MovieChat Forums > The Servant (1964) Discussion > Great Movie (Slight Spoilers)

Great Movie (Slight Spoilers)


I think THE SERVANT is an excellent movie in every respect. Joseph Losey is a very great and underappreciated director -- sort of like Sam Fuller and Ingmar Bergman combined. Actually, this film reminds me very much of Polanski (who was a great fan of Harold Pinter). At the end it's hard to tell exactly what has happened. What is that strange drink that Barrett gives Tony? Is that absinthe? And how about that party? Who the hell were those awful women? And what was up between Barrett and Susan? The whole thing is really creepy and leaves you with a nasty feeling, though you're not entirely sure why, as you haven't seen anything that is particularly shocking; but that whole finale in Tony's apartment, now transformed into a den of depravity, is certainly grotesque. It's easy to see why so many people found this film repellent at that time. Along with Powell's PEEPING TOM and Polanksi's REPULSION, this is a great, gritty British psycholigical thriller from the 1960s. Thoughts, anyone?

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Yes, but you are sucked into the den of depravity... You are seduced into it... And the way it is shot, the angles, and the black and white, makes you feel as if you have taken drugs... It's a masterpiece, it really is.

I just bought the DVD, love it more and more...

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I don't see so much depravity, I just saw the decline of Tony, and Barrett hatching a plot. I agree with you, it's a masterpiece, black & white photography, shooting and playing (especialy Bogarde) are excellent.

I'm not sure, but maybe Barrett is a pimp, at the end he say to the girl with the hat "tomorrow night, come with John". At the end, there is also the girl that Tony meets at the pub, when he was calling Susan. The screenplay explicitly leaves us without answer about Barrett's goal, but maybe the novel can enlight us, if someone read it, you're welcome.

I saw it on tv tonight, they've passed it because Harold Pinter (who adapted the screenplay from the novel) won the Nobel Prize of litterature.

It reminds me Pasolini's Theoreme (1968): a man arrives in a familly and turn everything topsy-turvy.

The bishop, in the restaurant scene, is played by Patrick Magee, he is famous for his role in A Clockwork Orange, he plays the writer in the bath-chair.

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(please bear with any mistake/weird phrasing you might find in my post —English is not my first language, and it's close to 2 a.m.... sheesh)




The screenplay explicitly leaves us without answer about Barrett's goal, but maybe the novel can enlight us, if someone read it, you're welcome.


*raising hand* I did! I read it for a school assignment. (have to write an essay on a book and its silver screen transposition.)


Barrett's goal isn't made clearer in the novella, really. What is possibly made clearer is his potential queerness —he is immediately presented as a man with very affected, "prissy" (the adjective comes often in association with Barrett) manners. But he still has that ambiguity that characterizes Barrett as portrayed by Bogarde in the movie.

The thing with the novella is that it tells the story from a totally different point of view —that of a third party. The narrator is a friend of Tony's (they met in the army), and his narration is part first-hand (as he describes what he sees of Tony's downfall), part second-hand (as he retells episodes reported by Tony and Susan). Another important point in the book is the esquisse of a love triangle between Barrett, Tony and the narrator, who sometimes seems to harbour feelings for his friend.

I find the angle shift (from Maugham's third-party narrator to Losey's "intrusive" camera) absolutely fascinating. Maugham's novella is quite a good read, but it does have its odd moments of clumsiness and loss of tension, while Losey's movie keeps the tension from beginning to end. To me, the movie is much more powerful than the novella... Its impact on the viewer is much more potent than that of the novella on the reader.

Then again, Maugham reportedly hated the movie. ;)



*EDITED TO ADD:*

I just remembered after posting this that Losey addresses the topic of Barrett's goal in an interview with Michel Ciment:

Do you think that Barrett's intention from the beginning is to dominate Tony?

— Oh yes! He had this idea of invading Tony, bringing in his own mistress, his friends, etc. Of submitting him. I am sure he is trying to do the same thing wherever he goes. I had servants who were like this. They tried, but it did not work.

(in Michel Ciment, Le Livre de Losey, ed. Stock Cinéma)

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I think I understand where you got "the den of depravity". Tony started the movie as a very stiff, proper Englishman. By the end he was grovelling on the floor in a drunken state. The party Barrett and his friends threw was so powerful that even Tony's straight lace, conventional, conservative lost herself and kissed Barrett. She was so shocked at her own behavior, she slapped Barrett.

The fact that Tony and his girlfiend sunk as low as socializing with the servants and their friends, let alone kissing them in public, could be interpreted as depravity.

Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.

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It's funny, I keep seeing opinions on here that she "lost herself in the moment" etc. at the party and kissed Barrett. To me, it seems that she was completely disgusted by him, but was so worried about Tony's state that she saw kissing Barrett as the only way she had a chance of pulling Tony out of his stupor. It didn't work, Tony was too wasted, and she immediately stops kissing Barrett when she sees this, leaves the house, and slaps Barrett on the way out. I mean, we don't see her gazing at Barrett - we see her watching Tony worriedly the whole time, and kissing Barrett and looking back at Tony. It's obvious to me where her interest was.

Interesting to see different opinions on this though. It's awesome how much of this movie is up to interpretation and yet the movie comes across so strongly unlike many ambiguous films that leave you with an "eh" feeling.

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The whole thing is really creepy and leaves you with a nasty feeling, though you're not entirely sure why, as you haven't seen anything that is particularly shocking


The thing is —you just pinned it down— that it all relies on the power of suggestion, rather than showing/expliciting what really happens. This is what makes it so powerful and uneasy: in the end, you are faced with your own thoughts and interpretation, and these are a reflection of yourself, or at least a part of yourself, in a way. It is a movie that plays with the viewer's own dark side —that of the voyeur (the frames and angles often make you feel like you are there, but uninvited, that you are peeping into their lives) and of the potential rake.

What also makes it uneasy is the very personality of Barrett —it is very easy to fall prey to his seduction scheme, even though we know that his intentions are rather dubious, to say the least. In that respect, he is a fantastic character —I for one find him much more fascinating in the movie than he is in Robin Maugham's novel, where he is much more instantly repellant.

But, yes, oh yes, The Servant is an AMAZING movie —one that doesn't leave the viewer untouched.

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Hey, what's up. I agree, great movie, and one question I'd like to add to the original post: What's up with the restaurant scene? You know, where Tony meets Susan for lunch and you see all these people at the other tables, and Losey gives you a glimpse of their conversations. I think the point is that all these people, like Tony, are involved in master-servant struggles of one kind or another. I could be way off-base, and it seems like kind of an odd place to all of a sudden insert this bit of commentary about these characters whom you never see again in the otherwise totally subjective story of Tony and what happens between him and Barrett.
Thoughts?

I don't want some renegade necrophile princess as MY roommate!

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That's an interesting idea, you might be right about that. By the way, one of the people at the restaurant table is Harold Pinter, did you catch that? The first man who speaks, and again in back of Tony and Susan.

I watched this again last night, and what struck me about it what how lonely Tony was after he got rid of Barrett and his sister and Susan. And how he NEEDED Barrett... He really got to the point where he could not live without him. And of course, he was a bit in love with him.

But I think Barrett just wanted power and control and he got it! And yes, I know people like this, give them an inch and they will take over your house!!

Beware house guests and servants, etc. Sometimes you can NEVER get them to leave! Once you give someone the keys to your house, they really can get to you...

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absolutely loved this movie!great acting,excellent directing,amazing cinematography.i like the fact losey made the subject in such a personal way:the last scene,with the party and the awful ladies,could easily have been turned in one of the many imitations of felli's grotesque humanity,but here's the psycological approach makes every detail complex and unpredictable.

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I saw this today on DVD and was left feeling very ill at ease. Tony was such a hopeless flake (though gorgeous if you like that kind of look) and Barrett's undermining of him was so thorough.

I thought that the older woman in the party scene might be a man in drag. Certainly having the drugged Tony snogging a transvestite would have been shocking.

It seemed strange that the "actor's bio" section attached to the DVD entirely ignored Bogarde's fine, astonishing and brave positive depiction of a blackmailed homosexual in THE VICTIM. That precedent, and Bogarde's own actual queerness, must have informed his depiction of Barrett, in a role-reversed character.

I'm not going to forget this one soon.

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Devans00 and BlondeIsBetter:
Why say anything if you really have nothing to say?

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Well, it seems the film got you a little wound up, eh? A bit of excitement -- some excess energy? And so now you want to dish a little abuse, try to clean the place up a bit? Well, put down your rag and GET OUT! It's not YOUR bloody house anyway! I'm the Servant around here now! And YOU, Sir, have just been served!

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What's up with the restaurant scene? You know, where Tony meets Susan for lunch and you see all these people at the other tables, and Losey gives you a glimpse of their conversations. I think the point is that all these people, like Tony, are involved in master-servant struggles of one kind or another. I could be way off-base, and it seems like kind of an odd place to all of a sudden insert this bit of commentary about these characters whom you never see again in the otherwise totally subjective story of Tony and what happens between him and Barrett.
Thoughts?
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Surely nothing happens by accident in this film. The scene with the two women obviously suggests the older woman suspects her younger lover was flirting with another woman (no doubt younger) at the bar. In a quick glimpse at a strangers' table (as if we're at the restaurant sitting at the next table and cannot help but easedrop on their conversation) and with just a few lines of dialogue, we imagine a power struggle in a sexual relationship between an older woman who has used the power of her money to get a much younger lover and is now suffering the tinges of jealousy and inevitable betrayal. "Ah, Sweet Love," Pinter seems to be saying, tongue firmly planted in cheek. Also, don't overlook the Bishop's opening line to the Curate: "Where the HELL are YOU going?" And, for some reason, the way they sit side-by-side at the table has an oddly comic quality, almost like Laurel & Hardy in bed together! (By the way, the Curate is played by Alun Owen who wrote the screenplay for "A Hard Day's Night" which was released the following year.) The intercuts to a wide-eyed Vera chomping her candy bar whilst catching bits of London through the taxi windows are fantastic, with Hugo sitting calmly beside her -- cool, calculating and amused. And last but not least, Pinter's own very sparse dialogue delivered as mere background (sitting at the table behind Tony & Susan) is particularly vacuous and drolly delivered. A man of very few, but well-chosen words.

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Excellent analysis of this very unusual and provocative film. I was also reminded of Repuslsion as I watched this film. And I wanted to take a cleansing shower afterwards.

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