The Servant [1963]

 The Servant bruises its viewers like red-hot iron with its trenchant and subversive dissection of class and power, its electrifying blend of flamboyantly baroque aesthetics and coolly modernist form, its unsettling homoerotic undertones, and the way it tantalizingly occupied the subliminal space between tar black satire and psychological terror. The first of three remarkable collaborations between Joseph Losey – the great American exile who’d been blacklisted from Hollywood for his left-wing politics – and Harold Pinter – an exciting young British playwright then, in his first tryst with screenwriting – this remains the most acclaimed directorial venture of Losey (even if his greatest film was Monsieur Klein) and screenplay by Pinter. If the former’s simmering and spectacularly caustic evocation of barely contained hysteria, anarchy and violence, and the latter’s virtuoso script (adapted from Robin Maugham's novella) – filled as much with complex confrontations as with precision, silences, inflections and wry asides – were two stunning sides of this meticulously balanced triangle, undoubtedly the anchoring third side was Dirk Bogarde’s deliciously unfolding and implosive turn as the titular manservant Hugo – at once slippery, scheming and sinister – who cannily usurps the role of his employer Tony (James Fox), a callow and dandy man-child; incidentally, he’d also played a role in getting Losey and Pinter connected. Interestingly, aside from the servant turning the tables on his master, Hugo – over the course of the film – also seems to represent Tony’s nagging wife, jilted mistress and possessive mother; no wonder, both women in their lives – Tony’s snobbish fiancée Susan (Wendy Craig) and Hugo’s coquettish “sister” – are eventually pushed out of their claustrophobic house, magnificently photographed in expressionist B/W, and accompanied by a haunting bluesy melody and gloriously discordant jazz score.

Director: Joseph Losey

Genre: Thriller/Black Comedy/Psychological Drama

Language: English

Country: UK