Hunted (1952)

The 1950s was something of a golden age for British crime thrillers, and Hunted is a fine example of the breed.

It’s the story of two people on the run. One is a sailor, Chris Lloyd, who has killed his wife’s lover in a crime of passion. The other is a seven-year-old boy fleeing his brutal adoptive father.

Chris Lloyd (Dirk Bogarde) doesn’t really want Robbie (Jon Whitely) trailing along after him but he can’t get rid of him. The boy claims to dislike him but he insists on following him. The boy becomes an increasing liability for the hapless sailor who will hang if the police catch him but he gradually grows oddly fond of the kid. And despite something of a violent temper Chris is basically a kind-hearted soul. He’s been hurt himself and he can’t bring himself to hurt Robbie by abandoning him. And in a hostile world they really have only each other anyway. It’s an odd kind of buddy film.

This is a thriller without gunfights, in fact without any actual onscreen violence at all. Of course Chris’s fatal act of violence towards the man who who stole his wife and the violence Robbie has suffered at the hands of his adoptive father are the driving forces of the film even though we don’t see any of these events. The fact that we don’t see the violent acts actually strengthens the film because it concentrates our attention on the psychological results rather than acts themselves.

While there’s no violence there’s plenty of suspense. Director Charles Crichton had a varied career in film and television and does a very solid job.

The key to the film is the focus on the personalities of Chris and Robbie and on their relationship as it progresses from toleration to affection. Jon Whitely is likeable as the kid. Dirk Bogarde initially alienates our sympathies by his apparently callous attitude towards his young travelling companion but as the movie progresses we slowly gain understanding of Chris’s character and the reasons for his bitterness and we gradually come to realise that he’s actually a fundamentally gentle and sensitive man. It takes time for him to regain his trust in humanity. It’s a complex and subtle performance, as you’d expect from Bogarde.

While it can’t really be described a a film noir it does have some affinities with film noir with its doomed protagonist who has led himself in a desperate predicament without ever quite understanding how it happened. There’s plenty of atmospheric and suitably gloomy black-and-white cinematography, so if you’re a film noir fan you’re probably going to enjoy this one.

Definitely worth seeing. The out-of-print Australian DVD unfortunately seems to be the only DVD release for this movie. Recommended if you can find a copy.

Accident (1967)

Joseph Losey's 1967 film Accident opens with a fatal car accident. The events leading up to the accident are then recounted in flashback. We see Stephen (Dirk Bogarde), who seems to be a rather shy and retiring Cambridge don and also seems to be a happily married man, a sensitive caring family man. We meet Charley (Stanley Baker) who appears to be much more a man of the world. Charley thinks of himself as a bit of a ladies' man, a bit of a rake. We meet Stephen's wife, who appears to be a rather self-effacing housewife type. And we meet Anna, a young Austrian student who seems to be really just a rather innocent young woman. And William (Michael York), an aristocratic student of Stephen's.

But in this film appearances can be very deceptive indeed. These people are all playing games, sexual and emotional games, and the most dangerous players aren't necessarily the ones who seem the most dangerous. In this movie the information conveyed by the dialogue doesn't tally at all with the information conveyed by body language and doesn't tally with the characters' actual behaviours.

These people use language not to reveal things about themselves, but to conceal them; not to clarify situations but to cloud them.

Director Joseph Losey and his cinematographer, Gerry Fisher, emphasise the disjuncture between what these people say and what they do with a extraordinarily unsettling though rather subtle visual style. Everything seems enclosed, and slightly distorted. Places seem more enclosed than they should be. Scenes are shot through doorways, down stairwells, from disturbing angles, and there seem to be barriers everywhere – fences, gates, doors, everywhere. Stephen and Anna go for a walk in the woods, but rather than open and picturesque English open woodland they find themselves in a thicket that encloses them like a cage.

It looks like they've used a wide-angled lens much of the time to give the slightly distorted feel and the sense that the depth and the scale of the spaces aren't quite right, that things are more claustrophobic than they should be.

Dirk Bogarde and Stanley Baker are outstanding. Bogarde in particular gives an exceptional performance – there are just so many layers to the character of Stephen, a character so accustomed to living a life of deceit that you wonder if he himself could ever unravel the truth.

Harold Pinter's script is delightfully cynical and deceptive. It combines with Losey's disturbing direction and Bogarde's masterful acting to produce one of the finest British films of the 20th century. You must see this film!

The Servant (1963)

The Servant, made in 1963, was one of three collaborations between writer Harold Pinter and director Joseph Losey, and one of four films which teamed Losey with star Dirk Bogarde. It’s one of those queer films where the queer content is all sub-text, but there’s plenty of sub-text! The Servant seems at first to be simply about class but as the film progresses other undercurrents appear. And it seems to be a role-reversal film, with manservant Barrett (Bogarde) gaining the upper hand over his employer Tony (James Fox). Again, though, the situation becomes more complex.

The class system has corrupted both the oppressors and the oppressed. Tony’s girlfriend Susan is unable to prevent Barrett from taking over Tony’s life, and this is at least partly because she is incapable of thinking of a servant as a human being. There are some subtle hints of homoeroticism which work because they are subtle.

The plot is in essence very simple. Tony is an upperclass man-about-town who advertises for a manservant. He gets more than he bargained for in Barrett. While Barrett sets about gaining control of the household he and Susan become involved in a power struggle for control of Tony. Barrett then brings his “sister" into the house, and she sets out to seduce Tony.

Losey’s direction is fabulous. So many unsettling camera angles, extreme low-angle shots, mirror shots, all contribute to a feeling of things spiralling out of control, and to a feeling of tensions building to unbearable degrees. There’s also a scene in a restaurant in which we hear disjointed pieces of various conversations which have nothing whatever to do with the film, but they again have the effect of making the viewer uncomfortable. There are one or two brief outdoor sequences which only serve to emphasise the claustrophobic hot-house atmosphere of Tony’s townhouse in which almost all of the action takes place.

Bogarde’s performance is superlative, at times menacing, at times downright nasty, at other times charming or obsequious, but always sinister to some degree. James Fox is also superb as Tony. Sarah Miles as Barrett’s “sister” and Wendy Craig as Susan are both solid. The music, a very jazz-influenced score by Johnny Dankworth which includes Cleo Laine singing a song that recurs throughout the film, is very effective. It’s a movie that seems longer than it is, not because it’s dull but because it’s so tense. A great film.