The Servant (1963), a perplexing and enigmatic gem, was the first of three collaborations between English playwright Harold Pinter and American expatriate Joseph Losey. The other two were The Accident (1967) and The Go-Between (1971).

Historical Background – Harold Pinter: English playwright Harold Pinter, the 2005 Nobel Laureate prize-winner, celebrated his 75th birthday just a few days ago, on October 10th. He was born in 1930 in London. Pinter's plays are essentially psychological studies, featuring unspoken and often unexplained tension between the characters, exacerbated by a breakdown in communication. Pinter was the son of a Jewish tailor of Portuguese nativity. Pinter enrolled in the Academy of Dramatic Art in London and took up acting, using the stage name David Baron. He wrote poetry as a teenager and his first play, The Caretaker, in 1957. It was later adapted into a film in 1963. Pinter's early plays were called "comedies of menace." Pinter was interested in power relationships between people. In The Homecoming (1965), for example, he examined how the return of a son, with his new wife, to his parents' home results in a rearrangement of the family power structure. His later plays were often concerned the uncertain nature of memories. Pinter contributed screenplays for well over a dozen films, most notably The Servant (1963), Accident (1967), The Go-Between (1971), The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), and The Handmaid's Tale (1990). He drew Oscar nominations for the scripts written for The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981) and Betrayal (1983). He appeared as an actor in Mansfield Park (1999).

Historical Background – Joseph Losey: Director Joseph Losey was born on January 14th, 1909, in La Crosse, Wisconsin and died in 1984. He was educated at Dartmouth and Harvard. His father was a lawyer of Dutch ancestry. Losey began study in medicine but gave it up in favor of a career on the stage. In the thirties, he began writing reviews for newspapers in New York while working as an actor. He gathered his first experience as a director staging touring plays, but in 1936 made a mark producing the Brechtian-influenced Living Newspaper in New York City.

After World War II, Losey scored his most notable stage success as a director with Brecht's Galileo Galilei (1947), before switching to filmmaking with RKO. His early feature films, beginning with The Boy with Green Hair (1948), revealed an obsession with social concerns and the study of character under conditions of duress. Losey made five films in Hollywood. In 1951, while filming Stranger on the Prowl in Italy, Losey learned that he had been summoned to appear before the communist-baiting House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Though he returned to America after completing his Italian film, he discovered that he had already been blacklisted. Losey then settled in England.

Losey's British films were marked by profound pessimism, often dealing with matters of human frailty and corruption. Like the kitchen-sink directors, Losey had disdain for the intractable British class system. Losey reached his career pinnacle with three collaborative efforts with Harold Pinter. The superbly crafted The Servant (1963) drew widespread praise, winning three BAFTA awards. Accident (1967), complex and stylized, shared a Special Jury Prize from the Cannes Film Festival. The Go-Between (1971), an atmospheric period piece, won the Palme d'Or at Cannes. Losey's style was well matched to that of Pinter.

Losey moved to France in 1976, where he made his last few films. The best of his French dramatic films was Mr. Klein (1977). Losey also turned to directing operas, with a screen adaptation of Don Giovanni (1979) and a stage production of Boris Godunov (1980) for the Paris Opera.

The Story: Hugo Barrett (Dirk Bogarde) arrives at 3 P.M. precisely. Barrett is an experienced valet seeking a new position after the death of his former employer. Tony (James Fox), on the other hand, is an upper-class twit who has just recently come into his inheritance. He's found a townhouse in upscale Chelsea and is in need of a manservant, as befits a proper young gentleman. Tony has a fiancée, Susan (Wendy Craig), who he will marry at some time in the distant future, but, in the meantime, he's a carefree bachelor playing at the notion of useful employment. He's got a project in mind, relating to development of the Brazilian rain forest, though it's unclear that the notion is anything more than a pipedream. Barrett fares well in the interview, being well turned out and properly servile. The revelation that he also cooks seals the deal. Tony hires Hugo and the two settle in. The first order of business is redecorating the townhouse, which Barrett supervises with delicate good taste.

Susan, however, doesn't much like Barrett. She doesn't like his attentiveness to her fiancé or the way he seems to be constantly lurking about, awaiting his master's orders. Susan is especially put out when Barrett barges in just as she and Tony are beginning a roll on the bearskin rug, in front of the fireplace. Susan urges Tony to get rid of Barrett, but gradually it is Barrett who proves indispensable to Tony, not Susan. Barrett caters to Tony's every need.

At the urging of Barrett, Tony hires Barrett's "sister," Vera, as a housekeeper and cook. Vera is not nearly as accomplished as Barrett in household duties, but she's young and downright yummy looking in a tight sweater and short skirt. It's no effort at all for Vera to gain Tony's attentions, especially when "brother" Hugo arranges to throw them together by "going to visit his ailing mother." Soon, Tony is so enraptured with the sexually uninhibited Vera and the delights she provides that he takes no notice that Vera and Barrett have a familiarity that is highly inconsistent with a sibling relationship. At the appropriate moment, Barrett arranges to "discover" the relationship between Tony and Vera and to ensure that it is also revealed to Susan.

After Susan recoils from Tony and Barrett and Vera are fired, Tony's life begins to fall apart. Already a steady drinker, he begins hitting the bottle hard. Barrett and he meet up in the local pub and Barrett begs him for another chance. Tony, who is incapable of tending to his own needs, desperately needs a caretaker and Barrett truly is a professional gentleman's gentleman who knows no other way of life. It's a classic co-dependency and soon reestablished. Now, however, viewers begin to realize that Tony's downward spiral is just beginning and that Barrett's ascendancy to the position of control is just beginning.

Themes: At the time of the film's release, critics tended to interpret the film as another commentary on the British class system, partly because British cinema was in the throes of the "angry young men" cinematic movement (see, for example, Room at the Top (1959), Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), A Taste of Honey (1961), and If… (1969)). It was easy to read The Servant as allegorical and as a reversal of roles, with the lower class Barrett rising up and wresting control from the incompetent upper class twit, Tony. One problem with that interpretation is that Barrett never transcends his role as a manservant. That's all he knows how to do. The other problem is that the social commentary interpretation ignores Pinter's history as a playwright. Pinter never exhibited any interest in sociological issues or social commentary. Pinter worked at the level of individual psychology and character and the power dynamics that exist in the most mundane of relationships.

The Servant is basically a film about the destruction of one person by another, for the purpose of gaining the upper hand. Both Pinter and Losey had a very harsh view of human relationships and they are at no small pains to share their pessimism with the audience. This is a film about all of the deviant things people do in normal life. It is about dominance and deference and the inherent ugliness of servility as a way of life. The master-servant relationship is pernicious to the moral fiber of both the master and the servant. In The Servant, class domination ultimately succumbs to psychological domination, but we are given no reason to experience that shift as poetic justice. The end-point is even more horrific than was the class domination.

There is just a hint of homoerotic undercurrent in this film as well. We see in one shot that Tony keeps a "pin-up" from a male bodybuilding magazine on the wall next to his bed. Though there is no indication of actual sexuality between Barrett and Tony, it is easy to interpret Barrett's relationship to Tony as, initially, that of a traditional wife and, finally, that of a mother to a dependent child.

Production Values: The screenplay by Pinter was adapted from a novel by Robin Maugham. It could just as well have been a play entirely by Pinter himself, bearing all of his cryptic approach, with elusive dialog and vague suspense. For viewers, the issues very slowly unfold is a way that demands analysis. The economy of dialog and explication results in a film that is both creepy and fascinating.

It is clear from the outset of this film that director Losey is in complete charge of every facet of filmmaking. The camerawork subtly underscores the gradually changing circumstances by opening with a fluid style featuring long takes and tracking shots and gradually transitioning into more jagged camera angles and quick editing, as Tony's psychological state becomes more fragmented. The noirish high contrast texture of the black and white photography by Douglas Slocombe accentuates the cold, distant point of view of the narrative. Distanciation is also promoted by occasional intrusion of unrelated conversations involving peripheral characters. The sets are highly stylized and often claustrophobic, except for one outdoor scene featuring a snowball fight between Tony and Susan, which is Tony's psychological highpoint before his steady descent. There's a selection of offbeat shots through mirrors that add visual enrichment. The musical score is nicely complementary, featuring a theme that changes in tone as the story develops.

Two of the foremost reasons to seek out this film are the brilliant performances by Dirk Bogarde and James Fox. Either one, but especially Bogarde's, could have warranted an Oscar, though neither was given so much as a nomination. Bogarde was a master at roles involving a character with a tormented inner psychology. With the impenetrability inherent in Pinter's work, it takes an actor like Bogarde to sustain viewer interest. His mastery of facial expression and body language provided him with a non-verbal eloquence that exceeded what most actors could reveal through dialog. Bogarde's other film work includes Quartet (1949), Doctor in the House (1954), King and Country (1964), The Damned (1969), Death in Venice (1971), Providence (1977), and A Bridge Too Far (1977).

Fox is also outstanding as the initially privileged and pampered Tony, and on through his humiliation and destruction. Fox went on to roles in Performance (1970), Passage to India (1984), Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984), The Whistle Blower (1986), The Russia House (1990), Patriot Games (1992), and The Remains of the Day (1993). A very young Sarah Miles, appearing here as Vera, would later gain fame in such films as Blowup (1966), Ryan's Daughter (1970), and Hope and Glory (1987).

Bottom-Line: Those interested in exploring this brilliantly executed but profoundly pessimistic film can look for it either as a single DVD or as part of a three disc Dirk Bogarde Collection (see Dirk Bogarde Collection for the listing). The set includes also The Mind Benders and Accident, the latter of which was also directed by Joseph Losey. With either the set or the single, you get the same extras: the theatrical trailer and talent bios. There are no subtitle options. This won't be a film for everyone. You've got to have a taste for dark, psychological material and a capacity for active engagement in film analysis. If you match those characteristics, you're likely to find Pinter's laconic style, Losey's film craftsmanship, and Bogarde's brilliance as an actor highly rewarding. The British Film Institute ranks this film as the twenty-second best British film all-time.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age