Accident ***** (1967, Dirk Bogarde, Stanley Baker, Michael York, Jacqueline Sassard) – Classic Movie Review 1768

Made in 1967, Accident is a subtle masterpiece of understated film-making, and one of the important fruits of the classic four-film partnership between American director Joseph Losey and British star Dirk Bogarde. It is second only to The Servant in rich achievement.

Bogarde is on his finest form, ideally cast a restless, middle-aged Oxford University professor, who is married to Rosalind (Vivien Merchant), but is having a mid-life crisis, feeling stifled by his surroundings and especially the folk around him. Then he meets and falls for Anna, a beautiful student engaged to one of his students, William (Michael York) and his existence springs to life. But now he reflects on the events that led up to Anna’s tragic death in a car accident.

A very typical screenplay from Harold Pinter takes an expectedly chilly and intellectual approach to the events in Nicholas Mosley’s novel. But Pinter also brings warmth and soul to the story by ensuring that the character studies are riveting, especially as interpreted by these choice actors. The film belongs to Bogarde, but real-life Oxford student York is outstanding in his first major film role after his debut as Lucentio in Franco Zeffirelli’s The Taming of the Shrew (also 1967) .

It is ironic but somehow satisfying that it took an outsider like Losey to capture Oxford and the middle-class English exactly right. Nominated for four Bafta awards and a Golden Globe as Best English-Language Foreign Film, the film shared the Grand Prize of the Jury at Cannes in 1968.

Delphine Seyrig (who shot her scenes in a day and a half), Alexander Knox, Ann Firbank, Freddie Jones, Terence Rigby and Brian Phelan co-star. Pinter (as TV producer Bell) and Mosley (as Don Hedges) have cameos. Maxwell Caulfield (aged 8) is billed as Maxwell Findlater, playing Ted.

It is filmed at various telling Oxford locations, St Edmund Hall college library, St. John’s College, Magdalen College and the cricket pitch at Magdalen. Also filmed at Syon House, Syon Park, Brentford, Middlesex, Norwood Farm Hall, Elveden Road, Cobham, Surrey, and in London.

Vivien Merchant was married to Harold Pinter, appearing in many of his works. They divorced in 1980 and she died on October 3 1982. Pinter died on December 24 2008, aged 78.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1768

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