HOW TERENCE RATTIGAN EVOKED DEEP EMOTIONS IN FILM AUDIENCES

Five Classic British Films to Enjoy ?

A different version of this article was first published in Film International.

Terence Rattigan was a master at inducing strong emotions in the audiences of his many plays and films. During his career from 1936 to his death in 1977, Rattigan had 23 stage plays and 22 screenplays produced, as well as numerous television productions based on his works. Rattigan’s prodigious ability to evoke intense emotions in his audience is evident in all the films he wrote (or co-wrote) but it is especially apparent in The Sound Barrier (1952), The Winslow Boy (1948), Separate Tables (1958), The V.I.P.s (1963), and The Final Test (1953). Let’s examine some of the dramatic techniques that Rattigan used in these films that induced strong emotions in viewers.

THE SOUND BARRIER

Directed by David Lean and starring Ralph Richardson, The Sound Barrier (1) is a fictional account of the men who first broke the sound barrier. The film (with The Winslow Boy) is Rattigan’s most philosophical story because its characters dramatize an abstract issue, innovation. The film is not focused primarily on the nature of innovation itself but on the nature of the men who break new ground, especially the main pioneer in this story, successful airplane industrialist Sir John Ridgefield (Richardson). What makes Sir John and many other Rattigan characters appealing and their conflicts dramatic is the high values they have at stake. In The Sound Barrier, Sir John can fail in his quest to break the barrier, lose his relationship with his daughter, and cost the lives of his test pilots and family members.

The main conflict of The Sound Barrier is between Sir John and his daughter, Susan (Ann Todd), who although admiring her domineering father “tremendously” cannot understand his life-risking obsession with innovation. Susan challenges her father’s ethics because his crusade has cost the life of her brother and threatens the lives of her husband and other test pilots. Sir John believes that mankind must explore no matter the cost, that human progress and the advancement of knowledge are of fundamental importance. “It’s just got to be done.”

This conflict between father and daughter is a rare on-screen experience, a debate over important principles. But these conflicts are not abstract debates about high ideals but are intensely personal life and death conflicts: Career success versus career failure. Father versus daughter. Husband versus wife. Families splitting. Pilots dying. This personalizing of important ideals by Rattigan deeply increases our emotions during the story, especially those of concern and fear. Further, because Rattigan makes us empathize with both Sir John and Susan’s viewpoints for and against innovation, to see its great possibilities and costs, our feelings of curiosity and suspense are more strongly aroused. What will happen next? Who is right? In the climax of The Sound Barrier when Susan finally understands that for humans to progress the world needs men of “imagination” and “courage” like her father, this father and daughter are reconciled and we react with feelings of warm pleasure. The important ethical question of the story has been answered but in an intimate and personal way that creates strong emotions in us.

The Sound Barrier is an excellent example of a writing technique fundamental to Rattigan’s dramaturgy. Throughout this article, I will discuss this technique as it is applied in different Rattigan stories in different ways. This dramatic technique relates to how Rattigan plays his story events to create the most conflict and to elicit the strongest audience reaction.

Let’s look at this dramatic method in relation to Susan’s conflict with her father over the deaths caused by his quest for innovation. Rattigan first sets up the key problem of the story: Sir John’s struggle to break the sound barrier and how this struggle influences the main characters and their relationships. Rattigan reveals Susan and her father’s important relationships with her brother Chris (Denholm Elliot), husband Tony (Nigel Patrick), and their test pilot friend Philip (John Justin).

Rattigan escalates the conflicts in these relationships by having Chris die in a plane crash while trying to please his god like father. Susan blames her father for Chris’s death and watches fearfully as Tony risks his life as the lead test pilot. As Sir John and his engineering team work on the test plane and ways to safely break through the sound barrier, we see the simmering conflict between father and daughter ignite. In a bid to break through the barrier, Tony takes up the latest test jet. Refusing to watch the flight, Susan hides in a local cinema. Tony’s plane goes into a death dive and he is killed. As marching music blares from the film in the cinema, Susan looks up and sees Philip’s grim face looking down at her. Without a word passing between them, Susan knows that her beloved husband is dead, killed trying to break the sound barrier for her father.

The dramatic key to these events is their effect on Sir John and Susan’s relationship. Rattigan now plays the first direct confrontation between father and daughter. After visiting the crash site, Susan rushes to her father’s office. As she charges in, stricken with grief and need, Susan finds her father, hunched over his desk, listening coldly like a scientist to a tape recording of Tony’s crash. Susan hears Tony’s voice crying out as he dies. Susan flees the office, horrified at what she presumes is her father’s callous indifference to her husband’s death.

This scene is emotionally powerful because Rattigan has so logically built up all the thematic ideas and personal conflicts that explode in Sir John’s office. This setup has given these climactic events a value significance and meaning that is now paid off, but in a shocking way. We have seen Sir John’s love of innovation and respect for Tony and witnessed Susan’s love for her husband and admiration for but fear of her father’s work. But we don’t expect Sir John to be so cold or Susan to witness this during such tragedy. The scene is also deep with implication about the nature of Sir John and challenges us regarding the morality of his crusade for man to conquer nature.

Rattigan has also chosen the most dramatic way and time to heighten the conflict between Sir John and Susan: when Sir John’s quest has failed and Susan is suffering the death of the man she loves. However, by Rattigan creating such events and playing them in this way, he makes the drama especially arresting and painful for the audience. Rattigan’s ability to structure his character conflicts so they climax when the worst thing happens in the worst way at the worst time is the hallmark of a great dramatist. And it is a potent way to create great emotion in an audience.

THE WINSLOW BOY

Directed by Anthony Asquith and starring Robert Donat, The Winslow Boy was adapted by Rattigan (and others) from his play of the same name. The film opens with young Ronnie Winslow accused of stealing a five-pound postal note from a fellow school cadet. Ronnie’s father Arthur (Cedric Hardwicke), a middle-aged banker of fierce demeanor and frail health, and his suffragette daughter Catherine (Margaret Leighton) spring to Ronnie’s defense. Both Arthur and Catherine are individuals of great principle, intelligence and strength of purpose.

There is an inspiring goodness in the lead characters of this film. One key way Rattigan develops our feelings of warm respect for the three leads of The Winslow Boy is to give them high-minded reasons to defend Ronnie: In the play version of the story, Arthur declares “I shall continue to fight this monstrous injustice with every weapon and every means at my disposal.” While Catherine declares, “All I care about is that people know a government despotism has ignored a fundamental human right [a fair trial and legal rep-resentation] and that it should be forced to ac-knowledge it.” The third lead character who supports Ronnie is Sir Robert Morton (Robert Donat), the best legal advocate in the country, who wants “to do right” to fight for “Individual liberty.”

The emotional reaction of the audience to the goodness of Arthur, Catherine and Sir Robert is heightened by how these characters are portrayed. Leighton, Hardwicke and especially Donat play their characters as human beings with great gravitas and dignity. The nature of these characters and their onscreen portrayals infuse the audience with a sense of benevolent regard, not only for the characters themselves but also more generally for our fellow human beings. All seems right with the world when Arthur, Catherine and Sir Robert support the good and succeed. When we witness these three noble Rattigan characters, we feel inspirited.

Another way Rattigan evokes strong emotions in The Winslow Boy audience is by depicting acts of splendid decency. Again, this dramatic effect is the result of a carefully developed yet subtle set up. For example, during the story Catherine derides the motives of Sir Robert, believing him to be, not a man of principle, but “a cold fish” taking advantage of Ronnie’s situation for political gain. (Sir Robert also sits in the parliament). When Catherine realizes that Sir Robert is in fact a principled man she apologizes to him. During this scene, we are moved by Catherine’s apology and by the dignity and decency of these two good people. This effect is further heightened by the way that Rattigan plays this recognition scene, with dramatic irony. We the audience have been let in on the true good nature of Sir Robert before Catherine, so we have been anticipating and desiring this scene of recognition and justice. When it finally comes, we experience a catharsis, a release of our pent-up frustrated desire for justice and rightness. This is similar to how we also want justice for the innocent Ronnie.

Scenes like Catherine acting justly towards Sir Robert also cause deep emotions in us because Rattigan makes us empathize with his characters. He expertly creates attractive, three dimensional characters imbued with values and problems that we understand and care about: Ronnie likes trains and planes but doesn’t give a hoot about his court case. Sir Arthur shows great concern for the happiness of Catherine and is upset when he sees that their cause may result in her losing the affections of her fiancé. Arthur is hurt when he sees that his son Ronnie fears him. Sir Robert at first may seem a cold fish, but when we learn of his passion for his work, his caring for Ronnie’s cause, and even his wish to see Catherine across the aisle in the parliament, we admire him. These are all the realistic and humane reactions of good people that other good people recognize, causing in them a rush of emotional warmth.

SEPARATE TABLES

Let’s now turn to two of the most emotion inducing scenes in Rattigan stories, the breakfast scene in Separate Tables and the check writing scene in The V.I.P.s. These scenes do not contain brilliantly witty dialogue, big action or great clashes. The scenes are dramatic because they climax carefully constructed, deeply personal conflicts. But what is especially important regarding the drama of these scenes is the manner in which Rattigan climaxes these lines of conflict.

Co-written by Terence Rattigan and John Gay and directed by Delbert Mann, Separate Tables dramatizes the lives and sexual problems of four lonely people living in (or visiting) a retirement hotel in Bournemouth, England. The climax of the two main stories of the film takes place in the dining room during breakfast and consists of no more than the speaking of a few quiet words or the expressing of several small gestures by these four characters. But these words and actions are filled with profound decision and meaning.

The first story features Sybil Railton-Bell (Deborah Kerr), a frigid spinster dominated by her controlling and cruel mother, and her companion the Major (David Niven), a harmless fraud who pretends to have been an important soldier. The lonely Sybil and Major enjoy the company of each other. After Sybil’s mother exposes the Major as a fraud and sexual harasser, she bans Sybil from ever talking to him again. Throughout the film, we have witnessed Sybil’s meek surrender to her bullying mother. In the climax, as Sybil’s mother is exiting the dining room, she commands Sybil to follow her and so be away from the Major sitting alone at a table. Sybil remains seated and answers, “No, Mummy. I’m going to stay here in the dining room, and finish my breakfast.”

Because Rattigan has so well dramatized the nature of Sybil, her mother and their relationship, we understand the subtle but deep meaning of Sybil’s words. They are the soul saving choice of a shy, repressed woman “scared of life” who for the first time has stood up to her tyrannical, destructive mother. Sybil’s softly spoken words are revolutionary. She now has a friend and a chance to live an independent and somewhat happy life. Because we understand so well the essence of these shy characters and their failed lives, Sybil’s life-affirming choice deeply moves us.

Also seated in the dining room are John Malcolm (Burt Lancaster) and Anne Shankland (Rita Hayworth). John has hidden for years in the hotel, afraid of his desire for his frigid ex-wife Anne, who he once bashed. Anne, a neurotic former model, desperately needs John’s love and attention (but not sexually) to find some kind of meaning to her life. She has come to the hotel to use any means to win him back. John discovers that Anne has lied and deceived him and refuses to leave with her but agrees to talk with her one last time. At the end of their conversation, John and Anne discuss life without each other. Here is how part of the climax of the scene is written in the play version:

“Anne. After all, there are worse deaths, aren’t there? (She looks round the room at the empty tables.) Slower and more painful and more frightening….

John gets up quietly from his table and walks to hers…He takes her hand.

John. (Gently.) You realize, don’t you, that we haven’t very much hope together?…

Anne. Have we all that much apart?”….

[The waitress Doreen comes in.] They release their hands.

Doreen. Do you two want to sit at the same table from now on? You can, if you like?”

John. “Yes. I think we do…

John once again takes Anne’s hand.” (2)

Understanding the meaning of John’s subtle words and his suggestive gesture of taking Anne’s hand, we feel a warm sympathy and hope for John and Anne. As critic and Rattigan biographer Michael Darlow concluded, “One’s heart so often lifts at the end of a Rattigan play not because of some neat ending to the story, but because the characters have in some, usually small way, reasserted their human dignity.” (3) These “reassertions” are especially emotional because they are the final scene of a carefully built structure and value meaning that is climaxed so subtly. Rattigan’s use of implication in his characters’ dialog and actions forces the audience to work out the exact meaning of these words and actions. Having to firsthand think about these meanings, the audience is much more involved in and moved by these events. Rattigan noted this dramatic effect this way: “it is the implicit rather than the explicit that gives life to a scene and, by demanding the collaboration of an audience, holds it, contented, flattered, alert and responsive.” (4) (We will discuss more later about the importance of implication and suggestion to create drama.) 

THE V.I.P.s

Directed by Anthony Asquith and featuring a cavalcade of stars, The V.I.P.s is an ensemble story about VIPs who, for a variety of interesting reasons, are desperate to leave England that day. But when their plane is stranded by fog, these VIPs are stuck on English soil and their souls tried.

One of the most emotion inducing scenes in The V.I.P.s is the check-writing scene between Miss Mead (Maggie Smith) and Paul Andross (Richard Burton). Our reaction to this beautifully written, directed and acted scene is, again, produced in a context: The carefully set up value meaning underlying the need for the check and the asking for and giving of it.

This set up begins with our introduction to the relationship between secretary Miss Mead and her boss, Australian tractor factory owner Les Mangram (Rod Taylor). To save his business and its “family of 3,000” employees, Mangram has signed a check he knows will bounce unless he can soon get to New York to cover it. Without any express actions or words, the story has also revealed that the shy Miss Mead is in love with Mangram, who does not realize it.

After learning that because of the delay of the plane leaving London all hope for covering the check has gone, Miss Mead sees British magnate Paul Andross sitting in the airport bar. Andross is writing his suicide note. As dramatized earlier in the film, Andross is a tough businessman and thoughtless husband who is shaken to his core by losing his wife Frances (Elizabeth Taylor) to a French gigolo (Louis Jordan). The lovers are trying to flee on a plane. Andross will commit suicide if his wife leaves him.

Rejecting her shyness, Miss Mead interrupts Andross to ask him to write Mangram a check (as a loan) for a huge amount. We understand that Miss Mead’s request reveals and climaxes her unexpressed love for Mangram. The audience has been anticipating and hoping for some manifestation of this love by Miss Mead. Such an expression would confirm our values and release our frustrated need for Miss Mead to reveal herself. At the moment of experiencing his own terrible romantic failure, Andross understands Miss Mead’s motivation and respects it by signing the check. Through his interaction with Miss Mead, Andross has implicitly expressed his own tender side of desperately loving and needing his wife. Understanding the meaning underlying the actions of Miss Mead and Paul Andross, the audience experiences an effusion of warm tenderness. The climactic choices of both these characters express the victory of high values with spiritual meaning that we empathize with and feel strongly about.

Importantly, as noted earlier, because Rattigan plays his scenes so implicitly, which forces us to be more mentally involved in the story, we react more strongly emotionally. The more we understand, the more we feel. Consider an alternative way of depicting these issues of the heart in The V.I.Ps: Rattigan has Miss Mead confide in another character her deep love for Mangram and then has her beg Andross to sign the check because she loves her boss and doesn’t want to see him hurt. Such explicitness robs the audience of making these conclusions itself and thus from becoming an intimate part of the drama and lives of these characters.

Rattigan is so skilled at building empathy for his characters that he makes us even care for the gigolo Marc Champselle, who is stealing Frances Andross from her husband. Rattigan makes us care for Champselle by playing him sympathetically. Rattigan first shows us the context of Frances being taken for granted by her husband and then he dramatizes this gigolo acting honestly about a value and being honest about himself for the first time in his life. Rattigan portrays Champselle, not as sleazy but as an elegant, charming and intelligent failure. Rattigan also develops our feelings of empathy for Champselle by depicting his genuine (and universal) need of wanting to love and be loved. And because we do understand and care for Marc Champselle, we are saddened by the tragic letdown that awaits him when Frances returns to her husband.

Because Rattigan makes us feel sympathy for Marc Champselle does not mean that he does not also have us care for Paul and Frances Andross. The climax of The V.I.P.s is the quiet but emotional ending of their story. After Paul Andross has won back his wife, they nestle up to each other in the back of his Rolls Royce on the drive home. They look honestly ahead at their hopeful but uncertain future. Andross tells Frances, “With the truth we don’t have much hope. With lies we have none.” Rattigan once wrote that “An analysis of those moments in the great plays at which we have all caught our breaths would surely lead to the conclusion that they are nearly always those moments when the least is being said, and the most suggested.” (5)

THE FINAL TEST

Set in the worlds of cricket and poetry, The Final Test dramatizes a beautifully touching (and often amusing) story about a father and son. In this very English drama directed by Anthony Asquith, the main characters learn to understand and respect the values of each other. This is especially so for Sam Palmer (Jack Warner), the great cricketer playing his last game, and his son Reggie (Ray Jackson), a poetry and drama obsessed teen who disdains cricket. Sam has no understanding of drama or poetry and needs to become more insightful about his other passion, girlfriend Cora, who is frustrated by Sam’s seeming lack of commitment to their relationship.

Sam longs for his son to come to the Oval cricket ground to watch him play his last innings in the game he loves, but Reggie prefers to visit Alexander Whitehead (Robert Morley), a great dramatist. In an amusing, ironic twist, Whitehead turns out to be a cricket fanatic, who demands that Reggie rush with him to see the great Sam Palmer’s last innings. Whitehead argues that Sam is a great man for his artistry in “banging a ball around an oval.” In the climax, father and son are reconciled and Sam bravely asks Cora for her hand in marriage. And Whitehead meets his hero.

The dominant emotion evoked by The Final Test (especially its climax) is the feeling of benevolent warmth. There is no evil in this story, no real irrationality or meanness. There is misunderstanding and ignorance. Rattigan stories rarely have villains (except Ross, Separate Tables, and The Browning Version). As a template, Rattigan treated his characters with compassion. In the climax of The Final Test, we witness a son learn respect for his father’s great value cricket and a father keep an open mind about his son’s unfathomable love of poetry and absurdist drama, and we are infused with a warm pleasure. Through experiencing these characters and events, we feel that there is goodness in the world and that good people can succeed and respect each other across their differences. We are uplifted and cheer when the poet gives his rapturous defense of cricket that results in a deeper understanding and bonding between father and son. We react emotionally to the benevolent world that Terence Rattigan has created. 

Rattigan’s many films (and plays) are a dramatic feast that inspire a vast range of thoughts and emotions in their audiences. Feelings of suspense, wonder, hurt, tenderness, and especially benevolence. Rattigan’s unique, three-dimensional characters, their poignant relationships and high-value conflicts, and his sensitive depictions of human goodness and need deeply move audiences. Rattigan was masterful at setting up and implicitly playing his characters’ values and choices and at integrating these with the values and minds of his audience. The content and style of Rattigan plays and films that created such strong emotions in audiences is the key reason why Terence Rattigan was one of the most popular and successful playwrights and screenwriters of the last century. 

…

Scott McConnell has been published on Terence Rattigan in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. A former film and TV producer in Los Angeles, he is now a story consultant who lives in Melbourne Australia. Read more of his story analysis and film reviews at https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/scottamcconnell/

Endnotes

1)     Also known as Breaking the Sound Barrier.

2)     The Collected Plays of Terence Rattigan Volume 2, The Later Plays 1953-1977. Paper Tiger 2001, Cresskill NJ, USA, PP 128 - 129.

3)     Michael Darlow, “A Personal Essay” in Longman Study Texts The Winslow Boy (London: Longman, 1990), XIV.

4)     Terence Rattigan, “Preface” The Collected Plays of Terence Rattigan, Volume One. The Early Plays 1936–1952. (Cresskill NJ: The Paper Tiger, 2000), 10. 

5)     Terence Rattigan, “Preface” The Collected Plays of Terence Rattigan, Volume One. The Early Plays 1936–1952. (Cresskill NJ: The Paper Tiger, 2000), 10.

 Techniques of How to Create Strong Emotion in An Audience