THE SERVANT ENDURES AS ONE OF THE SHARPEST DISSECTIONS OF BRITAIN’S SOCIAL AND SEXUAL HYPOCRISIES.
Tony (James Fox), an upper-class bachelor who moves into a new London home, hires Hugo Barrett (Dirk Bogarde)to manage his household. Barrett appears efficient and devoted, but Tony’s girlfriend, Susan (Wendy Craig), distrusts him and urges Tony to dismiss him. Barrett brings Vera (Sarah Miles)into the house, claiming she is his sister. Tony begins a clandestine affair with her. Tony and Susan leave for a trip, but when they return unexpectedly, they discover Barrett and Vera together in Tony’s bedroom. Vera is revealed not to be Barrett’s sister but his lover. Tony fires Barrett and ends his relationship with Susan. However, Barrett later manipulates his way back into Tony’s life. Over time, Barrett gradually dominates Tony, reversing their roles: Tony becomes increasingly dependent, passive, and degraded, while Barrett asserts control over the house.
Adapted by Harold Pinter from Robin Maugham’s novella and directed by Joseph Losey, The Servant has a powerful current of homoeroticism emanating from its dominance-and-submission dynamic. Some of the sexual tension emanates backward in time from Donald Cammell’s and Nicolas Roeg’s Performance (1970 – see Essay Two),a film that was greatly influenced by The Servant and stars James Fox in a similar role.
Pinter’s screenplay is a masterwork of sharp dialogue, silences, and tension and won the NYFCC award for Best Screenplay of 1964. Losey’s masterful direction created a claustrophobic atmosphere, featuring two subtle yet powerful performances and an exploration of power dynamics that mirrored the British class system, a theme he and Pinter would later investigate in Accident (1967) and The Go-Between (1971). A landmark of British cinema, The Servant endures as one of the sharpest dissections of Britain’s social and sexual hypocrisies. Although it falters in its final thirty minutes, it boasts Bogarde’s most extraordinary performance.
In the beautifully choreographed and edited restaurant scene, there are four couples, one of whom is obviously a lesbian couple:
- COUPLE ONE: Wendy Craig and James Fox (our leads)
- COUPLE TWO: Harold Pinter and Ann Firbank (society man and woman)
- COUPLE THREE: Doris Knox and Jill Melford (the lesbian couple)
- COUPLE FOUR: Patrick Magee and Alun Owen (the bishop and the priest)
