Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Joseph Losey
Starring: Dirk Bogarde, James Fox, Wendy Craig, Sarah
Miles
Joseph Losey's 1963 adaptation of Robin Maugham's novella
The Servant might be one of the most influential movies ever
made. Films as disparate as Pasolini's Teorema, Landis's Trading Places, Hanson's The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, Paul Thomas Anderson's
Phantom Thread
and Bong Joon-ho's
Parasite
all bear its mark. Yet in recent decades Losey's
Harold Pinter scripted film seems to have become somewhat forgotten.
Hopefully this new 4K restoration will introduce Losey's film to a new
generation of cinephiles, who will likely recognise many of its elements in
more recent fare.
Maugham was reportedly inspired to write his story by an incident in which
his man-servant seemingly attempted to honey trap him into sleeping with a
rent boy, presumably with some sort of blackmail in mind. The film swaps
this out for a heterosexual scenario, but The Servant is still
one of the gayest movies of the 20th century.
Dirk Bogarde is the eponymous man-servant Hugo, who is hired by Tony
(James Fox), an immature young fop who has just purchased a home in
central London. Tony is essentially a man-child who requires Hugo to look
after his every need, as though replacing his own mother. This is seemingly
something Hugo was counting on, as he harbours nefarious plans to take over
the house for himself. Recruited into his scheme is Vera (Sarah Miles), who Tony hires in the belief that she is Hugo's sister. She's actually
Hugo's lover, and the pair have a plot to seduce Tony and destroy his
life.
For a movie directed by an American, The Servant is sure
tuned into that very British obsession - class. The class war of mid 20th
century Britain might have been a cold war, but here it's a bloody battle.
Losey and Pinter draw such a social divide between their characters that
viewers will likely take sides early on along their own class lines. Those
of a working class background will no doubt find themselves initially
rooting for Hugo's scheme, particularly when it comes to Tony's obnoxiously
snooty middle class girlfriend Susan (Wendy Craig), who treats her
lover's servant like dirt - we're really longing for her to get her
comeuppance at Hugo's hands. I imagine at the time of its release
The Servant must have played as a straight thriller for those
who were feeling threatened by the rise of the working class in British
culture.
What The Servant gets so right about the class war is that
it's never really been fought between the upper and working classes, but
between the middle and working classes. As a working class man myself, I've
only had pleasant experiences with the few members of the upper class I've
met, while most middle class people make me feel like something they might
scrape off the sole of their shoe. This is a war that's fuelled by
aspiration and ambition. The upper classes usually have no aspirations or
ambitions because they've already got everything they could want. The
working classes learn early in life that aspiration and ambition are foolish
notions best put aside. The middle classes however are so obsessed with
social climbing that they torture themselves with how out of their reach the
next rung on the ladder seems to be - knowing they can't reach the upper
classes, they instead look down on the working classes to make themselves
feel elevated. I'm beginning to sound like that old comedy sketch with John
Cleese and the Two Ronnies, but the point I'm trying to make is that the
upper class Tony might be an ignorant plonker, but he's essentially a nice
guy who treats Hugo like a friend. The middle class Susan on the other hand,
treats him like dirt, because she feels threatened by his presence.
There are likely two reasons for Susan's fears regarding Hugo. For one, she
resents the working class because she knows she's only a few bad decisions
away from joining their ranks. Tony is her ticket to the upper classes, and
she's not about to let some Mancunian oik steal him away from her. This
brings us to the secondary reason for her resentment towards Hugo - she
views him as a sexual threat. Not to herself, but to Tony. Long before
homosexuality was accepted in wider British society, it was considered an
upper class indulgence, something many wealthy men experienced and
experimented with in their time in boarding schools. With this in mind,
Susan can see how Hugo might prove a competitor for Tony's affections.
Later in the film you can see why Susan's fears aren't entirely unfounded.
By the film's final act, the lines between Tony and Hugo's master/servant
relationship have been so blurred that they now resemble a gay couple,
bickering over who's responsible for the messiness of their home. In a
remarkably candid bit of dialogue for a 1963 film, the two essentially
confess to experiencing homosexual dalliances while serving in the military.
Knowing what we now do about Bogarde's personal life, it's easy to see why
he was attracted to Losey's film.
By the end, Hugo has inflicted such psychological torture on Tony and Susan
that even the most bolshy of viewers will feel that Hugo has gone too far in
his war against the higher classes. He's like a Cambodian revolutionary
smashing an infant's brains against a tree - we can understand his rage but
we can't condone his actions. By the end of the movie we're left needing a
shower. Losey and Pinter have exploited our class resentments and rubbed our
faces in the dirt. If you have your own man-servant, you might ask him to
run you a bath after viewing Losey's film.
The Servant is in UK/ROI cinemas
from September 10th and on 4K UHD Collector’s edition Blu-Ray, DVD and
Digital from September 20th.