'60s British cinema: Dirk, Losey, Accident, again

Nice to see ACCIDENT on television again - thanks, Talking Pictures. Been a few years since I last saw it, though the dvd is filed away - we liked Losey's 1967 drama, scripted by Harold Pinter, a lot back then, it was almost the kind of movie we took for granted then, but it seems like an arthouse classic now. This is what I wrote on it here in 2013 :

Joseph Losey's ACCIDENT remains a key '60s movie for me - I well remember seeing it for the first time with my best pal Stan when it was on general release as a double feature - the supporting movie was JUST LIKE A WOMAN another forgotten '60s comedy, good cast though headed by Wendy Craig. ACCIDENT though was the culmination of those Bogarde-Losey films: THE SLEEPING TIGER in 1954 and that quartet which more or less defined the '60s: THE SERVANT, the too little see KING AND COUNTRY, the mod op-art delight MODESTY BLAISE (maybe my favourite cult movie with the divine triumvirate of Vitti, Bogarde & Stamp on that mad, mod op art island, with those witty asides as Dirk goes over the top as the supercamp villain Gabriel in the blonde wig... but I digress as usual). The Losey-Stanley Baker films are fascinating too, I particularly like the 1959 thriller BLIND DATE (Losey, Baker labels) and EVE and THE CRIMINAL ...

ACCIDENT, scripted by Harold Pinter, begins and ends with the sounds of a car crash, and we go back and forth to discover what really happened. There is that long marvellous central sequence depicting a languid lazy summer afternoon at the comfortably upper-middle class Oxford residence of professor Stephen (Bogarde) and his pregnant wife Rosalind, perfectly played by Vivien Merchant. Guests include William, one of the professor's pupils - a golden boy, aristocrat Michael York, and his girlfriend Anna an Austrian princess, Jacqueline Sassard.
An interloper is another rival professor Charley, Stanley Baker at his most aggressive. They shell the peas, go for walks, lie on the lawn, hands slowly touch, as we begin to see the tensions and undercurrents here... Stephen is having a kind of mid-life crisis and is attracted to Anna, the glacial girlfriend who is manipulating these men. She is sleeping with Charley but knows how Stephen feels about her. Rivalies between the men come to the surface over dinner as William falls drunk into his plate - Charley is also a tv presenter, he is good on tv - and taunts Stephen who also wants to be on tv, and in fact has an appointment with a producer, played by Pinter himself. We also see Charley's distraught wife Ann Firbank, watering flowers in the rain, while the pregnant Rosalind watches all - Stephen also has a date with an old girlfriend, silently played by Delphine Seyrig - we hear their disjointed conversation played over that restaurant scene. Her father is Losey regular, Alexander Knox. Upper class rituals are explored - rugby, punting on the river ....

 We know right away that William has been killed in the car crash, as Stephen takes the unconscious Anna out of the car and into his house. Who actually was driving ?
Do they sleep together too ? Does he take advantage of her dazed state? One thing that mars ACCIDENT for me is that Sassard is too blank a presence at the centre - she also had a big role in '68 as a similar object of desire in Chabrol's LES BICHES, though it was her last year in movies. (I also saw her when younger in FAIBLES FEMMES, a French comedy with the young Alain Delon, in 1959). Projector favourite Austrian Romy Schneider, who was originally cast, would have been ideal here, with that teasing, feline quality of hers and would have made so much more of the role. We never get to see or understand what Sassard is feeling or thinking. Baker and Bogarde of course are both pitch perfect, squaring up to each other again a decade after their Canadian adventure CAMPBELL'S KINGDOM, a perfect Rank Organisation movie in 1957. ACCIDENT would be their final film with Losey, who was next making films with the Burtons and going off to Europe (Losey label), as indeed would Dirk. ACCIDENT's reputation has grown over the years, though like Antonioni's BLOW-UP it is a polarising film, some people actively hate it, but like BLOW-UP and THE SERVANT it is for me a major '60s film, and one of Pinter's best scripts. Cinematography by Gerry Fisher, and music by Johnny Dankworth. 

Stylish horror for Halloween ...

We don't do tortureporn or slasher moves or teen frightmares here at the Movie Projector, but we do like  good stylish horror fantasy, particularly if starring one of our favourite French ladies - or Vincent Price, or a deliciously twisted item from Roman Polanski .... Let's recap a few favourites:   
We had to re-visit the deliciously camp BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN from 1935 too, a James Whale classic, lovingly spoofed by Mel Brooks in YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN in 1974 where Madeline Kahn, Cloris Leachman, Terri Garr and Marty Feldman are all ace.

THE HUNGER. It was nice to have another look at Tony Scott's THE HUNGER too, that popular vampire flick from 1983, capturing that early '80s look nicely. That terrific opening scene at the nightclub looks like the old Heaven club in London, as our vampires prey on urban clubbers and pick up another couple, while Bauhaus intone "Bela Lugosi's dead" on the soundtrack ..... David Bowie and Deneuve are perfect casting - Bowie though is ageing rapidly and will have to be placed with the ageless Miriam's past lovers locked away in their caskets - I liked that quick flashback to Ancient Egypt with Miriam in full vampire mode. 
Then there is that great scene with Susan Sarandon who asks the piano-playing Miriam if she is making a pass at her to which Miriam cooly replies "Not that I am aware of, Sarah" .... love that final shot too of the new ageless vampire looking out over her new domain ... its a glossy exercise in style of course, but it certainly satisfies the eye. Deneuve's vampire is the equal of Delphine Seyrig's countess in DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS (see item below). Sarandon was amusing in that THE CELLULOID CLOSET documentary, noting that her character had to be drunk to allow herself to be seduced by Catherine Deneuve, one of the great beauties of the movies!  

Roman Polanski's 1967 (though I think it was 1969 when it played in British cinemas) spoof DANCE OF THE VAMPIRES or THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS is still an absolute delight - and should really be seen on a large screen as it's widescreen images are just marvellous - I particularly like that moment when Polanski (he plays Alfred, the bumbling rather dim-witted assistant to Professor Abronsius himself) is fleeing from Count Von Krolock's son ("a sensitive youth" as his father, the leader of the vampires, says) and he - Polanski - runs all around the four sides of the castle cloisters to return to the point he started from where the vampire son [Iain Quarrier] is waiting for him .... delirious stuff.

This was Polanski still in English movie mode, after REPULSION and CUL-DE-SAC before heading to America and ROSEMARY'S BABY, so it was made with his usual collaborators, writer Gerard Brach and composer Krystof Komeda. Veteran actor Jack McGowran is the dotty professor hunting for vampires in Transylvania with his assistant Alfred. They stay at an inn where everyone is superstitious and afraid of vampires. Alfred gets to meet and fall for the inn-keeper's daughter Sarah (Sharon Tate, quite lovely here) who has also come to the attention of the mysterious Count whose eerie castle is outside the village. Sarah is addicted to taking baths and during one the Count enters and takes her away. Alfred and the Professor follow but not before the inn-keeper (who is Jewish, played by Alfie Bass) also falls victim to the vampire, as does his busty barmaid/mistress Fiona Lewis.

This is all spendidly realised with great sets for the inn and the castle. They find the resting places of the count and his son but it too late as the sun goes down ... Count Von Krolock materialises and has his own plans for the Professor and Alfred who can provide some intellectually stimulating company for them during those long winter nights as the centuries pass by. The son Herbert takes a shine to Alfred and there is that delicious scene as Alfred sitting on the bed as Herbert gets closer realises his is the only reflection in the mirror ... hence that chase around the castle. So we have a Jewish vampire and a gay vampire, both hilariously done, and Ferdy Mayne is a perfect arch vampire.

Sarah will be initiated into the vampires during the great ball held once a year and there is that great eerie moment as ancient tombs covered in snow open as the rather decrepit vampires emerge for their ball. The ball is a delight with everyone dancing but the large mirror only shows Alfred, Abronsius and Sarah .... they manage to get away as the vampires give chase in some very funny scenes and the ending is quite nice, while Komeda's score is just right.... It is all just a perfect delight from start to finish and one I can relish any time - a key Polanski movie too, before those later darker movies like his MACBETH and CHINATOWN or THE TENANT, or THE GHOST (WRITER) (see Polanski label). Back in '69 or '70 when I was living around Chelsea I turned from Sloane Square into Kings Road and there was Polanski in front of me talking to someone - you could never mistake him for anyone else!

We have already covered Harry Kumel's 1971 perverse delight DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS here, see recent post below, and we reviewed Franju's 1959 EYES WITHOUT A FACE too. 

Roger Vadim's 1960 BLOOD AND ROSES delighted me when I saw it in my early teens, when living in Ireland, and it has eluded me since, but I now sourced a copy, and it is a mysterious and erotic as I remembered. 
Made after his Bardot films and before the Jane Fonda ones, it featured his then wife Annette Stroyberg, a rather passive beauty - who also featured in his previous film, LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES in 1959, but Jeanne Moreau and Gerard Philipe walked away with that one. BLOOD AND ROSES is adapted from Sheridan Le Fanu's "Carmilla" by Vadim who creates a perverse darkly romantic love story with that Gothic atmosphere. Elsa Martinelli and the dull Mel Ferrer are the engaged couple, but her friend Annette is jealous ... It is simply one of the best vampire movies ever made, miles better than those silly Hammer soft core items of the early 70s. The best Hammer vampire is BRIDES OF DRACULA in 1960, with the marvellous Martita Hunt - as per my review, Horror Label. 

Also in the '60s of course we had Roger Corman producing in the UK those two Vincent Price classics THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH with its great imagery and sets, and colour by Nicholas Roeg, with Price in his element as evil prince Prospero with those rooms in different colours, and the lovely young Jane Asher as well as stalwart Hazel Court, and the stylish THE TOMB OF LIGEIA was just as good. Price though was utterly terrifying as the THE WITCHFINDER GENERAL in 1968, a grim look at life back in the Civil War with superstitious villages isolated from each other. It's young director was Michael Reeves whose early death was surely a great loss to the horror genre, but Vincent was soon back in high camp mode in THEATRE OF BLOOD and the DR PHIBES films. WITCHFINDER GENERAL though is terrifying in its depiction of sheer cruelty as old women are dragged away to be hanged as witches or ducked in rivers to see if they sink or swim - either way they are doomed. The Witchfinder Matthew Hopkins is making money from it all as he goes from village offering his services as a persecutor of witches, and soon alights on the village where Rupert Davies is the priest and Hilary Dwyer his comely daughter who is in love with solder young Ian Ogilvy, whose sidekick is young Nicky Henson. It builds to a terrific climax as the Witchfnder is hacked to death by the enraged Ogilvy after seeing his girl tortured by his sadistic helper, who also gets his. It remains a savage disturbing film. 

Delphine

With Holloween coming up before too long, and those October horror movie challenges (over at IMDB) here is one horror film to track down and savour, if one does not know it already. It is of course DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS, Harry Kumel's stylish essay into ageless vampires, from 1971, and now a cult item. Let's see how they put it:  

Another European slice of lesbian vampirism, this time influenced by a real-life monster – Elizabeth Bathory, the Hungarian countess who allegedly slaughtered hundreds of young women and bathed in their blood to retain her youth. Belgian director Harry Kumel sets his dark tale in Ostend, transforming an off-peak holiday destination into a landscape of perpetual menace. In this modern setting, a mysterious countess, with female sexual companion in tow, becomes obsessed by a couple of newlyweds, with gruesome results.

Grande dame Delphine Seyrig (in Marlene Dietrich mode) gives a performance of great wit as the bloodthirsty aristo, pitching the role perfectly between sinister and comical. It’s an elegant and constantly surprising flirtation of a film, featuring lashings of nudity and sadism, not to mention death by salad bowl.

Then there is that aged hotel porter who remembers seeing the ageless Countess arrive there when he was young - and that strange telephone call the husband makes to "mother" back home .... stylish thrills don't get much better. See Delphine label for more on this stylish treat 

Having said that, I am soon going to re-see Roger Vadim's 1960 BLOOD AND ROSES another lesbian vampire tale which impressed me a lot at the time, let's see if it still works.

Delphine Seyrig (1932-1990) remains one of the most stylish actresses in movies, and collaborated with the likes of Bunuel, Losey, Resnais, Duras.  We will soon be re-discovering her in the late Chantal Akerman's mesmerising JEANNE DIELMAN, 23 QUAI DE COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES, and I like her lilac fairy godmother in Demy's PEAU D'ANE.

The Ambassadors: Lee, Delphine & Gayle go to Paris

Another vintage BBC tv listings magazine from 1977, with a full report on that Henry James adaptation of THE AMBASSADORS, a BBC "Play of the Month", which we cannot see now, despite it starring Paul Scofield, Lee Remick, Delphine Seyrig and Gayle Hunnicutt.

For the magazine feature writer Paul Theroux took the three ladies to lunch in Paris and they explored the sights. "Driving from the Opera into the Place Vendome, past the Ritz, and the ministry that looks like a hotel, the beautiful floodlit acres with the bright obelisk, columns, balconies and ramparts, the warm illumination removing the severity from the stone, Miss Remick peered, held her breath, then said - it was her highest praise -  "Its like a set"."

Delphine in Paris, photos by Clive Arrowsmith

THE AMBASSADORS is Henry James' subtle novel about the changes wrought in the lives of some Americans by a sojourn in Paris in the 1880s. As the BBC film is not available I have ordered the book and should be able to visualise it. Scofield is the ambassador sent to Paris to bring back (shades of THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY?) a young man who has fallen under the influence of Marie de Vionnet (Seyrig); 

Remick is Maria Gostrey who has a flirtation with him, and Hunnicutt is Sarah Pocock, another ambassador sent to bring back Scofield ....it should be as fascinating as those other James novels about Americans in Europe. Hunnicutt also featured in a BBC version of James' THE GOLDEN BOWL and Lee had done the Merchant/Ivory THE EUROPEANS in 1979.. This was the era when the BBC were investing a lot in these classical productions with fascinating casts, all the more odd that these were shown just once, and never seen again and not available now, when most of the leads are no longer with us, as per my previous posts below ... Tbe play was produced by Cedric Messina and directed by James Cellan Jones. Lucky Mr Theroux to be in Paris with the three ladies ... though at the restaurant Miss Seyrig recommended a fish called Lot, which they all enjoyed, which turned out to be conger eel!

3 by Losey, 2 Doll's Houses & 1 Severed Head

DON GIOVANNI - the 1979 film of Mozart's opera by Joseph Losey - subject of many posts here, as per label: THE SERVANT, BLIND DATE, my cult favourite MODESTY BLAISE, ACCIDENT, etc. One of the most individual American directors who had settled in England in the 1950s ...

Screen adapatation of Mozart's greatest opera. Don Giovanni, the infamous womanizer, makes one conquest after another until the ghost of Donna Anna's father, the Commendatore, (whom Giovanni killed) makes his appearance. He offers Giovanni one last chance to repent for his multitudinious improprieties. He will not change his ways So, he is sucked down into hell by evil spirits. High drama, hysterical comedy, magnificent music!

First thing to say is it looks - and sounds - marvellous ! The baroque visual style of Losey would seem the ideal choice for filming Mozart's opera. I must say I did not know this opera before, being more of a MAGIC FLUTE and COSI FAN TUTTE person, or Bizet's CARMEN or Puccini's TURANDOT. It looks sensational filmed at those locations around the Palladian Veneto of Venice (though apparantly it is set in Seville!), in those period costumes. The cast is pretty sensational too - Ruggero Raimondi as the seductive and sinister libertine Don, and Kiri Te Kanawa as Donna Elvira (above), plus delightful Theresa Berganza. The sublime music is performed by the Paris Opera, conducted by Lorin Maazel.

My favourite opera film before this was Ingmar Bergman's delightful 1975 THE MAGIC FLUTE, but Losey runs him a close second. Is the Mozart opera an attack on the aristocracy and its immoral behaviour? We are on the eve of the French Revolution and Mozart was a freemason ...whatever, it is all as gloriously visual as AMADEUS. Masterful opera singers, stupendous sets and costumes, the magnificent setting of a 16th century estate, Mozart's music and Losey's direction of it  all makes this opera film a triumph, and one to relish again.

STEAMING, 1985. Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles and Diana Dors star in Losey's film of Nell Dunn's feminist comedy play. 
As the manager of the council's women-only steam baths, Vi (Diana) finds herself acting as den mother to the walking wounded who come to the baths - including 2 middle-class ladies - abandoned wife Nancy (Redgrave) and ex-hippie now lawyer  Sarah (Miles). There is also older Brenda Bruce and her mentally challenged daughter. The baths is a place where they can escape the world - and their men - as they talk about their humdrum lives, vicious boyfriends, money worries and dead end jobs. Then the Council want to close it down and build a new leisure centre, as these type of communal baths are now obsolete, and it does frankly look like it has seen better days. The girls get together and fight back and succeed in keeping it open .... a fantasy ending I am sure. The feisty Josie  (Patti Love) is the one with the abusive boyfriend and she is often bruised .... Love played the part on the stage and still seems to be playing to the back of the gallery, as she seems far too loud compared to the others. During one long monologue one begins to wish for her to shut up. 

Losey and Sarah Miles

Brenda Bruce & Diana

Vanessa and Bruce stay covered up, Sarah strips off frequently as do the other women in the background. Dors is marvellous here, in her last role, like Losey she had cancer too ... it is a quiet, odd film for Losey to bow out with, scripted by his wife Patricia, after that tremendous opera DON GIOVANNI and those Bogarde, Baker, Burton classics from his great era the '60s and '70s. Nell Dunn also wrote those '60s classics UP THE JUNCTION and POOR COW.Sarah Miles of course was back with Losey 21 years after THE SERVANT, which it was good to see back on a cinema screen earlier this year - (Miles, Losey, Bogarde, Fox labels).
One Losey I have not seen is his 1974 THE ROMANTIC ENGLISHWOMAN where Glenda and Helmut also strip off .... (below). 

A DOLL'S HOUSE, 1973 had two versions of Ibsen's A DOLL'S HOUSE, which suddenly became a feminist tract then, as Nora slams that door and walks out on her husband ... 
Nora Helmer has years earlier committed a forgery in order to save the life of her authoritarian husband Torvald. Now she is being blackmailed lives in fear of her husband's finding out and of the shame such a revelation would bring to his career. But when the truth comes out, Nora is shocked to learn where she really stands in her husband's esteem. 

Fonda & Seyrig

The Losey version, by David Mercer, re-structures the play, making more of the subsidiary characters Kristina and Krogstad (Delphine Seyrig and Edward Fox), with Jane Fonda as Nora and David Warner as Torvald, and Trevor Howard as Dr Rank, that ailing doctor. Anna Wing is the faithful servant/nurse (before she became that matriarch Lou Beale in tv series EASTENDERS).  It looks great, filmed in Norway, but Fonda's overall manner is too contemporary for a 19th Century wife - whereas she was incredible as Bree Daniels in KLUTE two years earlier. Film critic Alexander Walker mused that it was like Torvald had an American babysitter in the house. Losey's version though was not widely seen at the time, and is an interesting contrast with the other version ... it starts with an invented scene between Nora and Kristina, out having coffee by the lakeside and Nora discussing her forthcoming marriage to Torvald and they part affectionately, but the film retains the moment where in the next scene, Nora does not recognise Kirstina when she turns up at her house 10 years later at the start of the play!   (I saw Losey in 1970 with the Burtons, as per Losey label).

A DOLL'S HOUSE, the Claire Bloom version, as directed by Patrick Garland and produced by Bloom's husband of the time, Hilyard Elkins, is the more traditional reading of the play, as scripted by Christopher Hampton, and is overall the better and more engrossing film. This too has a great cast: Bloom is terrific as Nora, a part she was playing on stage then, with Anthony Hopkins as the uncomprehending husband, Ralph Richardson is a terrific Dr Rank, aware of his impending mortality; Anna Massey is Kristina, and Edith Evans has a few glorious moments as the nurse and servant. Nora here realizing that her marriage to Torvald (Hopkins) is a sham, that he only wants his wife to be his little "squirrel" and not meddle in their family affairs, she has to be cunning and seductive to deceive him; he will not let her have any money of her own as she will only let it run through her fingers. 
She gets more and more desperate to keep that forgery she is being blackmailed about, secret from him, and then witnesses his fury and fear when it is found out as the facade of their happy marriage crumbles. She sees he is no longer the man she loved and is prepared to leave him and that home ... Denholm Elliott is the rather seedy, sleazy yet pitiable blackmailer, while Hopkins captures all of the pompous, arrogant and authoritarian husband's manner, oblivious of his insensitivity to his wife's feelings and needs.  It was of course quite shocking back then for a wife to walk out on her husband and children, but seems to have struck a chord with feminists back in the '70s. This is the more engrossing production.

A SEVERED HEAD. 1970 British comedy based on Iris Murdoch's novel and hit play.

Antonia, the pampered wife of Martin an upper class wine merchant, tells her husband that she is in love with their best friend, the psychiatrist Palmer Anderson, and she wants a divorce. Palmer and Antonia want to deal with the situation in a civilized way, by remaining friends with Martin. Meanwhile Martin tries to keep his mistress, Georgie Hands, a secret, but Palmer's sister, Honor Klein, who taught Georgie at Oxford, tells Palmer and Antonia about her. Furthermore, Honor introduces Georgie to Martin's womanizing brother, Alexander. This is just the beginning of the various liaisons .... 
This is frankly a rather tiresome, dated comedy, but the 1970 look of it all looks rather seductive now. The cast is the thing here, with Lee Remick and Attenborough very droll - they were also in the film of that other hit play, Orton's LOOT, that year - I must get back and re-see that, Remick is a scream as the devious Irish nurse, with that accent!  Claire Bloom is also fascinating here. Directed by Dick Clement (OTLEY, THE LIKELY LADS). (Lee Remick was living in London then, I met her that year 1970 at her BFI appearance - as per NFT, Remick labels).

Soon: Brush Up Your Shakespeare: All those HAMLETs and THE MERCHANT OF VENICE ... plus more Ibsen with Ingrid Bergman's HEDDA GABLER, a BBC production from 1965. 

Accident, 1967

Joseph Losey's ACCIDENT remains a key '60s movie for me - I well remember seeing it for the first time with my best pal Stan when it was on general release as a double feature - the supporting movie was JUST LIKE A WOMAN another forgotten '60s comedy, good cast though headed by Wendy Craig. ACCIDENT though was the culmination of those Bogarde-Losey films: THE SLEEPING TIGER in 1954 and that quartet which more or less defined the '60s: THE SERVANT, the too little see KING AND COUNTRY, the mod op-art delight MODESTY BLAISE (maybe my favourite cult movie with the divine triumvirate of Vitti, Bogarde & Stamp on that mad, mod op art island, with those witty asides as Dirk goes over the top as the supercamp villain Gabriel in the blonde wig... but I digress as usual). The Losey-Stanley Baker films are fascinating too, I particularly like the 1959 thriller BLIND DATE (Losey, Baker labels) and EVE and THE CRIMINAL ...

ACCIDENT, scripted by Harold Pinter, begins and ends with the sounds of a car crash, and we go back and forth to discover what really happened. There is that long marvellous central sequence depicting a languid lazy summer afternoon at the comfortably upper-middle class Oxford residence of professor Stephen (Bogarde) and his pregnant wife Rosalind, perfectly played by Vivien Merchant. Guests include William, one of the professor's pupils - a golden boy, aristocrat Michael York, and his girlfriend Anna an Austrian princess, Jacqueline Sassard.
An interloper is another rival professor Charley, Stanley Baker at his most aggressive. They shell the peas, go for walks, lie on the lawn, hands slowly touch, as we begin to see the tensions and undercurrents here... Stephen is having a kind of mid-life crisis and is attracted to Anna, the glacial girlfriend who is manipulating these men. She is sleeping with Charley but knows how Stephen feels about her. Rivalies between the men come to the surface over dinner as William falls drunk into his plate - Charley is also a tv presenter, he is good on tv - and taunts Stephen who also wants to be on tv, and in fact has an appointment with a producer, played by Pinter himself. We also see Charley's distraught wife Ann Firbank, watering flowers in the rain, while the pregnant Rosalind watches all - Stephen also has a date with an old girlfriend, silently played by Delphine Seyrig - we hear their disjointed conversation played over that restaurant scene. Her father is Losey regular, Alexander Knox. Upper class rituals are explored - rugby, punting on the river ....

 We know right away that William has been killed in the car crash, as Stephen takes the unconscious Anna out of the car and into his house. Who actually was driving ?
Do they sleep together too ? Does he take advantage of her dazed state? One thing that mars ACCIDENT for me is that Sassard is too blank a presence at the centre - she also had a big role in '68 as a similar object of desire in Chabrol's LES BICHES, though it was her last year in movies. (I also saw her when younger in FAIBLES FEMMES, a French comedy with the young Alain Delon, in 1959). Romy Schneider, who was originally cast, would have been ideal here, with that teasing, feline quality of hers and would have made so much more of the role. We never get to see or understand what Sassard is feeling or thinking. Baker and Bogarde of course are both pitch perfect, squaring up to each other again a decade after their Canadian adventure CAMPBELL'S KINGDOM, a perfect Rank Organisation movie in 1957. ACCIDENT would be their final film with Losey, who was next making films with the Burtons and going off to Europe (Losey label), as indeed would Dirk. ACCIDENT's reputation has grown over the years, though like Antonioni's BLOW-UP it is a polarising film, some people actively hate it, but like BLOW-UP and THE SERVANT it is for me a major '60s film, and one of Pinter's best scripts. Cinematography by Gerry Fisher, and music by Johnny Dankworth. 

 
A postscript: a nice birthday present recently (thanks Jerry) was a double CD of Johnny Dankworth scores for films and television (right), with vocal tracks by his wife Cleo Laine. It has that song "All Gone" so central to the fabric of THE SERVANT, music from MODESTY BLAISE, the ACCIDENT theme, DARLING including Dirk singing or rather intoning a song not used in the film!, fascinating stuff!