Paul Risker looks at the threats to the home in The Servant and Accident...
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Considered to be two of the finest examples of British art house cinema, director Joseph Losey and writer Harold Pinter’s first two collaborations, The Servant (1963) and Accident (1967), were re-released this week on DVD courtesy of StudioCanal.
These two films explored the waning English class system previously vacated by British filmmakers. Though this was a subject explored by Evelyn Waugh in his novel Brideshead Revisited, first published in 1945 and is one of the motifs of the current running television drama Downton Abbey.
The Servant and Accident came at a crucial time in film history, an important spell in the history of art house cinema. By 1963 the Nouvelle Vague (French New Wave) was in full force. Francois Truffaut had directed The 400 Blows, Shoot the Pianist and Jules et Jim by 1963, and Jean-Luc Godard Breathless, A woman is a Woman and Vivre Sa Vie.
The common perception at the time was that Britain was incapable of delivering on the art house scene, though Losey and Pinter’s collaborations, starting with The Servant and ending with 1970’s TheGo-Between, would challenge this pre-conception and enter Britain into discussions of European art house cinema.
The Servant tells the story of aristocrat Tony (James Fox), who hires manservant Hugo Barrett (Dirk Bogarde), and the professional and personal bond the two men form. Complications arise with the introduction of Tony’s girlfriend Susan (Wendy Craig). From the first meeting of manservant and future lady of the house, Susan’s suspicions of what Barrett really wants from the house are rife, compounded by her general dislike for his role as manservant. Susan to no avail frequently attempts to persuade Tony to dismiss Barrett, and the introduction of Barrett’s sister Vera (Sarah Miles) – in fact his lover – sees the two orchestrate a series of machinations to undermine Tony and reverse the roles of master and servant in the house.
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Together they fornicate in the master’s bed and private bathroom, but their masterstroke is to ensnare Tony, making him complicit in their malicious game, when Tony foolishly indulges in an affair with Vera who he believes to be Barrett’s sister. When Barrett and Vera’s machinations are eventually unveiled, Tony is left as both victim and culprit. His once peaceful and ordered existence is upended, the loss of manservant and fiancée occurs in one nightmarish night.
The Servant is a two act film, the second act beginning as Barrett preys on Tony’s forgiving nature, convincing him that he too was the victim of Vera’s manipulations, and we watch as he slinks his way back into Tony’s home and life. The eventual consequence is that with the reappearance of Vera, the two servants finally succeed in destroying both Tony and Susan, forcing them into a subservient role. The Servant is a depiction of the dangers of individualism and the contempt of the class system, the latter of which permits inequalities continued oppression. But individualism is not let off lightly. Losey and Pinter explore in this first collaboration the ugly side of individualism as exploited by society’s miscreants Barrett and Vera.
Thomas Jefferson wrote and believed that “all men are created equal,” but of course equality only exists before the law. Outside of the law, men are not born equal, and they never will be. If this were so the class system would have had no foundation, and would have struggled to exist. Barrett’s machinations are designed not to rectify this wrong, but to punish Tony, an individual of higher birth. Ironically in the war of the classes, we are positioned to offer our sympathy and support to the privileged.
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A tense psychological thriller, a study of servitude and an indictment of the class system; these are all pertinent readings of the film. There is however one reading of the film that establishes The Servant as a pre-cursor to a sub-genre which possesses the psychological edge of The Servant, but which also incorporates the physical violence and bloodshed that is absent in Losey and Pinter’s take on the home invasion movie.
In 2008’s The Strangers, Liv Tyler’s character Kristen McKay asks one of her masked tormentors known as Dollface, “Why are you doing this to us?” The answer is a disturbing moment in modern horror: “Because you were home.” That singular moment lacked any sense of motivation, filling the screen with pure malice, and as I watched Joseph Losey and Harold Pinter’s first collaboration, it became apparent that there was an unexpected connection between the two films.
Such a realisation positions The Servant as a pre-cursor to the home invasion sub-genre, which is comprised of films such as Michael Haneke’s Funny Games - both the 1997 and 2007 versions - TheStrangers and James Cullen Bressack’s Hate Crime (2012). Of course we should not forget John Landis’ An American Werewolf in London’s classic dream home invasion sequence of intense violence as a family is mown down by soldiers in SS uniform.
These films came more than forty years after The Servant, but as I watched the film, I wanted Susan to ask the follow-up question, “Why are you doing this?” She never does, but rather almost appears to hand herself over to Barrett in the lead up to the film’s end. There is a certain sexual implication in her surrender, and how as her class have been separated from their status by this low born commoner, all that is left is for him to rape her of any sense of dignity that may remain.
This however is never Losey or Pinter’s intention, for their tale of home invasion remains exclusively psychological and emotional, the only violence verbal. But if it is tamer in terms of its depiction of violence, it is psychologically as cutting as these later home invasion films; perhaps exactly because of the absence of violence.
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The Servant is a home invasion art house movie, where the characters are not murdered, but rather stripped and deprived of their identities. They are characters who are raped for malicious and unmotivated reasons. In the closing moments Tony is seen crawling along the floor, powerless and dependent on Barrett, whilst Susan is exiled from the house.
The women Barrett invites to the house to drink the night away and indulge in sexual acts should they desire, transforms the potential family home into a brothel like space, distinct from the respectable gentleman’s home Tony and Barrett worked towards during the film’s setup. Tony and Susan’s destiny from the very beginning is one of a journey into an emotional and psychological hell, their space invaded and left with no home, identity or companionship. The lower class has risen up to banish them to hell.
If the threat to the home is an external one in The Servant, then in their second collaboration together Losey and Pinter would threaten the family home from within, the threat coming from the protagonists themselves. One of these protagonists was played by The Servant’s male antagonist Dirk Bogarde.
The story of Accident centres on Stephen (Dirk Bogarde), an Oxford professor who’s growing infatuation with one of his female students; the beautiful Anna (Jacqueline Sassard) leads him to orchestrate a tryst with the young woman under the nose of his wife, inviting her to Sunday lunch at his house.
Accident ironically is a film of deliberate intent, of deceit and the pursuit of sensual gratification. Stephen pursues Anna despite his friend and student William’s (Michael York) romantic pursuit of the young woman. Likewise Anna is no innocent, playing her own little games in the pursuit of sensual gratification.
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The crash which opens the film, involving Anna and William, in truest fashion of the game that is Accident, sees Stephen’s concealing her involvement in the crash which claims the life of William for what it is. It is a check-mate, and the forfeit is consenting to a sexual encounter with her Oxford lecturer.
Stephen is the internal threat to the home he is master of, and Losey’s incorporation of the climbing frame amidst long grass, the shots of family life are all imbued with a metaphorical meaning; the decay or sham of respectability. The family’s association to Stephen sees it injured unknowingly by association alone, a truth we are conscious of whilst the family remains ignorant. But then “Ignorance is bliss.”
Losey and Pinter’s cinema has been described as masculine or male centred. To a point this is true, but the women in these films are the Queen’s, the most powerful pieces on the chess board as they pertain to both films. They are equally capable of bringing fulfilment or ruin, and they serve as the kingmakers.
It is just they are viewed through the male gaze and are therefore perceived as objects, to be admired, employed in one’s machinations, or as the poster seen in the restaurant in Accident says, “Eat out and keep the wife as a pet.”
Still the films deceive, but one should not be mistaken that if Losey and Pinter thought they could dominate these women, they were very much mistaken, as were their male leads. These women are pivotal players who shape the future and our perception. That is perhaps the true invasion that is present in these films, the women’s rebellion to the perceived male dominated control.
These are two powerful films, which will provoke debate and discussion long into the future. They are films which give ample opportunity to discuss the use of sound, of performance, of images composed for metaphorical meaning as well as their place in the history of art house cinema as well as iconic cinematic collaborations.
One reading is almost certainly that first they tackled a home invasion, the external threat which transforms into an internal one, followed by the internal threat to the stability and respectability of the individual and hence his home.
This was originally posted on Wages of Film.
Paul Risker is co-editor in chief of Wages of Film, freelance writer and contributor to Flickering Myth and Scream The Horror Magazine.
Considered to be two of the finest examples of British art house cinema, director Joseph Losey and writer Harold Pinter’s first two collaborations, The Servant (1963) and Accident (1967), were re-released this week on DVD courtesy of StudioCanal. These two films explored the waning English class system previously vacated by British filmmakers. Though this was a subject explored by Evelyn Waugh in his novel Brideshead Revisited, first published in 1945 and is one of the motifs of the current running television drama Downton Abbey.
The Servant and Accident came at a crucial time in film history, an important spell in the history of art house cinema. By 1963 the Nouvelle Vague (French New Wave) was in full force. Francois Truffaut had directed The 400 Blows, Shoot the Pianist and Jules et Jim by 1963, and Jean-Luc Godard Breathless, A woman is a Woman and Vivre Sa Vie.
The common perception at the time was that Britain was incapable of delivering on the art house scene, though Losey and Pinter’s collaborations, starting with The Servant and ending with 1970’s TheGo-Between, would challenge this pre-conception and enter Britain into discussions of European art house cinema.
The Servant tells the story of aristocrat Tony (James Fox), who hires manservant Hugo Barrett (Dirk Bogarde), and the professional and personal bond the two men form. Complications arise with the introduction of Tony’s girlfriend Susan (Wendy Craig). From the first meeting of manservant and future lady of the house, Susan’s suspicions of what Barrett really wants from the house are rife, compounded by her general dislike for his role as manservant. Susan to no avail frequently attempts to persuade Tony to dismiss Barrett, and the introduction of Barrett’s sister Vera (Sarah Miles) – in fact his lover – sees the two orchestrate a series of machinations to undermine Tony and reverse the roles of master and servant in the house.
The Servant is a two act film, the second act beginning as Barrett preys on Tony’s forgiving nature, convincing him that he too was the victim of Vera’s manipulations, and we watch as he slinks his way back into Tony’s home and life. The eventual consequence is that with the reappearance of Vera, the two servants finally succeed in destroying both Tony and Susan, forcing them into a subservient role. The Servant is a depiction of the dangers of individualism and the contempt of the class system, the latter of which permits inequalities continued oppression. But individualism is not let off lightly. Losey and Pinter explore in this first collaboration the ugly side of individualism as exploited by society’s miscreants Barrett and Vera.
Thomas Jefferson wrote and believed that “all men are created equal,” but of course equality only exists before the law. Outside of the law, men are not born equal, and they never will be. If this were so the class system would have had no foundation, and would have struggled to exist. Barrett’s machinations are designed not to rectify this wrong, but to punish Tony, an individual of higher birth. Ironically in the war of the classes, we are positioned to offer our sympathy and support to the privileged.
In 2008’s The Strangers, Liv Tyler’s character Kristen McKay asks one of her masked tormentors known as Dollface, “Why are you doing this to us?” The answer is a disturbing moment in modern horror: “Because you were home.” That singular moment lacked any sense of motivation, filling the screen with pure malice, and as I watched Joseph Losey and Harold Pinter’s first collaboration, it became apparent that there was an unexpected connection between the two films.
Such a realisation positions The Servant as a pre-cursor to the home invasion sub-genre, which is comprised of films such as Michael Haneke’s Funny Games - both the 1997 and 2007 versions - TheStrangers and James Cullen Bressack’s Hate Crime (2012). Of course we should not forget John Landis’ An American Werewolf in London’s classic dream home invasion sequence of intense violence as a family is mown down by soldiers in SS uniform.
These films came more than forty years after The Servant, but as I watched the film, I wanted Susan to ask the follow-up question, “Why are you doing this?” She never does, but rather almost appears to hand herself over to Barrett in the lead up to the film’s end. There is a certain sexual implication in her surrender, and how as her class have been separated from their status by this low born commoner, all that is left is for him to rape her of any sense of dignity that may remain.
This however is never Losey or Pinter’s intention, for their tale of home invasion remains exclusively psychological and emotional, the only violence verbal. But if it is tamer in terms of its depiction of violence, it is psychologically as cutting as these later home invasion films; perhaps exactly because of the absence of violence.
The women Barrett invites to the house to drink the night away and indulge in sexual acts should they desire, transforms the potential family home into a brothel like space, distinct from the respectable gentleman’s home Tony and Barrett worked towards during the film’s setup. Tony and Susan’s destiny from the very beginning is one of a journey into an emotional and psychological hell, their space invaded and left with no home, identity or companionship. The lower class has risen up to banish them to hell.
If the threat to the home is an external one in The Servant, then in their second collaboration together Losey and Pinter would threaten the family home from within, the threat coming from the protagonists themselves. One of these protagonists was played by The Servant’s male antagonist Dirk Bogarde.
The story of Accident centres on Stephen (Dirk Bogarde), an Oxford professor who’s growing infatuation with one of his female students; the beautiful Anna (Jacqueline Sassard) leads him to orchestrate a tryst with the young woman under the nose of his wife, inviting her to Sunday lunch at his house.
Accident ironically is a film of deliberate intent, of deceit and the pursuit of sensual gratification. Stephen pursues Anna despite his friend and student William’s (Michael York) romantic pursuit of the young woman. Likewise Anna is no innocent, playing her own little games in the pursuit of sensual gratification.
Stephen is the internal threat to the home he is master of, and Losey’s incorporation of the climbing frame amidst long grass, the shots of family life are all imbued with a metaphorical meaning; the decay or sham of respectability. The family’s association to Stephen sees it injured unknowingly by association alone, a truth we are conscious of whilst the family remains ignorant. But then “Ignorance is bliss.”
Losey and Pinter’s cinema has been described as masculine or male centred. To a point this is true, but the women in these films are the Queen’s, the most powerful pieces on the chess board as they pertain to both films. They are equally capable of bringing fulfilment or ruin, and they serve as the kingmakers.
It is just they are viewed through the male gaze and are therefore perceived as objects, to be admired, employed in one’s machinations, or as the poster seen in the restaurant in Accident says, “Eat out and keep the wife as a pet.”
Still the films deceive, but one should not be mistaken that if Losey and Pinter thought they could dominate these women, they were very much mistaken, as were their male leads. These women are pivotal players who shape the future and our perception. That is perhaps the true invasion that is present in these films, the women’s rebellion to the perceived male dominated control.
These are two powerful films, which will provoke debate and discussion long into the future. They are films which give ample opportunity to discuss the use of sound, of performance, of images composed for metaphorical meaning as well as their place in the history of art house cinema as well as iconic cinematic collaborations.
One reading is almost certainly that first they tackled a home invasion, the external threat which transforms into an internal one, followed by the internal threat to the stability and respectability of the individual and hence his home.
This was originally posted on Wages of Film.
Paul Risker is co-editor in chief of Wages of Film, freelance writer and contributor to Flickering Myth and Scream The Horror Magazine.