In 1971 at the Cannes festival the grand prize, the Palme d'or, was awarded to The Go-Between, Losey's last-produced film with Harold Pinter. Alexander Walker rightly called the film, which is based on a novel by L. P. Hartley, a “masterpiece,” but like that of so many of Losey's films before and after it, the path of The Go-Between from inception to completion was tortuous. In this instance, however, delay proved fortunate. “Immediately after The Servant I took The Go-Between to Harold,” Losey told Michel Ciment:

The more adventurous collaboration on Accident had intervened, and Losey and Pinter had become, in Losey's words, “fascinated by the concept of time, and by the power the cinema has suddenly to reveal the meaning of a whole life” (304). Pinter told John Russell Taylor when The Go-Between was in production: