Rent Accident (1967)

Worth watching but not a masterpiece - Accident review by Philip in Paradiso

This is a good film, and very much a 1960s British film, in its style, atmosphere, concerns, etc. But it is not a masterpiece. There is something a little bit annoying about it, somehow, in my opinion. It is a bit slow at times. There is something circular about it. At the end of the day, not that much happens: boy meets girl, problems arise, accidents happen, professors at university lust after young women, and so on. I enjoyed it but I don't think it is quite as great a classic as some people would have us believe. I still recommend it.

Haunting - Accident review by sb

FILM & REVIEW During his Hollywood exile Joseph Losey made a series of films in England where he dissected the mores of the English Upper Class with a chilly remote eye. His most famous film is The Servant and here he again re-unites with writer Harold Pinter and actor Dirk Bogarde. Bogarde plays Stephen a austere fastidious Oxford Don living with his wife who is expecting their third child. The film opens with a late night crash where William (York) is killed and his girlfriend Anna (Sassard) survives and who may or not have been driving. The rest of the film takes us up to this point and adds in Charley (Baker) who is a fellow Don with a disintegrating marriage. It’s obvious that Stephen is falling in love in Anna but over a very boozy Sunday ( the amount sunk is colossal) it’s revealed that Charley and Anna are having a long term affair…..that William may or may not know about. Add in Stephen reigniting with an old flame as events become more complicated. It’s very well acted and written - as always with Pinter the dialogue can be elliptical with glacial pauses and quite often it’s not clear that what you are watching is in fact really what is going on. It proves once again that Bogarde was one of the finest actors of his generation and says more in a glance or a tight smile that others would need a lot more dialogue to convey - very good indeed - 4/5

Oxford Blues. - Accident review by Steve

Cerebral drama from a script by Harold Pinter with his distinctive mood of implicit menace, allusive meaning and expressive pauses. It is a slow moving story with a strong evocation of a rural summer, and the aloof academia that gathers around a pair of ascendant Oxford scholars.

Dirk Bogarde is predictably excellent as a fading, rather seedy middle aged philanderer, and professor of philosophy. Stanley Baker is a revelation as his more successful antagonist. Most of the interest is psychological and all the cast accomplish these nuances with finesse.

This is an ostentatiously pessimistic portrayal of academic life. The encounter between Bogarde and Delphine Seyrig as a brittle victim of his malign infidelity is pitiful. Her silence betrays an extraordinarily intense impression of mental fragility.

Joseph Losey draws on the European arthouse cinema of Eric Rohmer and Michelangelo Antonioni… He has a gift for staging the interior life of his characters, which might easily be portentous and pretentious. But instead is compelling, and disturbing.