grantss Professional servant Barrett (played by Dirk Bogarde) is hired by a wealthy young man, Tony (Edward Fox), as his man-servant. Initially Barrett is the ideal man-servant - quiet, loyal, submissive, unquestioning and very helpful. However, over time the shine wears off and he reveals more of his true self, and it's far from submissive. Moreover, with time the master-servant dynamic starts to shift.Good build up to what I was hoping was going to be a very powerful and/or profound ending. Characters are given depth and are dynamic in their personalities. There is a decent degree of engagement and the plot develops well, albeit slowly.I was happy to take the slow-burning nature of the movie, figuring there would be a big pay-off at the end. Unfortunately, the end doesn't quite reward you for your patience. It does demonstrate how the dynamic between the master and servant has shifted, and how significantly, but that's it, and it's not really a surprise. I really was hoping for something more explosive at the end.

jungophile Based on a Robert Maugham novella from 1948, and adapted by Harold Pinter with the American ex-pat Joseph Losey directing, "The Servant" is on BFI's Top 100 British Film list. It is also on Cahiers du Cinema's Top Ten list for 1964 (although it premiered here in the US one week or so before the JFK assassination). So with such a rather distinguished pedigree I was curious and decided to check it out.Since we're talking about a film over a half century old, let's get some context out of the way. I myself am 56 years old, and I get the whole "crumbling class distinctions" that was so revolutionary and trenchant for the time. Ditto on the sexual tides churning and turning right before the whole "Mod Carnaby St." trend hit two years later. So even before the movie started, I was ready to give this independent film some props for being prescient and taking on adult issues of social import. I soon discovered that the cinematography is great, and Losey's direction is very dynamic even given the mostly claustrophobic surroundings.The only problem is there is not one likable character in this movie. They are all grotesque in one way or another, like Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio". Tony (James Fox) is an effete upper class twit, Hugo Barrett, the titular servant played by Dirk Bogarde, is a smoldering cauldron of class resentment and spiteful subterranean shenanigans, Susan (Wendy Craig), is Tony's bitchy and frigid girlfriend, Vera (Susan Miles), is a two-faced slut, etc. You get the idea.Granted the plot line was ripe with possibilities (you surely know what it is by now if you've read this far down the thread), but the execution here is wanting. The characters, being so grotesque, aren't very believable. Nicholas Roeg would take the same basic idea and do it much better with "Performance" a few years later, and that film has aged a lot better in my humble opinion.So what if this film was all the rage in 1963; here in 2015, it's just a dreary pretentious bore. It looks great, the performances are substantive, but the themes have been done to death and "The Servant" no longer surprises and just doesn't carry that much dramatic weight anymore. There are literally dozens of films that are much older than this that I find exciting to watch again, but I'll never bother torturing myself with this dated dinosaur.But if you're a British art house stuff completest, by all means, check it out; it is an historically important film in that regard.

Good Times If you knew that the manservant and master were supposed to swap places (the whole point of the movie) you will be extremely disappointed: This could have been done really well and it sounded like an interesting plot device. Seeing an IMDb score of 7.9 I was excited to watch this movie.However,rather than smoothly progressing from one state to the next, this movie dwells on each state for quite some time, so for example you see the state where the manservant and master are in their place, and then they presumably switch places in the last few minutes of the movie. It is unconvincing. Instead of the master being tricked, he is simply incapable of doing anything except breathing and drinking perhaps. The manservant is not crafty or anything, he is just there. Near the end he moans and complains 'you are so mean' so the master says 'I'm sorry' and the manservant says 'get me a beer then' so the master does. I can only assume this signifies they switched places because I didn't see any other clues and even after that you don't really see the manservant ordering the master around. Disappointing.Why is this movie 2 hours long, it could have been 1 hour and I wouldn't have missed anything.

audiemurph "The Servant" opens with an astonishing sequence, during which Bogarde, as a man-servant, is interviewed by his new employer Tony, played by James Fox. Watch how Bogarde sits absolutely, perfectly still on the chair in the attic, except for this: subtly, yet unmistakably, he is working his jaw muscles, and they pulse with waves of seething anger, and you can read how unhappy he is, having to behave so subserviently to his new snob of a master. This is a magnificent bit of film-making.This movie, along with "Victim", demonstrates what an extraordinary actor Dirk Bogarde was. Bogarde seems to have more control over every muscle in his body than any actor you will ever see. Not a finger twitches, not an eyebrow rises, not a single superfluous body part moves, that is not under the absolute control of Dirk Bogarde. In fact, every actor in this film is under the masterful control of the director. The camera-work too is mesmerizing, panning left and right here, and zooming in or out there. And look for the clever use of distorted mirrors and shadows (a naked Dirk Bogarde, for example) to indicate the action. This is real art, my friends.The plot is a strange one, though on paper it seems straight forward enough. Bogarde, as the newly hired servant, slowly but surely, through extreme manipulation, takes over the home of his new master. But this does not begin to describe how bizarre and extreme Bogarde's plots are. I don't think we ever really understand exactly what Bogarde's goal is here. He lets his girlfriend, Vera, seduce and carry on an affair with Tony, but why? Tony, enamored with Vera, loses his own fiancé, and slowly gives up on life, ultimately changing from an idealistic and active member of the nobility to a complete drunken wreck. Bogarde befriends him, rising above the servant-master relationship, but it is such a weird co-dependent relationship – an extended sequence shows them trying to hit each other with a ball, and arguing about the score. We never really figure out what is going on in Bogarde's mind. The servant is indeed an enigma of a character.Sarah Miles, by the way, is achingly gorgeous and sexy as Bogarde's girlfriend. Nothing dirty happens directly on screen, yet some of the sex scenes are so cleverly suggestive that they will leave you panting. Look out particularly for the scene later in the movie where Fox takes Miles on an over-sized lounge chair –but we only see her legs and the back of the chair."The Servant" is a truly bizarre and astonishing film, with tremendous acting and amazing directing. Highly recommended.