Themes: Mind Games, Servants and Employers, Class Differences
Main Cast: Dirk Bogarde, Sarah Miles, Wendy Craig, James Fox, Catherine Lacey
Release Year: 1963
Country: UK
Run Time: 112 minutes
Plot
Wealthy wastrel James Fox hires insouciant cockney Dirk Bogarde as a valet. No sooner has he donned his working clothes than Bogarde begins exercising a subtle but insidious control over his master. Suggesting that the house could use a little fixing up, Bogarde convinces Fox to spend a whopping amount of money on it. But this is just a warm-up session for Bogarde, who by mid-film is calling all the shots in the Fox household, all the while pretending to keep his place. Fox's fiance Wendy Craig sees through Bogarde's game. Bogarde then brings his own lady friend Sarah Miles into the house. At Bogarde's insistence, Miles seduces Fox, thereby loosening Craig's hold on the confused young man. And so it goes. The homosexual subtext of The Servant disturbed some of the more hidebound critics of 1963; Harold Pinter based his cryptic screenplay on a novel by Robin Maugham. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
Few films have gotten as much mileage out of Britain's caste system as The Servant, a psycho-sexual black comedy charting the uneasy relationship between lazy young aristocrat Tony (James Fox) and his devious, reserved manservant Hugo (Dirk Bogarde). One of the first films scripted by playwright Harold Pinter, The Servant is as much about gesture and mannerism as about spoken innuendo, and director Joseph Losey keeps the movie thick with suggestion: Hugo's co-conspirator Vera (Sarah Miles) is a study in coy seduction, and the sounds, shadows, and furnishings around the young man's estate are downright suffocating. Though the locations are minimal, the director never lets the movie become too stagy; Bogarde's hilarious fight for a phone booth is the stuff of classic silent comedy. That Bogarde and Losey never specify Hugo's rationale for corrupting Tony (money? control? sexual longing?) only adds to The Servant's allure and its ambiguous, hallucinogenic ending. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide
Richard Vernon - Lord Mounset; Ann Firbank - Society Woman; Patrick Magee - Bishop; Jill Melford - Younger Woman; Alun Owen - Curate; Harold Pinter - Society Man; Dorothy Bromiley - Girl Outside Phone Box; Gerry Duggan - Waiter; Philippa Hare - Girl in Bedroom; Brian Phelan - Man in Pub; Alison Seebohm - Girl in Pub; Derek Tansley - Head Waiter; Hazel Terry - Woman in Bedroom; Johnny Dankworth - Jazz Bandleader; Chris Williams - Cashier in Coffee Bar
Credit
Ted Clements - Art Director, Beatrice Dawson - Costume Designer, Roy Stevens - First Assistant Director, Joseph Losey - Director, Reginald Mills - Editor, Johnny Dankworth - Composer (Music Score), Johnny Dankworth - Musical Direction/Supervision, Johnny Dankworth - Songwriter, Harold Pinter - Songwriter, Bob Lawrence - Makeup, Chic Waterson - Camera Operator, Richard Macdonald - Production Designer, Douglas Slocombe - Cinematographer, Teresa Bolland - Production Manager, Joseph Losey - Producer, Norman Priggen - Producer, Ted Clements - Set Designer, Harold Pinter - Screenwriter, Robin Maugham - Book Author
The first of Pinter's three film collaborations with Losey, which also include Accident (1967) and The Go-Between (1970), The Servant is a tightly-constructed psychological dramatic film about the relationships among the four central characters examining issues relating to class, servitude, and the ennui of the upper classes.[1]
Tony (James Fox), a wealthy young Londoner, hires Hugo Barrett (Dirk Bogarde) as his manservant. Initially, Barrett appears to easily take to his new job, and he and Tony form a quiet bond while, nevertheless, maintaining their social roles; however, relationships begin shifting, and they change with the introduction of Susan (Wendy Craig), Tony's emotionally- stilted girlfriend, who seems suspicious of Barrett and to loathe all he represents. Barrett brings Vera (Sarah Miles), whom he presents as his sister, into Tony's household as a maidservant, but it emerges that Vera is, in fact, Barrett's lover. Through Barrett's and Vera's games and machinations, they reverse roles with Tony and Susan; Tony becomes more and more dissipated, sinking further to what he perceives as their level, as the "master" and the "servant" exchange roles.
Billington, Michael. Harold Pinter. London: Faber and Faber, 2007. ISBN 9780571234769 (13). Updated 2nd ed. of The Life and Work of Harold Pinter. 1996. London: Faber and Faber, 1997. ISBN 0571171036 (10). Print.
Gale, Steven H. Sharp Cut: Harold Pinter's Screenplays and the Artistic Process. Lexington, KY: The UP of Kentucky, 2003. ISBN 0813122449 (10). ISBN 9780813122441 (13). Print.
Apart From That ·Applicant ·The Black and White ·Dialogue for Three · "God's District" ·Interview ·Last to Go ·The New World Order ·Night ·Precisely ·Press Conference ·Request Stop, Special Offer ·That's All ·That's Your Trouble ·Trouble in the Works
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