Accident (1967)

User Rating:

7.1/10   

Director:

Joseph Losey

Writers:

Nicholas Mosley (novel)
Harold Pinter (writer)

Release Date:

22 June 1967 (Denmark)

Genre:

Drama | Crime

Plot:

Stephen is a married Oxford professor experiencing the pangs of a mid-life crisis as he begins to bristle...

Plot Keywords:

Professor | Oxford | Seduction | Car Accident | Teacher Student Relationship

Awards:

Nominated for Golden Globe. Another 3 wins & 5 nominations

Cast

Dirk Bogarde	...	Stephen
Stanley Baker	...	Charley
Jacqueline Sassard	...	Anna
Michael York	...	William
Vivien Merchant	...	Rosalind
Delphine Seyrig	...	Francesca
Alexander Knox	...	College Provost
Ann Firbank	...	Laura
Brian Phelan	...	Police Sergeant
Terence Rigby	...	Plainclothes Policeman
Freddie Jones	...	Man in Bell's Office
Jill Johnson	...	Secretary
Jane Hillary	...	Receptionist
Maxwell Findlater	...	Ted
Carole Caplin	...	Clarissa

Runtime:

105 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Australia:M | Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15 | UK:PG

Filming Locations:

Canterbury Quad, St. John's College, St Giles', Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, UK

Company:

Royal Avenue Chelsea

Trivia:

Britt Ekland was favored for a key role

Quotes:

Charley: [reading from learned journal] A statistical analysis of sexual intercourse at Kolenzo University, Milwaukee showed... that 70% did it in the evening, 29.9% between 2 and 4 in the afternoon and 0.1% during a lecture on Aristotle.
Aged Professor: I'm surprised to hear that Aristotle is on the syllabus in the State of Wisconsin.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Le samouraï (1967)

I actively disliked this film

If "anyone with a soul can't fail to appreciate this picture", then I can state categorically that I have no soul.

It's rarely that I'm tempted to walk out of a picture during performance, but in this case I was. (I noticed that a fellow member of the audience actually did exit part-way through; the woman next to me kept checking the time on her mobile phone, to which I really couldn't complain, as I had already done the same on my wristwatch...) My rating above is as high as it is solely on the grounds of "Accident"'s critical acclaim -- surely it must be doing something right that I simply can't see..?

I wasn't expecting a feel-good film from what little I'd heard about it, but I did expect something with emotional impact: a searing tragedy or a bitterly ironic script. The last thing I expected was tedium coupled with confusion, but that was what I got. Characters whom I alternately disliked and was left cold by, undertaking activities which I found distasteful on those occasions that I could actually understand them. Everybody hates everyone else (as the programme notes announced with an air of approval when I read them later). Everything happens at great and inconsequential length. The one famous line, "You're standing on his face!", occurs within a few minutes of the start.

The montage of unexplained sounds over the opening credits is more or less symptomatic of the whole film in its presumed intent to be deeply significant (and its ultimate result of confusion and alienation) -- we hear a typewriter, although none is ever seen in the house shown, an apparently irrelevant aeroplane, engine noises which with hindsight presumably belong to the road later revealed to be located just behind the camera, and what sounds for all the world like a passing steam train. The latter sound continues, inexplicably, throughout Dirk Bogarde's walk along the roadside towards the crash, waxing and waning as he confronts the injured girl.

By the end of the film, I found that I simply didn't care who did what to whom -- I had lost the ability to be shocked or even interested, due to the total lack of sympathetic characters -- I just wanted them to get on with it. It got to the stage where I was actively pretending that I was watching a silent film and trying to see if it made any more sense that way, if one watched the body language and totally ignored the dialogue: perhaps this was Pinter's intent.

I'm afraid I would actively pay not to have to watch this film again. I felt particularly short-changed, I suppose, due to having been promised a masterpiece -- no doubt that will teach me my lesson for daring to watch a picture made after 1960 :-)