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Through a glass darkly: Dirk Bogarde and James Fox in a dark drama as master and The Servant |
Tony (James Fox) is a louche, rich young man returning home
to Blighty, looking to expand his inherited fortune through dodgy property
investments in Brazil. Before then, he needs a home to call his own – and a
gentlemen’s gentlemen to run it. Tony hires Barrett (Dirk Bogarde), a
scrupulously polite, observant man, able to meet every single one of his
employer’s needs. But why is Tony’s fiancé Susan (Wendy Craig) so instinctively
hostile to Barrett? And what is Barrett’s exact relationship with the housemaid
Vera (Sarah Miles) he introduces into the house – and who quickly becomes the
focus of Tony’s interest? Over time, the balance of power between servant and
master becomes more and more uncertain.
Losey was an ex-pat American, driven out of the country by
the McCarthy hearings. This adaptation of a Robin Maugham novel is the sort of
brilliant deconstruction of (and assault on) the British class system and
manners that perhaps only an outsider) could have made. The film drips with an
air of corruption and vice. Even the earliest, most unobtrusive frames carry an
air of over-observant malice. No coincidence this is also the leading quality
of Barrett, perhaps one of the most darkly malign forces on film, whose
piercing intelligence sees everything and whose self-control never slips.
Losey’s camera constantly lingers over the slightest shot and detail, to an
increasingly unsettling degree. As the plot becomes increasingly dark,
claustrophobic and horrifying, the film’s exploration of the class-fuelled
psycho-sexual, alcohol-fuelled relationship between Barrett and Tony becomes
ever more pointed.
Losey partnered with the perfect script writer in Harold
Pinter (who also briefly appears as a posh restaurant goer). Pinter’s lean,
spare and menacing dialogue, with its corrupted poetry and acute psychological
insight, is easily his finest film script – and perhaps the only one that truly
could sit alongside his finest stage work. Pinter’s brutal vision of this twisted
world is coated in a dark menacing commentary on Wodehouse (Susan and Barrett’s
“duel” over the placing of a vase comes almost straight out of Jeeves) – and
above all on the weakness that underlies those dependent on servants, as well
as the loathing a servant can develop for his master, while still loving the
control he has over his life.
Losey responds to this masterful script with some inspired work, making the house where the action takes place increasingly claustrophobic and disturbing. The camera work slowly becomes more intimate as the film progresses – and Barrett entraps Tony increasingly into a total, infantile dependence on him. Takes become longer as the house itself – increasingly dishevelled, with Barrett’s property increasingly appearing throughout the property, while Tony’s goods are disposed of – seems to close in around the action. Reflections and mirrors increasingly dominate the film, as if pulling us with Tony through a glass darkly.
It’s a good servant who understands his master’s needs
before he knows them. Barrett is the best kind of servant. Within seconds, the
unctuous, Uriah Heap-like Barrett (ever so ‘umble), has dissected the character
of the foppishly weak playboy Tony, and identified him as man with no will of
his own, ripe to be dominated and manipulated. Dirk Bogarde has never been
better than his work here, a terrifyingly precise and soulless manipulator,
whose veneer of obsequious service drops away with his affected accent to
reveal a deeply corrupted, terrifyingly cruel man. Bogarde never allows a
second of doubt to enter Barrett’s mind – even when it (briefly) looks like he’s
lost his position, Barrett’s face is contorted with a contemptuous curl of the
mouth and a cocky defiance. It’s brilliant work from Bogarde, creating one of
cinema’s greatest monsters, destroying because he can.
His tools are of course to use his master’s fondness for booze and pretty faces against him. Vera – played with a sparkingly flirtatious richness by Sarah Miles, which disguises her ruthless disgust for Tony and his selfishness – is inveigled into the house as Barrett’s “sister” (actually his mistress), and swiftly instructed to seduce the hapless Tony, bending this playboy to her will. Losey’s camera follows in smooth shots as this woman moves from one man’s bed to another – while you can feel the influence of Pinter in the spare, sexually charged power Vera uses to seduce Tony (and the hints of submissive excitement in Tony). Losey soundtracks their first encounter – Miles erotically discussing the weather, pure Pinter genius, while Fox’s throat is so dry you can almost feel it yourself – with first the dripping of a tap, then the rocking back and forth of a pan in the sink. It brilliantly suggests the way Tony himself seems to be being consumed in a hypnotic trap.
If there is a character who sees through this early it’s
Wendy Craig’s sensitively played Susan – but even she can have no idea of the
horrors of Barrett’s plans to break Tony completely to his will. Susan
recognises – even if she can’t understand why – the sinister satanic nature of
Barrett, even while she seems powerless to do anything about it. Her attempts
to empower Tony to break his dependence on this omniscient figure fail completely.
In a beautiful Pinterish touch, at the end she almost considers joining their
bizarre, sex and alcohol fuelled menage – as close as cinema as perhaps got to
skirting a sort of sexual hell.
The final act of the film (it has a neat three act
structure, Pinter superbly constructing the screenplay to show Barrett and
Tony’s shifting power relationship), sees an almost infantalised Tony now meekly
accepting (almost apologising) as Barrett lets rip – all pretence at humbleness
gone and Northern vowels increasingly let loose – with his abuse and disgust.
In a brilliantly dark commentary on the upper and serving
class, such is the dependence on one for the other, that the house collapses in
Barrett’s temporary absence. The power may lie with Tony – but when Barrett stops
collaborating with that, the imbalance between them is revealed. It’s Barrett
who can actually do things – from cleaning to cooking – that Tony cannot. The
drive and will of the middle classes eventually overwhelms and breaks the upper
class, turning them into a vehicle for their own entertainment, like some sort
of dark National Trust.
The Servant is a profoundly brilliant film, one that
could stake a claim for being one of the greatest British films ever made.
Losey’s sharp outsider’s eye brilliantly dissects both the tensions between the
classes, but also the disturbingly awkward relationship the British have about
sex, a drug for the reserved, a pot of unspoken but deeply desired treats.
Bogarde is quite simply superb, Barrett is one of the greatest monsters of
cinema who could strike fear into the heart of Hannibal Lecter. Pinter’s
dialogue is brilliant. This psycho-sexual class drama is a work of art and
essential viewing.
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