The Servant is a 1963 British psychological drama film directed and produced by Joseph Losey from a screenplay by Harold Pinter, who adapted Robin Maugham's 1948 novella. It stars Dirk Bogarde, Sarah Miles, Wendy Craig and James Fox. The first of Pinter's three film collaborations with Losey, The Servant is a tightly constructed film about the psychological relationships among the four central characters and examines issues relating to social class.
At the 24th Venice International Film Festival, the film competed for the Golden Lion. It was released in the U.K. by Warner-Pathé on November 14, 1963 to highly positive reviews. It won three BAFTA Awards including Best British Actor for Bogarde, and was nominated in five other categories including Best Film and Best British Film.
In 1999, the British Film Institute ranked The Servant as the 22nd-greatest British film of all time.
Plot
Tony, a wealthy Londoner, who says that he is part of a plan to build cities in Brazil, moves into his new house and hires Hugo Barrett as his manservant. Barrett appears to take easily to his new job, and he and Tony form a quiet bond, retaining their social roles. Relationships begin shifting, however, when Tony's girlfriend Susan meets Barrett. She is suspicious of Barrett and asks Tony to dismiss him, but he refuses.
To bring his lover, Vera, into his world, Barrett convinces Tony that the house also needs a maid. When Tony finally agrees, Barrett hires Vera on the pretext that she is his sister. Barrett encourages Vera to seduce Tony. Later, when Tony and Susan return early from a vacation, they find Barrett and Vera sleeping together. Believing that the two are siblings, he flies into a rage at Barrett, who then reveals that they are not related and she is his fiancée. He and Vera then make it clear that Tony was sleeping with her, to Susan's dismay. After Tony dismisses them, Vera departs, humming "The Wedding March."
At this point, Tony has become reliant on Barrett and Vera. He becomes a drunkard, which is exacerbated by Susan's refusal to answer his calls. Eventually, Tony encounters Barrett in a pub, who spins a tale about Vera having made fools of them both. He begs Tony to re-engage him as his manservant, and he agrees.
Gradually the two reverse roles, with Barrett taking more control and Tony retreating into infantilism. Barrett also insinuates Vera back into the house. Susan arrives and attempts to convince Tony to come back to her. She finds him totally dependent on Barrett who keeps him supplied with alcohol and prostitutes. She walks through the sordid scene, and suddenly kisses Barrett, who forcefully returns her attentions. As he grows more brutal, Susan struggles to free herself from his embrace, and Tony, rising from his drunken stupor, attempts to intervene. However, he trips and falls onto the floor, causing all the prostitutes to laugh at him. Tony then has an outburst and Barrett orders everyone to leave. Before departing, Susan slaps Barrett with the jeweled collar of her coat. Barrett is shocked, but quickly recovers and places her coat on her shoulder as she leaves. He then walks upstairs where Vera is waiting for him, passing Tony, who is slumped on the ground and clutching a drink.
Cast
Production
The Servant was directed by Joseph Losey, an American director who spent the last part of his career and life in England, after being blacklisted by Hollywood in the 1950s.
His health was poor during production, causing Bogarde to provide significant assistance with the direction and finishing the film.
The film is based on The Servant, a 1948 Robin Maugham novella. The screenplay, written by Harold Pinter, stripped the plot to a more economical and chilling storyline. Pinter also appeared in the film, as a restaurant patron in one scene with a speaking part.
Writing for the British Film Institute, film critic Nick James noted:
<blockquote>It was Losey who first showed Robin Maugham's novella The Servant to Bogarde in 1954. Originally separately commissioned by director Michael Anderson, Pinter stripped it of its first-person narrator, its yellow book snobbery, and the arguably antisemitic characterisation of Barrett—oiliness, heavy lids—replacing them with an economical language that implied rather than stated the slippage of power relations away from Tony towards Barrett. a theme which had been rarely addressed in British cinema.
Music
The soundtrack by John Dankworth includes the song "All Gone", sung by his wife Cleo Laine. Her three different renditions of the song provide distinct emotional impacts throughout the film.
The film opened at London's Warner Theatre on 14 November 1963.
It was re-released in 2013 to mark its 50th anniversary. In June 2023, a 4K digital restoration of the film was released on Blu-ray and DVD by the Criterion Collection.
Reception
Box Office
The film grossed £238,893 in the United Kingdom and £150,383 overseas for a worldwide total of £389,276.
Penelope Gilliatt of The Observer called it "a triumph" and wrote "the thing that is most exhilarating about the film is that it has been written by someone who is obviously excited by the cinema and made by someone who obviously respects words". Richard Roud writing in The Guardian and Ann Pacey of the Daily Herald said it was "a masterpiece". In 2013, the Los Angeles Times film critic suggested that The Servant was the coldest film ever made, calling it "brilliantly icy". On Metacritic, it holds an average rating of 94/100, based on the reviews of nine critics.
Retrospective appraisal
"In the spirit of Brecht and Meyerhold, the movie's rejection of a passive, purely observational style and its creative use of sound, framing and editing, sensitized audiences not just to the destructive relations inside the master's London home, but to those of British society at large." (Robert Maras in the World Socialist Web Site). Maras also noted that "The Servant was widely praised in European filmmaking circles and helped encourage a period of greater social and psychological realism in British cinema," while Dan Callahan, writing in Senses of Cinema (2003), reports that the film "consolidated Losey's reputation internationally".
However, though for film historian David Thomson "The Servant marked Losey's coming of age among the artistic elite ... the man who had made The Prowler and M as gripping, low-budget thrillers was now working in a world ready to acclaim his seriousness," he commented on the downside how "some critics praised the subtlety and ignored the hysteria in The Servant. That was a disservice to Losey, whose strength had always been a fusion of the two."
In 1999, the British Film Institute ranked The Servant as the 22nd-greatest British film of all time.
Awards and nominations
{| class="wikitable"
|+
!Award
!Year
!Category
!Nominee
!Result
|-
| rowspan="8" |British Academy Film Awards
| rowspan="8" |1964
|Best Film
| rowspan="2" |The Servant
|
|-
|Best British Film
|
|-
|Best British Screenplay
|Harold Pinter
|
|-
|Best British Actor
|Dirk Bogarde
|
|-
|Best British Actress
|Sarah Miles
|
|-
| rowspan="2" |Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles
|James Fox
|
|-
|Wendy Craig
|
|-
|Best British Cinematography (Black-and-White)
| rowspan="2" |Douglas Slocombe
|
|-
|British Society of Cinematographers
|1963
|Best Cinematography in a Theatrical Feature Film
|
|-
|Cahiers du Cinéma
|1964
|Annual Top 10 Lists
|Joseph Losey
|
|-
|Nastro d'Argento
|1966
|Best Foreign Director
|Joseph Losey
|
|-
| rowspan="3" |New York Film Critics Circle
| rowspan="3" |1964
|Best Director
|Joseph Losey
|
|-
|Best Screenplay
|Harold Pinter
|
|-
|Best Actor
|Dirk Bogarde
|
|-
|Venice Film Festival
|1963
|Golden Lion
|Joseph Losey
|
|-
|Writers' Guild of Great Britain
|1964
|Best Dramatic Screenplay
|Harold Pinter
|
|}
See also
- BFI Top 100 British films
- London in film
- List of cult films
Footnotes
Sources
- Callahan, Dan. 2003. Losey, Joseph. Senses of Cinema, March 2003. Great Directors Issue 25.https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2003/great-directors/losey/#:~:text=The%20dominant%20themes%20of%20Losey's,love%20story%20in%20his%20films. Accessed 12 October 2024.
- Hirsch, Foster. 1980. Joseph Losey. Twayne Publishers, Boston, Massachusetts.
- Maras, Robert. 2012. Dissecting class relations: The film collaborations of Joseph Losey and Harold Pinter. World Socialist Web Site, May 28, 2012. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2012/05/lose-m28.html Accessed 12 October 2024.
- Palmer, James and Riley, Michael. 1993. The Films of Joseph Losey. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England.
- Sanjek, David. 2002. Cold, Cold Heart: Joseph Losey’s The Damned and the Compensations of Genre. Senses of Cinema, July 2002. Director: Joseph Losey Issue 21.https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2002/director-joseph-losey/losey_damned/ Accessed 10 October 2024.
- Thomson, David. 1981. A Biographical Dictionary of Film. William Morrow and Company, New York.
- Dixon, Wheeler Winston. 2014. Hollywood Exiles in Europe. Film International, February 3, 2014. https://filmint.nu/hollywood-exiles-in-europe/ Accessed 10 October 2024.
Further reading
- Billington, Michael. Harold Pinter. London: Faber and Faber, 2007. (13). Updated 2nd ed. of The Life and Work of Harold Pinter. 1996. London: Faber and Faber, 1997. (10). Print.
- Gale, Steven H. Sharp Cut: Harold Pinter's Screenplays and the Artistic Process. Lexington. Kentucky: The UP of Kentucky, 2003. (10). (13). Print.
- Gale, Steven H., ed. The Films of Harold Pinter. Albany: SUNY P, 2001. . . Print.
- Klein, Joanne. Making Pictures: The Pinter Screenplays. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 1985. Print.
- Sargeant, Amy: The Servant: Palgrave Macmillan/BFI Modern Classics: 2011:
- Weedman, Christopher (2019). "A Dark Exilic Vision of 1960s Britain: Gothic Horror and Film Noir Pervading Losey and Pinter's The Servant." Journal of Cinema and Media Studies 58.3, pp. 93–117.
External links
- "Films by Harold Pinter: The Servant 1963" at HaroldPinter.org – The Official Website of the International Playwright Harold Pinter
- "Harold Pinter & Joseph Losey", by Jamie Andrews, Harold Pinter Archive Blog, British Library, 15 June 2009.