The Servant was one of the key British films of the 1960s, winning three BAFTA awards for Dirk Bogarde (Best Actor), James Fox (Most Promising Newcomer) and Douglas Slocombe (Best Cinematography). Joseph Losey directed the film, adapted by Harold Pinter from Robin Maugham's novella, The Servant (1948).

 

When Hugo Barrett arrives for his job interview as upper class Tony’s servant he finds him asleep in a chair with an empty bottle in his hand. The shot of Barrett looking down on and appraising Tony anticipates what will follow, namely, the loss and disintegration of Tony’s control over the house and himself as Barrett slowly assumes power over him. We see many of the early scenes through the eyes of Tony’s upper class fiancée, Susan, who mocks Barrett’s pretensions. She embarks on a power struggle with Barrett over who is the arbiter of taste and style in the house. Barrett counters by bringing his “sister” into the house on the pretext of using her as a maid, escalating the savage struggle for power.

 

It seems that Losey wanted to use Maugham’s story to explore the fragility of the social order in swinging sixties London. Losey and Pinter  removed the single, outside narrator used by Maugham in favour of using close-up shots, distorted camera angles and sparse dialogue to focus on  the unnatural tensions between the characters. There was some concern in the film team that the plot was too far out of the mainstream with its showing of lower class people occupying upper class Tony’s house and with Tony’s loss of control. However, Leslie Grade, who helped finance the film, wrote that the film might “outrage many people, perplex others, fascinate, move and impress others, baffle and annoy others, but I should be much surprised if it bored anybody”. The film opened in London on

14 November 1963 with the help of its now well known poster of Bogarde’s and Fox’s faces reflected and distorted in a convex mirror. It was instantly acclaimed by UK critics.

 

The film’s locations used the King’s Road and Royal Avenue in Chelsea. In the opening scene of Barrett crossing the King’s Road look out for Thomas Crapper’s famous bathroom showroom (closed in 1967). The exterior shots of Tony’s smart town house are just off the King’s Road at 30 Royal Avenue, and in 1966 Losey himself moved to

29 Royal Avenue which was almost directly opposite No. 30. On No. 29 is a GLC Blue Plaque which reads, “Joseph Losey, Film Director, lived here between 1966 and 1984.” The film shoot took place between 28 January and 29 March 1963, the winter of Britain’s ‘Big Freeze’, one of the coldest British winters on record. In the snowy exteriors of Chiswick House Susan tries to draw Tony away from Barrett’s increasing hold but without success.

 

The successful collaboration between writer Harold Pinter and film director Joseph Losey stretched across two more completed film projects – Accident (1967) and The Go-Between (1971) - and with Barbara Bray an uncompleted film project of Marcel Proust’s novel A la Recherche du Temps Perdu.

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John Elrick