Karry Best movie of this year hands down!

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Tobias Burrows It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Mathilde the Guild Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

andrewplord Dirk Bogarde plays Barratt, a "gentleman's gentleman" employed by Tony, an upper class young man (James Fox, looking remarkably like David Bowie in his "Let's Dance" period) who needs someone to look after him until he gets married to his no nonsense fiancé Susan (Wendy Craig)The script, by Harold Pinter, begins like a modern day Jeeves and Wooster story full of "I aim to give satisfaction sir" and "I took the liberty sir of remove the ruffled valances. Not very practical." Before too long it all goes very nasty indeed, as though Jeeves turned out to be a psychopath. The pictures takes a path through psychological thriller areas with hints of sexual blackmail, incest, and intrigue and moral corruption and then ends up in firmly absurdist theatre territory, with characters playing threatening games of Hide and Seek, adults reacting like children to minor injuries (the sound Bogarde makes when he is struck in the face is quite bizarre) and strangely unerotic orgies filled with fully clothed prostitutes posing in front of strangely angled cameras.The whole thing keeps getting reflected in distorting mirrors and through crystal orbs and the script is lean and spare as only Pinter scripts can be.And to top it off the whole thing is shot through with a sort of all pervading, but unspoken gayness. There are significant glances aplenty between Fox and Bogarde, they bicker and argue like a married couple, and Fox's character slowly slides under Bogarde's control until by the end of the film he is... well, let's say he isn't in charge and leave it at that.It's creepy, it's disturbing, it's puzzling and very very dark. Is it an allegory of class? Is it a film in the closet? Is it a surrealist drama? Probably yes to all three. But even more, it's a Pinter script. Like "The Birthday Party", like "The Caretaker", like "The Room", it's full of menace and dark humour and unspoken threat.Losey directs like the master he was. Slocombe films the thing is pristine B&W and fills it with beautifully composed shot after shot. and The four principle actor give it all they're got.The only thing dated is the score, which is very much of its time. But this is a splendid film.

Boba_Fett1138 Even though I have seen sort of similar movies, you could still really call this movie an original and special one.It's a movie that I foremost liked for its subtlety. The way it's build up is absolutely great. It's often a slowly progressing movie, with still plenty going on in it. The movie manages really well to create a sense of mystery and tension, since you never really know what direction the story will be heading into. It's a movie that is actually mostly being build up and constructed as a drama but it has lots of different thriller elements thrown into it as well. All of these thriller elements actually work out so well because the movie is getting told and being constructed as a not everyday- or ordinary thriller.The movie has plenty of twists in it and mostly leaves you guessing till the end, what the true motives and plans of certain characters are. This ensures that the movie is a great one to watch, from still till finish. Well, almost!During its last half hour, or so, the movie was kind of starting to loose me. It was going a bit overboard with certain aspects, which went at the expense of some of the movie its credibility. I didn't mind its twist or developments but I did minded the way they were getting handled. For me it was a bit too much and not really in tone with the rest of the movie.Visually its a great looking movie. It's shot completely in black & white, which does truly add a lot to its atmosphere. Besides, the cinematography is done by perhaps one of the best cinematographers of all time Douglas Slocombe. It's also an incredibly detailed looking movie. It's almost an artistic one at times, with its complexity of certain shots. Perhaps you won't even notice all of it on your first viewing, simply because you're wrapped up too much into its story.Its a quite small and simplistic British production but this only once again proofs that all, that you foremost need, to make a good movie with, is a good and interesting main concept and a well written script. It also helps, in this particular case, that it has some pretty good actors involved. Dirk Bogarde plays a beautiful dark role. James Fox is also really good, who is better known for the roles later in his career.Despite its, in my opinion, weaker final 30 minutes, it still is a movie I can truly recommend!7/10 http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

Sindre Kaspersen Sixteenth feature film by American director Joseph Losey (1909-1984), an adaptation of a novel from 1948 by British novelist and playwright Robin Maugham (1916-1981), which was written by screenwriter and playwright Harold Pinter (1930-2008), tells the story of Tony, a young and wealthy man who hires a man named Hugo Barrett to work for him as a servant at his house in London. Even though his girlfriend Susan acts with pointed prejudice towards Tony's newly hired servant and questions his character, Tony ignores this and continues his trusting friendship with the charming Hugo Barrett.This brilliantly written and directed British production, a character-driven, dialog-driven and rigorously structured study of character which portrays a fierce power struggle between a man from the upper-class and a man from the working-class, is a tense, intriguing and dramatic chamber-piece and a poignantly atmospheric Film-noir from the early 1960s with a underlining jazzy score by English Jazz composer John Dankworth (1927-2010). The noticeable black-and-white cinematography by British cinematographer Douglas Slocombe, the sarcastic humor, the pivotal use of light, the quick-witted dialog and the stellar acting performances by James Fox as the shallow and gullible Tony, Dirk Bogarde as the dutiful and articulate Hugo Barrett, Sarah Miles as the enigmatic and seductive Vera and Wendy Craig as Tony's loving and suspicious girlfriend Susan are crucial aspects which characterizes this interior thriller about the darkest sides of human nature.This BAFTA Award-winning film from the British New Wave is an internal psychological drama with an efficient shifting pace and artful milieu depictions which provides a detailed examination of the British class system. An ardent, acute and captivating masterpiece from the director who was blacklisted by Hollywood during the McCarthy Era in the 1950s for supposedly having attachments with the Communist party and exiled to England where he made most of his films.

eyesour Not only Hugo Barrett, the Bogarde character, but also Pinter, Losey, and Maugham, Somerset's young nephew, combine most effectively and unpleasantly in producing this dirty little story. It has made at least one person want to take a cleansing shower after watching it. Two, in fact. Another person is left with a creepy, nasty feeling; although they also seem to think it excellent. It's very obviously well-constructed, cunning, subtle and clever.Bogarde slips into his slimy character's skin so perfectly that it fits him like a glove. He first appears on the doorstep as a sort of neo-vampire, setting out to suck his hapless victim dry, and strip him of every shred of dignity. A major flaw in this scenario is that the James Fox character has so little dignity to start with. It is neither moving nor instructive to see an utterly useless self-deluding nonentity reduced from nowhere to nothing. In fact, it is distasteful, off-putting and even disgusting.My disc came with an extra feature in the form of a wordy talk by a man called Ian Christie, described as "Director AHRB for British Film", and who is also, as may be discovered from his devotedly self-regarding fansite, Professor of Film and Media History at Birkbeck, University of London. He comes up with some interesting, but also frequently trite and banal, remarks about this film. He doesn't, however, seem to have a firm grip of his subject. For instance, he presents a photograph of three men in a row, labelled James Fox, Joseph Losey and a third called Dick (sic) Bogarde. The man shown as Dick (sic) Bogarde is actually Harold Pinter, author of at least one great script, called "The Caretaker".Then Christie refers to an otherwise unknown American actor called Rock Hunter, saying "Imagine if Rock Hunter had played a part like the one played by Bogarde?" I imagine he would have been successful. After that, Christie says (twice) that the first film directed by Dick Lester with the Beatles was called "Help", 1965. Some of us, not film professors, thought it was "A Hard Day's Night", 1964. In that film a man on a train from Liverpool to London is mocked for having fought in WW2. Christie thinks this happened in "Help". Someone at Studio Canal might have helped Christie with the text of his feature before sending it out to the world.For the record, the actor Dirk Bogarde's real name was Sir Derek Jules Gaspard Ulric Niven van den Bogaerde. A man with a name like that deserves several servants. The Beatles were a forgettable pop group, accurately described by Cassius Clay, who met them just before his sensational and memorable 1964 defeat of Sonny Liston, as a bunch of little sissies.Christie points out, what most viewers recognise, that there is a semi-submerged homosexual sub-text to "The Servant". Among the puzzles posed by this movie is how a world so often described as gay could consist of such deeply depressing misery. Presumably because its gaiety is diagnosed as repressed. The servant also acts as a nanny to his enfeebled employer, dosing him with what looks like Dr Collis Browne's medical compound of laudanum, cannabis and chloroform. The film should evoke a response from homophobes, a word not only etymologically specious and incorrect, but also demonstrating political incorrectness.If I weren't so sickened and repelled by the whole performance, I'd give it more stars than seven. I'd seen it when it first came out, and recalled that I hadn't liked it. All I really remembered about it was the rather silly and pointless Cropper joke at the beginning.Finally, it doesn't seem to be primarily about either repressed queerness, or class warfare, but about the ancient truism that when men seek power the search becomes evil and corrupting. Some time after this film was made, James Fox split with Sarah Miles and got religion.