Amazon.co.uk Review
For anyone interested in voyeurism, role playing, class envy and sexual humiliation,
The Servant is an essential buy. Directed by Joseph Losey, scripted by Harold Pinter, it probes away remorselessly at areas other British film-makers would not go near. Dirk Bogarde, the golden boy of 50s British cinema, is transformed into a scheming, unctuous butler, Barrett. Hired by dapper young toff Tony (James Fox), he proceeds gradually to take over his master's life. In one scene, he seduces Tony's fiancée (Wendy Craig). Tony is soon slavering over the voluptuous but vaguely sinister Vera (Sarah Miles), whom he has been told is his butler's sister (in fact, she's Barrett's mistress). Gradually, the lines between master and servant are blurred. Tony becomes beholden to his butler's every whim.
Nobody does queasy quite as well as Losey. The American-born director relishes the chance to disrupt the smooth workings of what seems a typical upper-class household. Compared to the bland comedies made at Pinewood in the late 50s, The Servant couldn't help but seem groundbreaking. Thanks to his performance, Bogarde, who'd starred in so many of those comedies, was at last taken seriously as more than a matinee idol. The critics adored the film, which was first released at around the time of the Profumo crisis. "Even if I make 10 better pictures in my lifetime", Losey observed, "I don't suppose one could expect to have such unanimous appreciation and approval again". --Geoffrey Macnab
Amazon.co.uk Review
The Servant marks the start of one of the most potent creative partnerships in 1960s British cinema, between ex-pat American director Joseph Losey and playwright-turned-screenwriter Harold Pinter--a teaming that also gave birth to
Accident (1967) and
The Go-Between (1970). It was a key film for Dirk Bogarde, too, the first of four he made with Losey that let him make the transition from lightweight matinee idol ("I was the Loretta Young of my day") to seriously regarded actor.
The Servant--amazingly, Pinter's first screenplay--quivers with sexual and social tension and unspoken menace. Tony (ex-child actor James Fox in his first adult role), an affable but none too bright young man living in Chelsea, advertises for a manservant to keep his household in order. What he gets is Barrett (Bogarde), buttoned-up and porkpie-hatted, whose deferential courtesy barely conceals his lacerating contempt for Tony and everything he stands for. Steadily he proceeds to take over, ousting Tony's posh fiancée and installing his sluttish "sister" (Sarah Miles) to complete the hapless young man's downfall. Douglas Slocombe's insidious camera, sidling and lurking to catch unexpected angles as the mood darkens, subtly maps the shifts of the power relationship. Here, as in their two later films together, Losey's outsider viewpoint catches the nuances and cruelties of the English class system in a cool, beady-eyed stare, while Pinter's flair for the unstated meanings between and behind what's said sharpens the pitch-black comedy as it slides towards nightmare.
On the DVD: the only extra feature is the theatrical trailer, stylishly understated. The print's flagged as "widescreen", which is a bit overstated for 1.66:1 (the original ratio). No sign of remastering on either sound or vision, but it's a good clean transfer. --Philip Kemp
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