THE SERVANT 1963

It was at an early age when I became to be aware of the fact that a significant part of motion pictures' allure for me was their “magic mirror” quality. The ability to illuminate and interpret the shadow aspects of human behavior and psychology. Particularly those darker sides of our natures we’re conditioned to suppress or deny. To a shy, somewhat sheltered, gay Black teen intent on forging for himself  an independent self-image away and apart from familial and social preconceptions, movies afforded a safe, vicarious means by which I could explore complex matters of ego and identity. To be able to watch people grapple with the shifting, fluid nature of image and personality (with the added bonus of not actually having to interact with said people) felt marvelously intimate, wonderfully personal, and too good to be true.

Truth Through Distortion

Inspired by my own desire to better accept and reconcile the ofttimes conflicting sides of my own nature, it took some time, but I ultimately came to understand that, like it or not, duality and contradictions are a fundamental part of what makes us human. This personal insight led to my gravitating to (and developing an acute fondness for) movies whose themes explicitly relate to the topics of identity, personality, and duality. Decidedly dark movies, to be sure, but all of a similar breed of exploring the faceted nature of personality.

Whether those films take the form of allegorical ruminations on the dichotomy between the physical and the spiritual (Steppenwolf, Dorian Gray); hallucinatory musings on personality-theft (3 Women, Secret Ceremony); splintered-persona melodramas (Images, Black Swan); tales of psychological co-dependency (Dead Ringers, Single White Female); or psychosocial conflicts (The Maids, The Ceremony)...no matter how they’re structured, they all fascinate the hell out of me.

One movie that manages to masterfully incorporate all of the above and which rates as a genuine, five-star classic in the annals of Identity-Crisis Cinema is Joseph Losey’s mind-bending, multilayered meditation on manservants, mutuality, and malevolence: The Servant.

Dirk Bogarde as Hugo Barrett

Sarah Miles as Vera

James Fox as Tony

Wendy Craig as Susan Stewart

In The Servant, adapted by Harold Pinter from the 1949 novel by Robin Maugham, Dirk Bogarde is Hugo Barrett, the devoted and dutiful gentleman’s gentleman recently hired by aristocratic layabout Tony (James Fox). Assigned to look after the daily creature comforts of his high-born, high-maintenance master—"I’ll need, well…everything! General looking-after, you know”—Barret is live-in cook, housekeeper, dresser, barman, decorator, and nursemaid. Which is a good thing, since Tony does little but drift about imperiously giving orders in a bubble of lazy entitlement that appears to have come built-in with his inherited Georgian townhouse in London’s affluent Chelsea district maintained on an independent income he lives on while awaiting the materialization of an indistinct development job in Brazil.

Barrett brings eager-to-please efficiency and order to Tony’s world of self-absorbed disarray, both men appearing to thrive under a mutually advantageous arrangement that sees each contentedly assuming their clearly defined, socially-assigned roles respective of status and station. Considerably less pleased with this alliance is Susan (Wendy Craig), Tony’s upper-crust, frostily snobbish fiancée. She and Barrett take an immediate dislike to one another, she mocking his genteel pretensions (white serving gloves) and lowbrow contributions to the décor (“Tomorrow I’ll organize a proper spice shelf for the kitchen”), Barrett resenting her intrusion into what he has clearly come to regard as his territory.

As per the presumptive tradition of the class system, Tony and Barrett’s master/servant relationship bears the surface characteristics of polite decorum, but Losey’s sly camera—always lingering on faces a second or two after you’re sure a scene has concluded—captures the reductive (if not downright contemptuous) looks Barrett shoots Tony’s way whenever his master's eyes are averted or back is turned.

To be sure, there’s nothing unusual in an employee harboring resentment toward an employer, for Barrett has to endure the daily micro-humiliations of being condescended to and ordered about with nary a please or thank you. But there’s a faint trace of maliciousness behind Barrett’s gaze. Something hinting at a duplicitous nature which has viewers of the film asking of him “What do you want from this house?” long before Susan combatively confronts him with the same question.

Confirmation that Barrett is indeed plotting some type of intrigue comes in the form of Vera (Sarah Miles), his teenage "sister" he has persuaded Tony to take on as housekeeper. A witty tip-off that Vera is not Barrett's sister but is, in fact, his lover, appears during their cab ride from the train station. Vera places her hand a little too high on Barrett's thigh, resulting in a most perceptible rise in Barrett's suggestively fondled umbrella handle. 

As deliberate deception gives way to coerced seduction, The Servant plays it cozy as to a motive for the couple’s charade. But what’s brought into far clearer focus is the way the unfolding of these events has the effect of intensifying the repressed antagonisms and attractions already evident in the ambiguous, contradictory interrelationships of the characters. Ultimately, as the anarchy of power-plays, class conflict, and sexual tension come to overthrow the structured formality of the film’s early scenes, the lives of Tony and Barrett become inextricably intertwined, their personalities undergoing a transformation (or unmasking) that finds roles reversed and the initial power dynamic upended.

Inequity of Power

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

When the arts are controlled by the mainstream, marginalized artists are inevitably compelled to resort to coding when expressing the truth of their reality. Queer coding permeates the plays of Tennessee Williams and remain an inextricable characteristic of the works of D.H. Lawrence. In a similar vein, the dualism dramatized in The Servant reflects the insider/outsider existence of its gay author (when homosexuality was illegal), Robin Maugham.

Tony and Barrett sexually commune with one another through Vera

Prolific novelist Robin Maugham (the openly gay nephew of the deeply-closeted writer Somerset Maugham), was a war hero, political diplomat, and lawyer who scandalized his aristocratic family with the homoerotic themes of his work. Keenly aware (some biographers would say tortured) of the social duplicity that would have him afforded unfettered access to privileges due to his class, yet simultaneously denied basic freedoms due to his sexuality; the themes of Maugham’s work often dealt with characters struggling with opposing natures and splintered identities.

One of the most commented-upon details about The Servant—rumored to be a heterosexualized telling of an autobiographically inspired, near-blackmail experience Maugham had with one of his own servants—is the assertively ambiguous nature of Barrett and Tony’s relationship. 

I've not read the source novel upon which Losey's film is based (Maugham has been quoted as not being very fond of Pinter's adaptation), but it does a marvelous job of dramatizing the unique two-sided existence Maugham must have lived as a member of England’s aristocracy encouraged by family and propriety to keep an essential part of his personal life hidden.

In this way, The Servant shares the twinning quality found in the works of Albee, Inge, and the aforementioned Williams. On the surface, their works are about one thing (in this instance, a class conflict drama about an ordered life thrown into chaos by the intrusion of a wily servant), yet at the same time, they are transmitting an entirely different message on a wavelength intended for those in the know. The Servant's second, subliminal theme plays as a metaphor for the world of pretense, image, desire, and detection that defined homosexual existence at the time. It's a fear familiar to any individual feeling as though they must conceal their true nature from others: the fear that the potential intimacy and bonding with another holds with it the possibility for exposure and exploitation, resulting in that person having power over you.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Three-time Oscar-nominated Cinematographer Douglas Slocombe (Raiders of the Lost Ark, Julia, and Travels with My Aunt) won UK’s BAFTA award for creating what is a truly striking visual style for The Servant. Brazenly contemporary, the look is part British neorealism, borderline expressionistic, and hovering somewhere around gothic surrealism. Slocomb’s painterly compositions and expressive B&W cinematography create an atmosphere of menace and conflict with every frame.

Underscoring themes of claustrophobia and entrapment, Tony's townhouse is used as an active character in the film. Frequently, individuals are framed in ways emphasizing their emotional imprisonment. In this shot, a distraught Tony appears hemmed in by both the bars of the staircase and the frame of Vera's bed. That he is surrounded by her muscleman pinups hint that perhaps it's not Vera he's really pining for.

As Tony and Barrett grow more interdependent, the house itself
seems to get smaller...the walls and ceiling closing in on them. 

Convex mirrors (something of a staple in Pinter films)... do they reflect, distort, or reveal?

Throughout The Servant, Barrett...figuratively or literally...
always comes between Susan and Tony

PERFORMANCES

I’m not particularly familiar with the films of Dirk Bogarde’s matinee idol period (although I did catch one of his “Doctor" series films, about which the only thing I remember is thinking how much he resembled a young Desi Arnaz), so I was never able to fully appreciate the impact of his transformation from heartthrob to serious actor via films like The Servant and Victim (1961). Knowing Bogarde only as the intensely compelling dramatic actor giving memorable performances in such superb films as Despair (1978), The Damned (1969), Our Mother’s House (1967), Darling (1965), and Death in Venice (1971), it’s really saying something that I consider his performance in The Servant to be his best. 

Sarah Miles' Vera exudes a brand of sexy that can best be summed up as of guileless guile 

Playing a difficult-to-read character who calculatingly exploits his all-things-to-all people charm, I think Bogarde registers so persuasively in The Servant because at all times it feels as if the actor is navigating familiar territory. Indeed, in the 2008 book “Ever, Dirk: The Bogarde Letters” a note from Bogarde expresses the sentiment that while he would like very much to be, in real-life, more like the character he played in I Could Go On Singing (1963), he laments that he’s “Actually nearer Barret in ‘The Servant,’ which is why it was so easy to do him…people don’t realize.”

Never an actor renowned for his accessibility, Bogarde is the master of the side-eye, knows his way around a double-entendre, and is uncommonly skilled in exposing the art of concealment. The same could be said of Bogarde both onscreen and off. The King of Denial, Bogarde remained closeted his entire life in spite of the fact many were aware that the husband of actress Glynnis Johns left her for Bogarde and went on to live with him as his "manager" for 40 years.
One of the delights of The Servant is marveling in Bogarde’s depiction of Barrett’s effortless slides in and out of his Manchester accent, and contrasting his “on the job” fussiness with his louche demeanor when “off the clock.”

Tony: (Interview question) Do you drink beer?
Barrett: (Primly) No, sir.

Like Anthony Perkins, that other '50s closeted screen star/onetime teen pin-up whose guarded image was changed (arguably, not always for the better) on the strength of a single role, Dirk Bogarde turned equivocality into an acting style. The Servant was the second of five films Bogarde would make with Joseph Losey.

"I can still think of things that will please you, can't I?"

As embodied by the performance of James Fox (granted an "introducing" credit in the film) the morally-ambivalent Tony also carries about him a provocative air of sexual ambiguity. A characteristic of the slight, blond, actor which would be mined to similar effect in David Cammell and Nicolas Roeg's brilliant identity-switch head trip Performance (1970). Fox is absolutely splendid as the self-indulgent idler who falls under the corruptive sway of his Machiavellian servant, displaying a considerable range of emotional vulnerability as he morphs from patrician parvenu to pitiable prisoner. Both Fox and Bogarde deservedly won BAFTA awards for their performances (Most Promising Newcomer and Best Actor, respectively).

Although I think I’m not meant to, I like the character of Susan a great deal. At least the side of her that reminds me of Leroy in The Bad Seed. She's the one character not taken in by Barrett's obsequious fakery (precisely why he sees her as a threat) and doesn’t mince words about it. In a film populated with weak males, Susan may be an insufferable snob with questionable aesthetics, but her questioning candor is the closest thing to principle in Pinter's world. Wendy Craig's performance has such intelligence and depth, she makes Susan an unexpectedly affecting player in this power-play drama.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

I loved The Servant the first time I ever saw it, an opinion only reinforced by repeat viewings. To me, it stands as the masterpiece achievement of Losey and Pinter’s three collaborations: Accident (1967) and The Go-Between (1971) complete the set. 

The Servant explores the dysfunction, hypocrisy, and false values behind master-servant, upper-class/working-class roles, and power inequities. Late in the film, this exchange occurs:

“Don’t forget your place, Barrett. You’re nothing but a servant in this house.”

“Servant? I’m nobody’s servant! Who furnished the whole place for you? Who painted it for you? Who does the cooking? Who washes your pants? Who cleans the bath out after you? I do! I run the whole bloody place and what do I get out of it? Nothing!”

And there you have the crucial nugget of truth that festers within the core of social class hostility; Barrett’s ruinous subversion is possible because Tony and his kind don’t really know how to “do” anything (a fact made embarrassingly explicit a while back when the world looked on as a certain reviled 72-year-old public figure demonstrated a lack of familiarity with how umbrellas work).

"A  weekend in the county. So inactive, that one has to lie down." - Stephen Sondheim
Tony and Susan pay a visit to Lord and Lady Mounset ( Richard Vernon and Catherine Lacey)

The morally-soft, easily-corrupted classes like to see themselves as the builders, but their desultory existences prepare them for nothing. Least of all survival. We encounter it in daily headlines—the wealthy, even in a system rigged in their favor, find it necessary to resort to fraud and swindles to win elections or get their children into universities. Forced, out of necessity to learn to look after themselves, it is the working classes, the servants, who are the builders, the survivors, and the only ones possessing actual skills.

The saying goes, "If you don’t have a seat at the table, you’re probably on the menu." The Servant suggests that come the day the dismissed and disregarded claim their place at the table, the bill of fare is likely to be all those who have erroneously assumed that to be waited on by another human being is their birthright.

BONUS MATERIAL:

Harold Pinter, Nobel Prize-winning author, playwright, and screenwriter of The Servant makes a brief appearance in a terrific scene that takes place in a posh restaurant where various couples engage in enigmatic games of one-upmanship and subtle power plays. (That's him in the center with actress Ann Firbank of One of Those Things.)  Pinter also wrote the lyrics to composer John Dankworth's (Darling) song "All Gone," sung by Cleo Laine on the soundtrack to The Servant.  

Copyright © Ken Anderson 2009 - 2019

DARLING 1965

I've a limited exposure to the British New Wave—that post-war cultural movement in theater, literature, and film which propelled the lives and concerns of working-class England to the forefront and ushered in the '60s vogue for socially conscious kitchen-sink dramas like Look Back in Anger (1956) and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960)—but of the few films I have seen, most have been distinguished by their decidedly testosterone-laden, male-centric perspective. So much so that in a great many cases, the “Angry Young Man” genre description could just as well serve as a plot synopsis. 

In these films, the leading men are depicted as a rebellious, restless bunch, ofttimes violently chafing at the constraints of the British class system. Meanwhile, the women are largely portrayed as either fun-killing domestic drudges standing as ball-and-chain obstacles to the hero’s independence, or sexually available conquests whose troublesome biology (they do get pregnant at the most inconvenient times!) brands them potentially dangerous anchors to a life of lower-class squalor.

The "Honeyglow" Girl
The ideal of the modern woman

Not to discount Look Back in Anger in its entirety, but I loathed the passive roles played by Mary Ure and Claire Bloom. Ure’s submissive doormat reminded me of nothing more than Wilma Flintstone as the browbeaten housewife in the teleplay, The Frogmouth. By contrast, I very much liked Simone Signoret’s worldly older woman in Room at the Top (1959) and Rachel Roberts’ complex widow in This Sporting Life (1963). But for all of their depth and dimensionality, neither character (tellingly, perhaps) came to a particularly good end. It ultimately took doe-eyed Rita Tushingham in Tony Richardson’s marvelous A Taste of Honey (1961) to provide a welcome change-of-pace from all this masculine disagreeableness shrouded in societal disillusionment. In my narrow experience, Tushingham’s spirited Manchester teen remained the lone feminine voice of the Brit-based genre until one day when I happened upon John Schlesinger’s Billy Liar (1963) and that force of nature known as Julie Christie.

Julie Christie’s entire role in Billy Liar can’t amount to more than ten minutes of screen time, but as the easygoing, independent-minded Liz (a girl so unlike the other clingy, provincial, ready-to-wed women in the film as to be another species of being), Christie emerged the only one I even remembered. The frank simplicity of her performance, coupled with her refreshingly open, guileless glamour, proved to be something of a bellwether moment in the British New Wave. A turning point of sorts, in the evolution of women in British cinema. Come the mid-'60s, the reversal of England’s post-war economic decline signaled a gradual abandonment of these sparse and spartan tales of social oppression. Instead, Northern England’s working-class suburbs were replaced by the burgeoning mod scene of swinging London, and the by-now familiar class rebellion commentary gave way to observant social satires taking pot shots at provincialism, consumerism, and the emergent dominance of youth culture.

Julie Christie as Diana Scott

Dirk Bogarde as Robert Gold

Laurence Harvey as Miles Brand

Roland Curram as Malcolm

Although the years have softened its bite somewhat, John Schlesinger’s Darling is a darkly comic, corrosive criticism of the swinging London jet set as embodied by its blithely self-centered, casually amoral, unrepentantly superficial heroine. Julie Christie’s Diana Scott is a London model possessing looks, self-confidence, charm, vivacity, ambition… in short, she personifies everything contemporary society deems worthwhile to possess. She’s everyone’s darling, and, as the pop lifestyle magazines are quick to point out, the world is hers for the asking. Unfortunately, Diana’s outwardly appealing free-spirit independence is born of a rootless, restless dissatisfaction; a nagging internal deficiency her beauty and instinct for opportunistic survival conspire to help her to ignore. As the film ends, Diana, who is always looking out for herself, is ultimately left with just herself.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Perhaps because of all the macho bullying behind so much of it, I’ve never much warmed to the whole “Angry Young Man” genre. Angry Young Woman…now that’s another matter. Only two films come to mind: the above-mentioned A Taste of Honey; and the rarely-mentioned 1985 Meryl Streep drama, Plenty. A film that,  while not technically an example of the genre, is a wonderful female-centric perspective of post-war British disappointment.

There is no obvious Angry Young Woman in Darling, but there is something akin to rage at the center of what is eating at the never-satisfied-for-a-moment Diana. You see it in today’s films. Those romantic comedies where women are characterized by how much they shop and the label of the clothes on their backs. The films where the women are near perfect physical and intellectual specimens, yet their very "femaleness” is a weakness that dooms them to relationships with doofus schlubs like Seth Rogen. Those awful Sex and the City films where the over-privileged girlfriends can’t stop complaining or bemoaning their first-world problems for a minute and just count their blessings…it’s the same thing (Indeed, Diana Scott would fit right in with Carrie Bradshaw and her “I want it all, but I'm pretty sure I won't be fulfilled when I get it” tribeswomen).

Sexual liberation yields little more than serial dissatisfaction

I don’t know about you, but when I see compulsive consumerism of the sort engaged in by women in today’s films as some sort of empowering birthright, I can’t help but feel there are some real hostilities and angers being repressed and swallowed up in this obsession with fashion. I can’t believe the battlefield of women’s liberation has become the local outlet store. 

What I like about Darling is how relentlessly it lampoons this culture we have fashioned for ourselves that sells people ideas of "lifestyles" rather than encourages us to find an actual life. Like a similar character played by Jacqueline Bisset in the 1970 film The Grasshopper, Christie’s Diana Scott has been led to believe that “liberation” is a complete lack of ties to anything. Even herself. As she flits from one dissatisfying situation to another, it never dawns on her that she has been sold a prepackaged, consumerist bill of goods as to what real freedom and happiness is. The chic trappings of the swinging lifestyle promoted by mod London are chiefly beneficial to the shopkeepers, stores, and businesses. For Diana, climbing the ladder of upward mobility ultimately offers her nothing more than increasingly sumptuous surroundings to feel desperately lonely in.

Having it All

PERFORMANCES

I’m mad about everything in this film, but Darling is far from being the favorite film of many. Some find it dated, others complain of the satire being too heavy-handed; even the late John Schlesinger stated in later years “(Darling) seemed altogether too pleased with itself” and claimed his film was guilty of “epigrammatic dialog” that came off as self-consciously hip. Where all opinions converge and most everyone is in agreement (even Schlesinger) is on the topic of Julie Christie's star-making performance. So natural a presence that the film takes on the feel of documentary whenever she’s onscreen. You can't take your eyes off of her.

I've always wondered if the career of popular '60s British actress Judy Geeson (To Sir, With Love, Bersek) was either plagued or assisted by her more-than-passing resemblance to Julie Christie 

An entire generation fell in love with Christie because of this film and it’s not hard to see why. In this her Oscar-winning role, Christie exhibits that appealingly straightforward quality that would characterize her entire career. She displays an incredible range and finds the humanity and humor in a character not exactly likable. It’s always interesting when a smart actor plays a not-very-bright character. Christie doesn’t condescend in her portrayal of the shallow Diana. She conveys the character’s intellect in terms of a keen, almost animal awareness of knowing which way the wind is blowing and shifting her sights accordingly. Julie Christie is just a marvel here and endlessly resourceful in getting us to know more about a character who knows absolutely nothing about herself. 

It's difficult for me to think of Darling as being dated when Julie Christie's Diana Scott is just another talentless, self-promoting, arrogantly ignorant, opportunistic phony. You know,  like any one of a number of today's Kardashians, Lohans, Snookies, and regional "housewives." 

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

In films with lead actresses as talented and drop-dead gorgeous as Julie Christie, it's not uncommon for the male characters to fade into the background. Not so with Darling. In fact, I can’t think of a film with a more solid, impressive, and eye-pleasing male cast. As a nice change of pace, the men in the cast are, by and large, more sensitive and emotionally needy than the heroine. Few actors have combined suave masculinity with vulnerable sensitivity as persuasively as Dirk Bogarde. As television reporter Robert Gold, Bogarde’s grounded sincerity (so easily read in his expressive eyes) casts a by-contrast harsh light on the frivolous affections of Christie’s Diana.

Diana (Christie) allows her vulnerabilities to show with her friend Malcolm (Roland Curram) 

Of course, the terrific Laurence Harvey (a delight in 1959s Expresso Bongo) makes for a rakishly reptilian—and surprisingly sexy—competitor for Diana’s affections, but Roland Curram in the role of Diana’s photographer friend, Malcolm, really made me sit up and take notice when I first saw Darling. For not only is the character of Malcolm funny, handsome, and a good friend, but Malcolm is that rare of rarities: a likable, non-tragic, non-campy, unapologetically sexual, gay character. In a film made in 1965, no less! As the only genuinely decent character in the film, his scenes with Christie are refreshingly convivial and the only times her character ever appears to relax into herself.

Diana and her Gays
Darling was one of the earliest films to depict gay characters in a sympathetic light

Strangely, for a film with such a progressive attitude towards homosexuality, it seems the closets were full-to-bursting behind the scenes. Matinee idol Dirk Bogarde was deeply closeted yet engaged in a brief fling with openly gay director John Schlesinger during the making of Darling (according to authorized Schlesinger biographer William J. Mann). Bogarde enjoyed a 40-year relationship with his agent, Tony Forwood, but invested considerable energy (throughout several autobiographies) in portraying himself publicly as a heterosexual. John Schlesinger harbored hopes that his friend, Roland Curram, might be inspired enough by his role in Darling to come out of the closet. Amused by his friend's presumption, Curram always insisted on his heterosexuality and went on to marry and later sire two children. In 1985, on the occasion of his divorce and ultimate coming out to his family and himself, Curram stated, “Of course, I told John later that he was right.”

Unfaithfully Yours - Diana's twin deceptions
Robert: "Your idea of fidelity is not having more than one man in bed at the same time"

  

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

I first saw Darling in 1980, by which time you’d think the film’s satirical slant would have lost its edge. That at least would be expected. The scary (and sad) thing is that while the jabs have lost their bite due to over-saturation, the chosen targets are nevertheless every bit as wanting of lampooning today as they were in 1965. I find it uncanny that the social absurdities Darling poked fun at 52- years ago (TV commercials, fame whores, liberal hypocrites, self-righteous homophobes, promiscuity for profit, the myth of “having it all”, etc.) are still a prominent part of our pop-culture landscape.

Darling is the film that made stars of both Julie Christie and John Schlesinger. Schlesinger's next film would be his last with Christie; the big-budget adaptation of the Thomas Hardy novel, Far From the Madding Crowd (1967). After which he would go on to make the classics: Midnight Cowboy, Sunday, Bloody Sunday, and The Day of the Locust. Schlesinger passed away in 2003.

Julie Christie is a legend, of course, and the promise of Darling has been realized in film after film throughout her career. Few actresses get to become iconic stars; fewer still owe it all to introducing to the cinema a new image of womanhood. There are many remarkable actresses around, but there is only one Julie Christie...she is in a class by herself.

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2012