The British New Wave outlier that tested Laurence Olivier

The hazards facing middle-aged male teachers surrounded by precocious teenage girls is a dilemma British cinema has explored more than once over the years. Edmond T. Gréville’s The Romantic Age (1949) saw Hugh Williams’ English master at a finishing school succumb to the charms of Mai Zetterling, while Glynis Johns’ schoolgirl crush on her Latin master (Leo Genn) in Personal Affair (1953) leads to suspicions of a relationship, or worse.

By the 1960s, the rise of the teenager (and exploitation cinema) had made pedagogy even more perilous for men teetering on the brink of a mid-life crisis. In Peter Glenville’s 1962 feature Term of Trial, Laurence Olivier plays Graham Weir, an idealistic English teacher in a drab northern town who becomes the object of affection of 15-year-old Shirley, played by Sarah Miles in her first screen role. When he rebuffs her advances, she turns on him and he is arrested for sexual assault.

The screenplay was adapted by Glenville from a recently published novel by James Barlow, which became a bestseller. Barlow later emigrated to Australia, announcing his departure with the 1969 book Goodbye England, a bilious diatribe against everything he perceived as wrong with the country, elements of which had surfaced in Term of Trial. Barlow died in 1973 aged 51, living long enough to see his novel The Burden of Proof make it to the screen as the dark gangster film Villain (1971), starring Richard Burton.

Glenville was better known as a theatre director, diversifying into film in 1955 with a stint in the US before returning to make Term of Trial. Miles described him as “a delightful, genuine, cultured man, far from second rate, [but] he had something soft at his centre”. He’d directed Laurence Olivier in a production of Becket on Broadway in 1961, though the actor was apparently not his first choice for the role of Weir. Likewise, Miles was cast as Shirley only after 15-year-old Hayley Mills’ participation was ruled out by her parents. Terence Stamp made his screen debut as the class thug, while Simone Signoret plays Weir’s long-suffering wife.

Signoret had won an Oscar for her performance as Laurence Harvey’s lover in the first of the social realist dramas, Room at the Top (1958), which, like Term of Trial, was produced by John and James Woolf’s Romulus. While Term of Trial is rarely included in the roster of British New Wave films, its contemporary Northern setting, emphasis on location shooting and stark black-and-white photography are typical of the type. Director of photography Oswald Morris had filmed both Look Back in Anger (1959) and The Entertainer (1960); the latter film marked Olivier’s participation in ‘kitchen sink’ drama, as fading music hall performer Archie Rice.

Term of Trial was Olivier’s first film since then, and there was some surprise at his decision to play a ‘little man’. Weir is bullied by his loutish pupils and henpecked by his frustrated French wife. A utopian liberal in a harsh, materialistic world, he drowns his sorrows in whisky at the pub near the school. His teaching career has been held back by his conscientious objection during the war, and Shirley’s accusations look likely to end it completely, along with his 20-year marriage.

Weir realises that, in order to save both, he will have to abandon his principles and “join the rat-race of deception”, as Monthly Film Bulletin described it. Cleared of the charges of assault, he pressures his headmaster to keep him on, despite disquiet among parents, and convinces his wife that he did actually seduce the girl, thus earning her respect. Signoret manages to lend conviction to lines such as “I’d much rather be badly treated by a man with some spirit than have to put up with your endless mush,” but the wife’s attitude stretches credulity. The film leaves us with the message that kindness and consideration get you nowhere, which doubtless chimed with Barlow’s politics, and perhaps also Glenville’s.

While the film is set in a dreary post-war England, the sheeting rain and gloomy streets were actually provided by Dublin, while interiors were shot at Ardmore Studios, just outside the city. For the final two weeks of the 10-week shoot, the crew decamped to Paris to film the end-of-year school trip.

Sarah Miles describes the Paris shoot in detail in her autobiography Serves Me Right. The sequence was set in spring, but the cast and crew found themselves in the French capital at the end of February 1962. Thus, Wilfred Shingleton and his team of set dressers were kept busy sweeping snow from the streets and tying buds and leaves to the Parisian trees. The actors were issued with hot water bottles, and the wind was so fierce that the scene between Olivier and Miles on the Eiffel Tower was interrupted by the actor-knight’s wig blowing off and bouncing its way down the iron structure to the bewildered tourists below.

Twenty-year-old Miles had recently graduated from RADA and was greatly impressed by Olivier. The feeling was clearly mutual, and the two began an affair, despite the recent birth of Olivier’s first child with third wife Joan Plowright. The irony of the actor committing the sin that his character is too moral to contemplate has not been lost on his biographers, and the coyness of the scenes between Weir and Shirley contrasts with events that took place when the cameras stopped rolling.

Miles got consistently excellent reviews for her performance, better, in fact, than her co-star. Several critics felt that such a powerful actor as Olivier was miscast in the role of the mousy schoolmaster, and he was apparently devastated by the critiques. There was praise too, however, with Paul Dehn calling Graham Weir: “One of the finest portraits in [Olivier’s] long, long gallery.” Donald Spoto sums up his performance well: “One of the best examples of Olivier’s immersion in a colourless role he transformed with the tints of his own emotional reality… Graham Weir remains a character far more compelling than Archie Rice.”

Glenville himself didn’t fare well either, with critics referring to the “clumsy writing” and “disorganised and ungainly” direction, and, at 130 minutes, the film is certainly overlong. However, the camerawork and Shingleton’s bleak production design capture the mood of despair and frustration, one reviewer observing: “The cold brown radiators and the seedy cloakrooms and the miserable Anglican hymns send a chill through one’s bones.”

In August 1961, The Daily Express declared: “The two most eagerly awaited performances of 1962 will be the brilliant newcomer to films Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia and Sir Laurence Olivier in Term of Trial.” While both may have been keenly anticipated, only one of the two is now remembered. Yet while it has its flaws, Term of Trial is an intriguing addition to the social realist canon, and Olivier’s understated portrait of a man contemplating his life choices deserves to be seen.