The Servant (1963)

Director:

Joseph Losey

Writers:

Robin Maugham (novel)
Harold Pinter (writer)

Release Date:

16 March 1964 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

The aristocratic Tony moves to London and hires the servant Hugo Barrett for all services at home. Barrett seems to be a loyal and competent employee...

Plot Keywords:

Alcoholism | Manservant | Bachelor | Prostitute | Sadomasochism

Awards:

Won 3 BAFTA Film Awards. Another 4 wins & 6 nominations

Cast

Dirk Bogarde	...	Hugo Barrett
Sarah Miles	...	Vera
Wendy Craig	...	Susan
James Fox	...	Tony
Catherine Lacey	...	Lady Mounset
Richard Vernon	...	Lord Mounset
Ann Firbank	...	Society Woman
Doris Knox	...	Older Woman
Patrick Magee	...	Bishop
Jill Melford	...	Younger Woman
Alun Owen	...	Curate
Harold Pinter	...	Society Man
Derek Tansley	...	Head Waiter
Brian Phelan	...	Man in Pub
Hazel Terry	...	Woman in Bedroom

Runtime:

112 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Colour:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Iceland:12 | Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15 | USA:Unrated

Filming Locations:

30 Royal Avenue, Chelsea, London, England, UK

Company:

Springbok Productions

Trivia:

Wendy Craig replaced an actress who had to drop out because she was pregnant.

Goofs:

Crew or equipment visible: When Barrett is bringing Susan and Tony their meal, the cameraman's reflection can be briefly seen in the shiny silver lid on the tray.

Soundtrack:

All Gone

Interiors

The first of three successful collaborations of the playwright Harold Pinter with director Joseph Losey, "The Servant", from a story by Robin Maugham, is an elegant, chilly chamber piece featuring a career-defining performance from Dirk Bogarde. Tony (James Fox) has just moved into a large London townhouse and employs Barrett (Bogarde) to be his 'manservant', somebody to look after the house, cook for him, do the cleaning, just about everything in fact. Tony has money but, despite vague talk of a big project in South America, very little motivation for work of any kind. He's ripe for corruption, and that's exactly what the insidious Barrett sets about doing, with a little help from his 'sister' Vera (a kitten-ish Sarah Miles).

At the start of the film Tony is luxuriating in the empty house. It is yet to be decorated or furnished. It is like the house in the Biblical parable, swept clean and in order, but vulnerable to a demonic infestation worse than anything that has gone before. In fact we know little of what has gone before in Tony's life, but he's clearly led something of a playboy existence and seems on the surface to be serious about settling down with his latest flame Susan (Wendy Craig, British TV sitcom queen, not quite convincing as an insecure ice queen here). But it's Tony's essential insouciance, his lack of moral engagement, that makes him so vulnerable to the amoral Barrett.

Pinter's screenplay is characteristically terse and laced with menace. The movie has an avant garde quality which rears up periodically, in particular in a downright weird scene in a restaurant in which we catch bizarre snatches of conversation from the other diners (including Pinter himself in a cameo appearance) that evidently have nothing to do with the actual plot, but effectively ratchet up the sense of unease and displacement that the audience is already experiencing. Losey's visual compositions are throughout quite exceptional. He makes stunning use of the interior space of what is, in the end, a fairly ordinary house, with shadows and light, open and half-open doorways and stark camera angles providing an ever-shifting perspective on events. The house seems to be involved in an ongoing transformation of itself, so that it never looks quite the same from one sequence to the next. It may be just an illusion, but I was never entirely sure what door would open onto what room or hallway. Cinematographer Douglas Slocombe's contribution is hard to overestimate, his black and white imagery quite masterly.

In the end, however, "The Servant" is very much Bogarde's film. Quite unrecognisable from the dashing young hero of postwar British popular cinema, he imbues Barrett with a malevolent campiness that conceals a seething bitterness and rage. Fox, in his first major role, is a superb foil as his uncomprehending victim. The one question not to ask about what happens in "The Servant" is 'why?' A satire on the class system in which the tables are turned on the complacent rich by the angry working class, it unfolds like a pre-determined morality play, each character fulfilling an archetypal function that seems to transcend purely rational analysis.