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.[8][9][10]
Plot
Wealthy Londoner Tony, 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, Susan departs silently.
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.[11]
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.[12]
His health was poor during production, causing Bogarde to provide significant assistance with the direction and finishing the film.[13]
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.[14] Pinter also appeared in the film, as a restaurant patron in one scene with a speaking part.[15]
"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 anti-Semitic 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."[9]
Losey's other collaborations with Pinter, Accident and The Go-Between, share a resemblance to The Servant in that these offer the same savage indictment of the waning English class system,[16] 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.[15]
Folk guitarist Davy Graham makes a brief cameo playing the song "Rock Me Baby".
Release
The film was shown at the 24th Venice International Film Festival in September 1963. It was also selected to represent Britain at the first New York Film Festival the same month, with Losey returning to the United States for the first time in 10 years to attend the festival.[17][18]
It was re-released in 2013 to mark its 50th anniversary.[15]
Reception
Critical
Upon release, Variety commended the film for its direction, acting and the "sharp incisive dialog" in Pinter's screenplay, writing: "The Servant is for the most part strong dramatic fare, though the atmosphere and tension is not fully sustained to the end." They also noted "the standout performance by Bogarde, for whom the role of the servant is offbeat casting" and "the noteworthy performance of James Fox, a newcomer with confident flair, who assuredly suggests the indolent young man about town."[17]
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".[20]
In 2013, the Los Angeles Times film critic suggested that The Servant was the coldest film ever made, calling it "brilliantly icy".[15]
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, it holds a rating of 90% and an average rating of 8.1/10 from 51 reviews. The website's consensus reads, "Thanks in no small part to stellar work from director Joseph Losey and screenwriter Harold Pinter, The Servant strikes at class divisions with artful precision."[22]
On Metacritic, it holds an average rating of 94/100, based on the reviews of nine critics.[23]
Box office
The film grossed £238,893 in the United Kingdom and £150,383 overseas for a worldwide total of £389,276.[4]
“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. —Critic Robert Maras in the World Socialist Web Site (2012)[24]
Critic Robert Maras, art critic at the World Socialist Web Site notes the significant of the film among Losey’s contemporaries:"The Servant was widely praised in European filmmaking circles and helped encourage a period of greater social and psychological realism in British cinema."[25]
Writing in Senses of Cinema, critic Dan Callahan reports that The Servant “consolidated” Losey’s reputation internationally.[26]
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. Thus, 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.[27]
^Callahan, 2003: “Harold Pinter, who wrote three screenplays for the director, the first of which was The Servant…” Maras, 2012: The film “sensitized audiences not just to the destructive relations inside the master’s London home, but to those of British society at large.”
^Sanjek, 2002: Losey’s career “tainted…by the [Hollywood] blacklist…The blacklist loomed large as did the need to hide under pseudonyms when he arrived in England…Part of the deal of his work in Britain was that he would be paid very little and would work anonymously.” Dixon, 2014: “Though some, like Losey, managed to completely reinvent themselves, and create work of lasting worth and brilliance, numerous others were plowed under by the effects of the Blacklist, and never really regained their footing either in Hollywood or abroad.” Maris, 2012: “Losey’s left-wing views made him an obvious target of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and when summoned to appear before it in 1951, he refused and went into exile in England.” Callahan, 2003: “Losey was forced to leave America after refusing to inform on his friends to the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), a sign of his ultimate integrity. Thus began a long exile in England; he never shot another film in the USA.
^Robinson, Eugene S. (4 October 2013). "Dirk Bogarde". OZY. Archived from the original on 17 April 2021. Retrieved 25 February 2021.
Gale, Steven H. Sharp Cut: Harold Pinter's Screenplays and the Artistic Process. Lexington. Kentucky: The UP of Kentucky, 2003. ISBN0-8131-2244-9 (10). ISBN978-0-8131-2244-1 (13). 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: ISBN1-84457-382-6
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.
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