Accident (1967) Online

Following their work on "The Servant" (1963) and before the more well-known, "The Go-Between" (1971), "Accident" can be seen as the best - certainly the most understated - of the collaborations between the English playwright, Harold Pinter, and the expatriate American director, Joseph Losey, who had lived and worked in London for some years.

As Pinter said in a 1966 interview: "So in this film everything is buried, it is implicit. There is really very little dialogue, and that is mostly trivial, meaningless. The drama goes on inside the characters." In the published screenplay his directions for one scene indicate that "the words are fragments of realistic conversation. They are not thoughts..." and what comes across is the brilliant contrast between the nondescript, mundane, day-to-day attempts at communication between the characters combined with a hard look at the underlying reality of the characters' situations. Nothing is like it seems to be.

If you like the work of Harold Pinter, this rarely-available film, is a brilliant addition. See it in combination with the other two to get a full picture of what Losey and Pinter achieved. I've seen the films at least 10 times each and they formed the basis of my 1974 MA thesis on the Pinter-Losey collaboration.

Watching this film again in 2010, it is amusing to see how much they smoked and drank. Students would arrive for tutorials and the professor would pour out a generous glass of the hard stuff or at least sherry. Stephen's pregnant wife takes an afternoon nap with a bottle of beer on the bedside table. Charley arrives for lunch carrying a couple of bottles of liquor, which gets consumed in the afternoon. Not surprisingly William ends up passing out face down in the salad! Anyone playing the drinking game and trying to keep up with the characters would be out cold halfway through the film.

Everything about the film was note perfect, with the exception of Jacqueline Sassard's stiff performance. Her character was supposed to be Austrian, so why did she try to look like an Italian starlet with that dreadful eye makeup. Perhaps they could not afford Gina Lollobridgida! Not only did she not look the part, but her voice was flat and harsh. I spent the movie wondering what on earth any of the men saw in her. If only they had used Marianne Faithful, who would have looked like an Austrian and given off an air of unattainability, at least until her affair with Charley was discovered.

I could not help feeling that if Anna had been written out altogether and the object of desire had been the beautiful William, played to perfection by Michael York, it might have been more interesting. Perhaps there was an subtle undercurrent which I missed. Filmmakers were not quite so obvious in 1966. Other than that, the wonderfully atmospheric film beautifully conveyed the long hot humid summer days of the south of England and the polite banter of the elite academics disguising an envious loathing of each other as they drank their way through the day.

40 years on I have never forgotten one little quote in the film by the provost who, upon hearing that a study into the sex habits of students at the University of Wisconsin revealed that 0.01% had intercourse during a lecture on Aristotle, remarked that he was surprised to find Aristotle on the syllabus in Wisconsin. With snappy one liners like that, how can you forget this film.

From the very first shot Losey lets us know that to get the most from this film it's not what you see, but what you perceive, that matters. The opening shot of a country house is held steady for our eyes whilst the sound of an approaching (speeding) car and, inevitably, the grinding of metal on gravel as the accident happens, dominates our hearing. And so it is for the rest of the film. What is important is not, necessarily, what we see, but what we discern.

The complexities of the relationships between the main characters, the effect on all of them brought by the simple presence of Anna (Sassard), their infidelities and insecurities all contribute to make this a spell-binding 100 minutes or so of classic cinema.

The spare, Pinteresque, dialogue inspires the viewer to attempt to untangle the dynamics between the characters. Some poignant photography (for instance, the symmetry of Anna and Stephen (Bogarde) as they gaze out over picturesque English countryside whilst leaning on a gate but, at the same time, teasing us as to whether or not they will draw closer,) adds to our desire for a better understanding of these people and their relationships.

The photography of rooms shot from odd angles (indeed, some of these shots seem designed to accentuate the angles of the characters every bit as much as the rooms themselves) all contribute to a complex web of relationships. Some sexy, sixties sax from John Dankworth adds an appropriate musical blend to the whole. And how many times does Stephen say to others `What are you doing?' as he strives to come to terms with his own infidelities and insecurities, let alone those of all those around him?

It's an intense, but approachable, movie with little concession to humour, save perhaps for a couple of comments from Stanley Baker's picaresque character, Charley. But don't let that put you off; this is intelligent, challenging cinema, a welcome refuge from the shoot ‘em up stream of movies we've become used to over the years.

Not a lot happens, but we were glued to The Accident. The script is wonderfully understated. Pinter as screenplay writer is a different style from Pinter the playwright. Pinter teases us, though, with a small cameo performance of his own using almost mock-Pinter dialogue for that one short scene. Also of note script-wise is the scene soon after Pinter's scene when Dirk Bogarde visits his old flame in London and the dialogue is almost thoughts, almost dialogue - you don't see either of them actually speaking.

The cinematography on this movie is superb. Oxford in the summer is a soft target for beautiful shots, but this film fills its boots with that beauty. Yet the dark mood never leaves you despite the beauty - partly because 90% of the movie is a flashback, so you have already seen most of the tragedy unfold. Also, the behaviour of the two professors is just so awful. Dirk Bogarde comes across somewhat sympathetically because he is Dirk Bogarde, but the character is a more or less unmitigated toad. The Stanley Baker character is also horrible. The acting of all the main characters is superb.

This is high class stuff - seek it out.

Late one evening in the English countryside two inebriated students on their way to visit Stephen (Dirk Bogarde) an Oxford professor who has been tutoring both, crash the car they are in killing the male ( Michael York). Stephen pulls Anna (Jaqueline Sassard)from the wreck and then possibly covers up for her part. The story then moves backwards in objective and dispassionate detail that first brings them and others together before the climax returns you with a group of facts to assess your own feelings about each character as the film plays itself out.

Accident is one cold and remote study of human behavior even for English academia. Director Joseph Losey and writer Harold Pinter erase any hints of compassion and understanding while ironically rendering men of vast knowledge non communicative to intimates as they try to come to terms with their own repressed desires. Bogarde is tailor maid to play Stephen. Defrosting little from his character in The Servant created by the same team he remains in a perpetual dark night of the soul even during moments of bliss. Fellow prof Charley ( Stanley Baker) is more nuanced and well played against type by Baker, even more deluded in his mid life crisis. The two have some excellent scenes together as Pinter's script and Losey's long takes build suspense fully but sometimes misleadingly. Vivien Merchant provides her usual laid back style of deceptive power while Michael York exudes youth and life with Jaquelline Sassard beautiful and comatose. There's also an excellent cameo by Harold Knox as a senior provost foreshadowing Stephen's future, who has to be reminded of his daughter's name. It's an almost soul less existence with all emotion cut off.

Accident reflects its title perfectly and in doing so makes it impossible for you not to look away. It is a challenging, exasperating and for some rewarding experience.

I can't agree with one reviewer here who states that "Accident" is the best of the Losey-Pinter collaborations. I much prefer "The Servant." "Accident" is about just that -- the film begins with a dreadful car crash and Stephen (Dirk Bogarde), an Oxford don, coming to the site and rescuing the young woman, Anna (Jacqueline Sussard) and taking her back to his house. The other occupant is dead.

The story unfolds from there, going back to what led up to this event. Stephen is going through a midlife crisis. He has two children, a pregnant wife, and not quite the success of his friend Charley (Stanley Baker) who has a television show. Stephen finds himself attracted to one of the students he tutors, Anna, but can't quite muster up the courage to approach her. Another student, William (Michael York) is a friend of hers; Stephen can't quite figure out the relationship, even after a night of boozing it up a la Virginia Woolf. Then he finds out something very interesting.

This has to be one of the slowest-moving films on record, filled with those famous Pinter pauses and emotions underneath the surface. And here, they're really underneath. Buried. John Coldstream quotes Michael York in "Dirk Bogarde" about being told "you can't underact," that film is so subtle a medium, the less you do, the better it is. Well, in "Accident," that's been taken to a new art form. York was impressed that while doing the scenes, it didn't come off like they were doing anything until you saw it on film. I don't know what film he saw.

The other problem with this film, and maybe it was just me going into an advanced stage of blindness, which I wasn't aware of, is that the night shots were black. I really couldn't see what was going on.

That all being said, the basic story is certainly a compelling one, of people leading normal, outwardly successful lives, with turgid emotions and unhappiness churning underneath. The scenes after the accident between Sussard and Bogarde are very striking and disturbing, as is the final moment of the film. We are reminded that what's on the surface has nothing to do with what really is in the heart.

"Accident" was a terrible emotional drain on Dirk Bogarde; unfortunately, because of the direction, we don't get to see why. He was a remarkable actor, but like any actor, he's a victim of the director's pacing and concept, not to mention the script he's handed. This could have been much better, right up there with the searing drama of "The Servant." Alas, it isn't.

"Accident" was a somewhat ripe little novel by Nicholas Mosley about the sex lives of dons, (of the Oxbridge type rather than the Juan or Giovanni kind). It was a good book but hardly memorable. The film that Joseph Losey made of it, however, was a different kettle of rancid fish altogether. Harold Pinter wrote the script and it's a brilliant piece of work, as acerbic, as nasty and, by God, as intelligent as any of his celebrated theatre work and Losey's direction is pitch-perfect. Perhaps no writer and director were ever quite as in simpatico as Pinter and Losey. The film is told in flashback. It opens stunningly with the accident of the title that introduces us to three of the central characters; the driver of the car, the young woman with him and the don who finds them. The driver is a young Michael York, the girl is Jacqueline Sassard and the don is Dirk Bogarde, magnificent here in a performance as fine as his work in "The Servant" or "Death in Venice". The film then jumps back in time as we meet the other characters caught up in the sexual shenanigans; Stanley Baker as another don, raffish and full of bluster where Bogarde is introverted and ineffectual and Vivien Merchant as Bogarde's pregnant wife. They, too, are superb but then everyone, no matter how small their part, is superb; everyone is there for a reason. Primarily this is a film about sexual tension and unfulfilled desires, about petty jealousies and how all this sublimated sexual longing can lead to disaster. It is a film made up of long, virtuoso passages; a drunken Sunday lunch that turns into a drunken evening of recrimination and which brings all the main characters together, Bogarde's visit to an old flame, (Delphine Seyrig), a cricket match and, of course, the crash itself and it's aftermath which is, naturally, sexual. This is great film-making, quite rare in British cinema. Paradoxically the film is among the most English and, at the same time, among the least English of pictures. Superbly photographed, too, by Gerry Fisher and with another great Johnny Dankworth score this is a masterpiece.

Accident is mesmerizing. Floating through the details of an appropriately Pinter-esque life, we are given a kind of psychological portrait in which we learn little more than what we can visually observe.

The most emblematic scene in the movie shows two people standing with their backs to us, leaning against a fence. One of them, just before the cut, breaks a twig from of the branch above him with a swift, almost violent motion. The movie itself keeps its back to us, refusing to yield its secrets while occasionally holding out before us strangely telling details.

The quiet narrative is punctuated by shots of cold, precise symbolic weight. Although they do not generally interrupt the pace, or shock us, they have a feeling of violence to them; shots of a house, tracking in extremely slowly until we hear the sound of a terrible car crash, or in which the camera moves, in close-up, between stone gargoyles to the beat of a cathedral bell hint at the ugliness behind the veneer of the character's lives. If nothing else, Accident is triumphant in its ability to convey a sense of existential rot that is somehow simultaneously hidden and apparent.

This is arguably Losey's masterpiece, overtaking in my mind the more renowned THE SERVANT (1963; see review above). In place of his trademark directorial stylistics, a more formal but equally assured approach to film-making - signaled perhaps by being his last outing with frequent collaborators Dirk Bogarde (with whom he made 5 films), Stanley Baker (4), Alexander Knox (4) and composer Johnny Dankworth (4) - is in evidence here. The only concessions to 'style' are some temporal flourishes a' la Resnais and a superbly enigmatic interlude with Bogarde, where the dialogue between him and former lover Delphine Seyrig is heard as voice-over while the characters are seen interacting in different surroundings! Still, the film's flashback structure is perhaps famed playwright Harold Pinter's doing who contributes a fine, nuanced script.

The characters say very little to one another: indeed the film as a whole may be too low-key for most viewers but the real emotions (lust, contempt, pity, hypocrisy) they feel for each other come to the fore regardless through fleeting glances, hesitant remarks, etc.; Bogarde even gets into a stammering fit in especially stressful moments, and only gets to concede to his repressed desires i.e make love to his pupil Jacqueline Sassard, when she is at her most vulnerable - immediately after her boyfriend's tragic death, even though his own wife is pregnant with their third child!

The film features an excellent ensemble cast, led by a vulnerable Bogarde and a particularly despicable Baker. This was also Michael York's first major role; in fact, he flew to Cannes specifically to talk with Losey - who was presenting MODESTY BLAISE (1966; see review above) - about getting the part! On the contrary, Sassard would go on to make just one more film - Claude Chabrol's masterly LES BICHES (1968) where, again, she was the 'prize' in a ménage-a'-trois that also comprised Jean-Louis Trintignant and lesbian Stephane Audran! - before disappearing from cinema screens altogether!! Freddie Jones, Pinter himself and Nicholas Mosley (the author of the source novel) appear in small roles, while Gerry Fisher's beautiful cinematography and Dankworth's jazzy score effectively complement the film's pervasive brooding mood.

ACCIDENT was nominated for 4 BAFTAs and won the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival but, again, Losey was criminally neglected at the Oscars.

***User-reviewer st-shot ("Accident keeps its distance", st-shot from United States, 11 April 2011) has a well-written commentary. So does Slime-3 ("Tense, measured actors piece which now shows it age", Slime-3 from Gloucester, England, 13 November 2012).***

"The Accident (1967, Joseph Losey)", a sexual foursome, is challenging but rewarding. It is written by Nicholas Mosley, adapted by Harold Pinter and directed by Joseph Losey. This third Losey-Pinter collaboration has a smoldering intensity even though there are many scenes concerning the everyday details of a comfortable University of Oxford society. "Accident" is intensely visual and austere. Casual film-goers are not its intended audience. Still, it has great emotional depth and is memorable.

It starts with a fatal car crash in the UK countryside. Stephen (Dick Bogarde), an Oxford professor of philosophy, rescues Anna (Jacqueline Sassard), an attractive young student, from the wrecked car. Stephen leaves behind the corpse of William (Michael York), whose frozen face becomes a recurring image. Flashbacks take us back to when Anna and William first become Stephen's pupils. Stephen is a repressed husband going through a middle-life crisis with a variety of frustrated ambitions. He has two kids, a wife Rosalind (Vivien Merchant) who is pregnant with a third, and the growing family resides in an elegant rural home. (Too bad philosophy professors are not as well compensated today.) As Stephen first meets and begins to tutor Anna, he is attracted to her but restrains from making a move. The chief instigator of most of the mischief that follows is another Oxford professor and TV personality Charley (Stanley Baker). Stephen and Charlie have an adversarial friendship which resembles a war, they are typically hostile to each other and openly competitive. Young William, an aristocrat, is athletic and vital. He never learns the Awful Truth about his new circle of friends.

"The Accident" seems to be portraying several pairs of dopplegangers, with the struggle between Stephen and Charley the featured one. Stephen is intensely jealous of Charlie but is stymied from catching up. Stephen mimics his rival by having his own extra-marital affair as well as attempting to appear on television. Rosalind and Anna are also two of a kind; they both facilitate Stephen's infidelity. (Rosalind's lack of concern to her husband over whether he is cheating seems dreamlike.) William, who is often in motion, has no human counterpart but sort of reminds us of the family dog, who we see fetch a ball once or twice. Stephen's two children have matching speech, etc.

Watching Stephen vs. Charley is mesmerizing. Dick Bogarde is an amazing actor. He reminds me of a less physical, more everyman-version of Marlon Brando. (Brando merged with Al Pacino?) There is often a primal quality with Bogarde's delivery that is stunning. Stanley Baker, who possessed a much-reviewed face (i.e., the consensus seems to be that he is as frightening as he is handsome), is another teapot that is always about to boil over. As with "The Servant (1963, Losey-Pinter)", there is a role reversal coming between two evenly matched, perpetually competing males.

The cinematography employs muted colors, contributing to a sense of gloom. Losey has a visual leitmotiv. He often frames points of interest between verticals and horizontals which reduce the effective frame size. When he does this we immediately recall William's deceased face, which is also restricted in the frame by the car wreckage. At the very minimum, Losey is doing this to remind us what is coming. By the way, I really love the sequence where Stephen has an affair with Francesca. The lovers are filmed silently with their conversation overdubbed. It creates a uniquely dreamlike experience.

This Losey and Pinter collaboration takes patience but will be enjoyed by cinemaphiles. However, please don't drive over to The revival theater showing this after having guzzled whiskey like a 1960s-era Oxford philosophy professor.

One of the best films ever made, this movie oozes atmosphere. The cinematography is impeccable, the script disturbingly brilliant. It makes rural Oxfordshire feel like the African weld.

This movie is the perfect example of style in accord with content. A glistening original of sixties cinema and a rare example of how British cinema can equal its French counterpart.

It's impossible to describe why you should see this movie, it simply justifies itself. If you thought films began with Star Wars then prepare to be amazed. Anyone with a soul can't fail to appreciate this picture.

The Oxford professor of philosophy Stephen (Dirk Bogarde) has two favorite pupils, the athletic aristocrat William (Michael York) and the Austrian Anna von Graz (Jacqueline Sassard). Stephen is a frustrated man, with a negligent wife, Rosalind (Vivien Merchant), who is pregnant of their third child, and is envious of the Oxford professor Charley (Stanley Baker) that has a television show. Stephen feels attracted to Anna, but William woos her and she becomes his girlfriend. Charley has a love affair with Anna but when William dies in a car accident, she leaves Oxford to return to her home town.

"Accident" is a deceptive and pointless movie directed by Joseph Losey. Dick Bogarde has an astonishing performance in the role of an insecure man, but it is hard to understand why he keeps his close "friendhip" with Charley. There is a sexual tension along the movie but the result is disappointing. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "Estranho Acidente" ("Strange Accident")

By 1967 the Swinging Sixties had officially been declared open and artists,pop singers,actors and other self - styled "creative" types found themselves in the avant garde of a movement of exquisitely silly pomposity whereby their every action was endowed with a significance far beyond it's worth and their excesses were indulged as the due of "greatness",a word that was bandied freely about,especially by the aforementioned artists,pop singers and actors.Mr J. Losey's film "Accident",along with "Blow - up" and "The Knack" is at the apogee of this movement.A collaboration with the equally self - regarding Mr H.Pinter,idol of the chattering classes,it solemnly progresses to precisely nowhere with excruciatingly pretentious indifference towards its audience all of which,it presumes,are struck with awe at its coruscating brilliance. Well,all but one maybe.Everybody in it is terribly clever of course,far more so than you or I,so,by extension,what they say must also be terribly clever and if it seems frankly pretty boring then the fault must be in ourselves,not in the Stars (ie Messrs Baker,Bogarde and Yorke who manage to look quite serious throughout). For all his manifest faults I feel myself in agreement with Herman Goering who is noted for saying "When I hear the word "culture" I want to reach for my revolver".When I hear the word "Accident" I want to reach for the remote.

If you like Harold Pinter then you will find this film appealing. His influence in the screenplay and dialogue is strongly evident with typically long pauses and an emphasis on suggestion. When you team these up with Losey's gritty unconventional direction you end up with an interesting yarn about an insecure University Professor who gets himself into a complicated web of adulterous affairs which indirectly lead to tragedy. Bogarde, as the professor, essentially plays a womanising, chauvinistic toad. However, because he plays the character with the unforgettable Bogarde charm, you can't help but feel sorry for him, and almost forget that he has had an affair with a student, rekindled a romance with an old flame and appears unconcerned that his pregnant wife has prematurely given birth.

The film is wonderfully picturesque, being almost entirely set in Oxford during the height of a hot summer. Losey captures both the oppressiveness of the heat and the uncomfortable situation brilliantly, especially during the scene of the drunken Sunday lunch that Bogarde's character hosts some way into the film. There are some very good supporting roles in the form of Stanley Baker and Michael York and even a cameo appearance by Pinter himself. It's a film that you have to think about and make your own mind up about the characters and their importance to the plot.

After the titular "Accident" kills sexy young Michael York (as William), we flashback to the events leading up to his death. The exotically beautiful woman surviving the crash is Mr. York's fiancée Jacqueline Sassard (as Anna), an Austrian princess. Both she and York are students at Oxford, where Ms. Sassard arouses irresistible sexual interests from professors Dirk Bogarde (as Stephen) and Stanley Baker (as Charley). With legs up to there, Sassard was made for the shorter skirts popular in the 1960s, as you'll witness along with Mr. Bogarde, director Joseph Losey, and impressively promoted-to-photographer Gerry Fisher. The story mainly involves Bogarde succumbing to middle-age sexual angst...

The stark agony of forbidden desire is written on Bogarde's face...

It's almost too subtle in spots, but Mr. Losey and the crew take great care, and make visually beautiful film. Mr. and Mrs. Harold Pinter are obviously valuable participants. The performances are uniformly excellent, with Bogarde winning some "Best Actor" award consideration. York and Mr. Baker could have easily won "Newcomer" and "Supporting" awards. Baker's characterization is almost horrific. York went on to have a commendable career. Young Sassard makes a good impression; it's strange to see her career credits are so few. Losey and soundtrack composer Johnny Dankworth canoe in an aloof homage to Roman Polanski's "Knife in the Water" (1962), which seems entirely appropriate.

******* Accident (2/6/67) Joseph Losey ~ Dirk Bogarde, Stanley Baker, Jacqueline Sassard, Michael York

If "anyone with a soul can't fail to appreciate this picture", then I can state categorically that I have no soul.

It's rarely that I'm tempted to walk out of a picture during performance, but in this case I was. (I noticed that a fellow member of the audience actually did exit part-way through; the woman next to me kept checking the time on her mobile phone, to which I really couldn't complain, as I had already done the same on my wristwatch...) My rating above is as high as it is solely on the grounds of "Accident"'s critical acclaim -- surely it must be doing something right that I simply can't see..?

I wasn't expecting a feel-good film from what little I'd heard about it, but I did expect something with emotional impact: a searing tragedy or a bitterly ironic script. The last thing I expected was tedium coupled with confusion, but that was what I got. Characters whom I alternately disliked and was left cold by, undertaking activities which I found distasteful on those occasions that I could actually understand them. Everybody hates everyone else (as the programme notes announced with an air of approval when I read them later). Everything happens at great and inconsequential length. The one famous line, "You're standing on his face!", occurs within a few minutes of the start.

The montage of unexplained sounds over the opening credits is more or less symptomatic of the whole film in its presumed intent to be deeply significant (and its ultimate result of confusion and alienation) -- we hear a typewriter, although none is ever seen in the house shown, an apparently irrelevant aeroplane, engine noises which with hindsight presumably belong to the road later revealed to be located just behind the camera, and what sounds for all the world like a passing steam train. The latter sound continues, inexplicably, throughout Dirk Bogarde's walk along the roadside towards the crash, waxing and waning as he confronts the injured girl.

By the end of the film, I found that I simply didn't care who did what to whom -- I had lost the ability to be shocked or even interested, due to the total lack of sympathetic characters -- I just wanted them to get on with it. It got to the stage where I was actively pretending that I was watching a silent film and trying to see if it made any more sense that way, if one watched the body language and totally ignored the dialogue: perhaps this was Pinter's intent.

I'm afraid I would actively pay not to have to watch this film again. I felt particularly short-changed, I suppose, due to having been promised a masterpiece -- no doubt that will teach me my lesson for daring to watch a picture made after 1960 :-)

First scene: a car crashes onto the side of the road. A man runs to the car lifting the glamorous female passenger out and leaving the man for dead. He seems to know the girl and he takes her back to his house. Cue flashback. 'Accident' The film's dramatic and intriguing opening lead me to expect a thriller or mystery. This is not exactly what was on offer. The tension comes from emotions, desires and inner conflicts. This is a character led film with wonderfully subtle performances and a good eye for life's little details. Dirk Bogarde is in top form as the professor whose mid-life crisis antics have tragic effects on those around him. The film has enough drama to keep your attention. The ensemble acting and editing create a sense of tension and impending doom in the banal country setting and bright weather. Ultimately though the film fails to tell a fully rounded story. At the end the fatal 'accident' loses it's impact rather than gaining any extra meaning. This is also a film with a very male perspective. The main female characters are very much stereotypes; the wife is a quiet, long suffering housewife, the professor's young and beautiful student an impenetrable femme fatale. Both characters act very much as symbols of the professor's inner struggles without very much character development. In conclusion this is an interesting way of spending a couple of hours as long as you're not looking for an enlightening or particularly pleasant view of human relationships.

Accident is less watchable than an earlier Losey-Pinter-Bogarde collaboration The Servant. There isn't much dialogue and the plot is uneventful. Nearly the entire film is shown in flashback after a car accident leaves Oxford professor Bogarde's student-friend dead.

The film is based on a quadrangle of love-lust by two professors and one student for the same Austrian student. As we gradually learn, its not so hard to get her into bed - but she comes out as the only relatively sympathetic character. Neither of the professors comes out looking good - Stanley Baker being especially sleazy. Neither does Michael York as a student elicit any sympathy because of his cocky manner.

Bogarde is perhaps the only reason for continued interest in Accident. He gives another good, understated performance. He continues to show the kind of reserved character we see in The Servant with something more sinister brewing under the surface.

Joseph Losey's "Accident" sent shock waves in the west due to its frank portrayal of a frustrated man and his hidden desires when it was released in late 1960s.However,it would appear to be a rather subdued film if one were to judge it from today's liberal standards. For a casual viewer,this film's title is highly misleading as Joseph Losey has shot his film in such a manner that it does not at all appear to be about an accident which has some indirect bearing on the protagonist's life.Accident is true to the spirit of 1960s,a time when everything mattered to everybody especially one's emotional as well as material well being.The credit for this film's honest portrayal of academic milieu can be attributed to director Joseph Losey and screen writer Harold Pinter who have truthfully described what really happens in institutions of higher learning. Lastly,British actor Dirk Bogarde is one major reason to watch "Accident" as he does perfect justice to his role of a man who is unhappy at all times.

Joseph Losey was a talented director and in ACCIDENT (UK 1967) he was at the top of his game. Born in the US and forced to move to the UK because of Senator McCarthy's persecution of communists in Hollywood, Losey managed to acquire a very insightful perception of life in England, its class distinctions, and the looseness of such supposedly firm commitments as marriage, job, and friendship.

I cannot recall a single weak performance in any Dirk Bogarde's films, and in ACCIDENT he is as solid and intuitive as ever, his eyes alone conveying myriad feelings, sometimes contradictory ones. In his role as university lecturer, he is ably seconded by the gifted Vivien Merchant, as his wife. The reliable Stanley Baker, who plays a multi-skilled and more successful fellow lecturer, mirrors Bogarde's own life, to the point of having three children, too, and engaging in affairs with students - in this case with Anna, played by the beautiful Julie Sassard. The difference is that Baker is far more egotistical than Bogarde - but both men are vulnerable to temptation and have selfish moments.

Michael York and Sassard play the aristocrats in the film, and you can tell immediately that that sets them apart and, regardless of sexual ties, they will always remain separate from the rest of society. Contact with commoners is as inevitable as it is accidental - and it can be fatal.

Thought-provoking script and film, beautifully shot, leaves you wondering whether the accident at the end claimed the family dog. Well worth watching, if you are an introspective mood.

This is an highly intellectual (pretentious) drama screen written by Harold Pinter. Pinter is the master of the pregnant pause, allowing the characters to react in their own ways. Dirk Bogarde is quite good as the college professor who has created his own world. He fancies being the controller, but his shallowness betrays him. When the young people get into the accident, he portrays himself as sympathetic to the young female survivor. But he really abuses his situation. But ultimately, we have the work of a masterful modern playwright.

Not as well known or as revered as the earlier Pinter, Losey collaboration, The Servant (1963) but equally fine. Harold Pinter's script is sparse and concise but its meaning clear and menacing. Indeed at times, such is the clarity of language and the depth of our understanding that we seem to know more clearly what is going on than those on the screen. It is some time since I last saw this and remembered little of the comings and goings but I remembered much of the dialogue and found myself, in the pauses, knowingly anticipating as one might have the next track on a vinyl LP. The script is perfection, Losey's direction very understanding and in complete harmony, Johnny Dankworth's music is effective but not over used and everyone performs well. Bogarde is as good as ever, the underrated Stanley Baker on top form and Jacqueline Sassard does very well in the difficult role, bouncing about between these competing males. Mostly shot in house, garden and college but there is a fine punting sequence and although on the surface not a lot seems to happen, it is surprising just how much does in this 'flashback' movie.

It's hard to believe that this script came from one of England's finest playwrights. The dialogue is so monosyllabic and kindergartenish that it's also hard to believe that the characters are members of academia. The actors go through their parts like zombies--you can drive a truck through the lines. Nobody seems to react to anyone else or anything else. the sexual attraction for the Austrian student can be explained only by the phrase zombie meets zombie. She opens her mouth and the result is embarrassment. She has the facial expressions of a patient shot full of novacaine and the body language of the Venus de Milo. The direction is pretentious, lackluster and uninspired. Like so many "art" films, the entire movie is overshot and overly long and, quite frankly, not only do I wonder why it was ever made but why most of those who have posted here seem to regard it as the greatest thing since buckwheat.

In the last week I've seen two great films from 1967, having seen 'Bonnie and Clyde' first, which has a terrific pace even by today's standards, and then seeing 'Accident', gave a good contrast on many levels...one being the opposite sides of the Atlantic.

Besides the obvious merits of 'Accident', I really loved the period, the emerging Britsh sense of style and that early start to the loosening up in which the Beattle played such a large role.

I particularly like Bograrde's portrayal of the professor and it kept reminding me of his celebrated role in 'Death in Venice'...one of my top ten films of all times.

People need to remember that the whole film is seen from Stephen's perspective; thus the other characters are not depicted as they "are" but as he perceives them at the time and many- perhaps even all- of the events may not happen except in his imagination (how likely, for example, is a crash that kills one person in a car and leaves the other without serious injury?)- or even someone else's imagination of his imagination. Indeed, there is a key scene where Charley begins to narrate the plot of a novel inspired by the people in the film and this is the film of that novel- are we in Charley's fantasy inspired by the friend who is the basis for Stephen or in Stephen's fantasy or is William taking Charley's advice and imaging a world?