing to say. Or rather, I have three very small words, but they are most deeply felt. They are these: I am sorry. I am sorry because I have failed to give you what you had the right to demand of me as your teacher: sympathy, encouragement, and humanity. I'm sorry because I have deserved the nickname of Himmler. And because, by so doing, I have degraded the noblest calling that a man can follow: the care and molding of the young. I claim no excuses. When I came here, I- I knew what I had to do, and I have not done it. I have failed. And... miserably failed. But I can only hope that you and the countless others who have gone before will find it in your hearts to forgive me for having let you down. I shall not find it so easy to forgive myself. That is all.
[rapturous and prolonged applause by the boys]
