Accident

A Harold Pinter Screenplay

Director: Joseph Losey

Script: Harold Pinter

Producers: Norman Priggen, Joseph Losey

Cast: Dirk Bogarde, Michael York, Stanley Baxter, Jacqueline Sassard, Annie Firbank, Alexander Knox, Freddie Jones

UK ***** 105mins 1967 Drama

Continuing my foray into forgotten films..

Another Losey/Pinter/Priggen/Bogarde pic and Losey’s last collaboration with Bogarde. Constructed in flashback after a car crash in the opening sequence, this was another book adaptation by Pinter, who jumped at a fourth chance of working with Joseph Losey.

Although finally shot in colour, black and white was considered long and hard; indeed, the chosen palette is decidedly muted, the colours really taken out by debut DoP Gerry Fisher, under instruction from Losey.

Credit: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061328/mediaviewer/rm2493086209/?ref_=tt_ov_i

Another dissection of British life, this time power-play among the upper classes; as with almost all Pinter, the menace seethes just beneath the sheen of sunny picnics, tennis and punting up the river, in this case the brutality of deception, lies and envy, given vent through ‘games’ and even the making of an omelette, in a claustrophobic academic world where everybody soon knows everybody’s business.

Exploring this underbelly, the true cost to those halcyon, timeless days at Oxbridge, Bogarde and Baxter play Dons to the students of Michael York and a very feline Jacqueline Sassard playing Anna, who stirs the loins of middle-aged Bogarde, even though he’s married with two kids.

Michael York will always have his detractors, but here he does just fine as the dashing young blade, vying for the aloof Austrian Anna’s affections. Stanley Baxter just great as the man living life on his sleeve, much to the irritation his long-suffering, buttoned-down colleague, Bogarde.

Harold Pinter and Annie Firbank make fleeting but impactful appearances, as do Terrence Rigby, Freddie Jones and Alexander Knox as the Provost, who has seen it all and misses nothing.

The Studio Canal re-release disk, for those who still believe in such things, has a bundle of extras: Losey and Pinter Discuss Accident, John Coldstream on Bogarde, Harry Burton on Pinter, Interview with Melanie Williams and an Interview with Tim Robey.

Another very classy outing then from the Losey/Pinter union and a very profitable one at that; Losey was again pushing the envelope in how he shot scenes and Pinter proved a willing sparring partner, himself experimenting with the methodology of how one can tell a story.

A forgotten gem worth a revisit, hunt it down…

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