Overview
Release Date:
16 March 1964 (USA)
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Plot:
The aristocratic Tony moves to London and hires the servant Hugo Barrett for all services at home. Barrett seems to be a loyal and competent employee...
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Awards:
Won 3 BAFTA Film Awards.
Another 5 wins
&
6 nominations
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User Comments:
Confusing, sexy and brilliant
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Crew believed to be complete
Additional Details
Runtime:
112 min
Aspect Ratio:
1.66 : 1
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Fun Stuff
Trivia:
When
Joseph Losey was hospitalized for two weeks during this shoot,
Dirk Bogarde continued filming assisted by minute, daily instructions over the phone from Losey's hospital bed. When Losey returned to the set he did not re-shoot any of the script, much to the relief of cast and crew.
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Goofs:
Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When Hugo and Susan arrive at Hugo's house in the Mercedes, with an extended visit in mind, they both go into the house and Hugo leaves the car's lights on.
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Soundtrack:
All Gone
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A super, confusing but entirely visceral experience, The Servant is a rich collaboration between Pinter (the writer) and Losey. Good performances from Fox and the doyenne of the slightly barmy 60's flick, Sarah Miles are mandatory in order to keep up with the entirely convincing theatrics of Dirk Bogarde's morally abstract butler, Barrett. Losey keeps everything claustrophobic: there's also an edginess through the stiltedness of set pieces - in restaurants and bars, and even in the Mounset's country pile. The only scene which seems comfortable is the snow(fight) sequence in which Susan and Tony affirm their love - and the moral height from which Tony must fall.
Bizarrely, the film is erotic for the first half but then simply frightening for the second, the drama wound around a single moral trajectory - downwards - throughout. We are engulfed from the start with open-ended sexual permissiveness and suggestion, which runs alongside the class divide whose tension drives the drama to the same degree. In the final scenes I couldn't remove Berg's opera on Wedekind's play Lulu from my mind, given the sax-fronted jazz of John Dankworth colliding awkwardly with a simultaneous orchestral score. It's just a brilliant, original film - analysis resistant, but entirely absorbing nonetheless 8/10