Accident (1967)
Joseph Losey.
The late 1960s- and the early 1970s- were extraordinary times for British cinema. An extension, perhaps, of what critics like to call the British New Wave. From Michelangelo Antonioni’s exposé of Swinging London, Blow-Up (1966) and Lindsay Anderson's surreal public school satire, If.... (1967), to Nicolas Roeg's seminal masterpieces, Walkabout (1971) and Don't Look Now (1973), all four films a masterclass in editing and direction. It's one of my favourite periods in cinema.
Which brings us to Accident (1967), based on the novel by Nicholas Mosley (son of Sir Oswald), directed by Joseph Losey and starring Dirk Bogarde, Stanley Baker, Michael York and French actress, Jacqueline Sassard. The script’s by Harold Pinter. The Losey-Pinter collaboration is a fine thing, resulting in three films: The Servant (1963), Accident and The Go-Between (1971)- which, from memory, Dirk Bogarde might well have appeared in, if he had been available. It’s one of the 'what-ifs' of film history.
I spent yesterday afternoon watching Accident (it's available on Amazon Prime instant download), and I can tell you one thing. It's about sex, or more accurately, plain, shallow, good old-fashioned lust. Dirk's a cardigan-clad 40 something Oxford don. His friend- or more accurately rival- is a fellow academic, played by the pugnacious Stanley Baker- who's a little bit younger, a little bit fitter, drives a white Lotus Elan and has a burgeoning career as a television don. Michael York's an aristocratic Oxford undergraduate, ironically, a born survivor. And all three of 'em have the hots for international dolly-bird, Jacqueline Sassard- York's fellow undergraduate- an Austrian princess with an unpronounceable name, a girl of extraordinary beauty; a ‘How d’You Say’ Euro bimbo with the English vocabulary of a Transylvanian newt: ‘she’s talking to the goat… they speak German’.
Understandably, this has been the source of some contention. The one-dimensional characterisation. My comprehension is this: Jacqueline Sassard’s English language skills- through no fault of her own- were at that time, decidedly dodgy. Put it this way, she wasn’t exactly a walking Roget’s Thesaurus. This was her first British picture. But- I think- it works. In the context of the film, seen from the point of view of the three male characters. The boys are after her body- are they not? It's a simple as that. It’s desperately shallow. An afternoon in the sack holds a greater appeal- for them- then a drowsy afternoon in a punt reading Proust or reciting Keats.
Losey sets his love triangle, or more accurately, love rectangle, against the dreaming spires of Oxford, with Dirk's red-bricked Georgian rectory filmed, actually, in Surrey, standing in for Oxfordshire. It’s Losey's sense of place which stands him out as a great director. His use of sound: the suck of a jet airliner overhead, the whistle of a shunting steam engine, the tick of a clock or the drip of a tap; schoolchildren in a playground, sound bouncing off the tarmac. Without giving too much away, the car accident itself (rather gruesome) takes place in bizarre light: a luminous witches' Warlpurgisnacht; clouds scudding across a full moon- the dog that barked in the night.
Which brings us to the English Sunday. I'm not keen on the English Sunday lunch, especially parties held by intellectual types in Hampstead or Oxford: languid, humid affairs, spiralling into drunken depression, stupor and resentment; the humidity of a late August. As an American outsider, Losey understood the English- and our ways- only too well. In Accident he recreates such a summer's afternoon to perfection: wasps zip around the Jekyll borders and as the Oxfordshire afternoon advances and shadows lengthen, conversation turns slurred and spiky; bitterness masked by English civility.
For, along with sex and lust, Accident is also a film about repressed jealousy and resentment. Losey is obsessed with the English class system- especially our penchant for games. Ruthlessness (The East India Company, Perfidious Albion) camouflaged by cricket; tea and biscuits. The vicious Eton Wall Game sequence, filmed in the Great Hall at Syon, is very much a Losey set piece, separating the middle-class Stephen (Bogarde) from the upper-class guests in thought, actions and manner. Oh, subtle stuff! In one marvellous sequence, Dirk takes Jacqueline for a walk in the Oxfordshire countryside (distant spires and Stephen Spender’s electricity pylons) and attempts to seduce her. Except that he doesn't: Evelyn Waugh’s thin bat's squeak of sexuality. It's painful. Cloud shadows race across the flat wheat-fields in the dappled sunlight and the faint sound of Oxford's bells are caught on the wind.
Accident (1967) is available to watch on instant download via Amazon Prime and there are various editions on DVD and Blu-Ray, including an excellent ‘fully restored’ version from Studiocanal.
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In the meantime, have a relaxing and cinematic Sunday.
Good article. The film "The Servant" is well worth a watch, the themes of class, sexuality (acted on or repressed) and power are all there. Leaves quite an impression.
Has someone invented the Pinter app? You too can create missives both cryptic and menacing.