Accident (1967)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Strong and Moving!

Overrated

Memorable, crazy movie

I had high hopes for this movie given the many bright lights involved in its making, especially Dirk Bogarde. Unfortunately, "Accident" did not live up to its promise. I found myself getting restless and fidgety as the characters laid their overeducated, upper-crust depravity on quite thickly in scene after scene. There's a lot of very heavy drinking and a lot of bed hopping here, with a dollop of death and a dash of spoofing the Oxford dons, but in the end it doesn't seem to amount to very much really...just a couple of middle-aged gents chasing the same skirt, that skirt being predictably much younger than themselves, while their wives are left to piece things together, or not, off on the sidelines. The fact that these middle-aged men succeed in their shared conquest of a girl half their age while their boyishly virile, handsome rival (Michael York) doesn't get any makes the whole premise rather implausible.If I could rewrite this plot I'd have Dirk Bogarde's Stephen and Stanley Baker's Charley suddenly discover their suppressed lust for one another amidst their frustration in being bested by Michael York's William. Michael York would get the girl of everyone's dreams after many trials and tribulations and Bogarde and Baker would make beautiful gay music together. Scandalous...piquant...but alas it was not to be...

Complex and slow moving, this highly rated film now seems very much of-it's-time although it was considered rather avant gard on release. The story, mostly told in flashback, moves with the speed of a work by Antonioni, exploring similar themes of moral decay, disaffection and dissatisfaction among a privileged group (jn this case Oxford academics.) Few of the characters are sympathetic and human weakness is laid bare on all fronts. At the heart of everything is Dirk Bogarde's Oxford Don, a dour man in the throws of a mid-life crisis. Seemingly wearying of his pregnant wife and jealous of his boorish colleague (Stanley Baker), the whole balance of a previously comfortable life is finally thrown right off balance by the arrival into his social circle of a young Italian woman, the exotic new girlfriend of an aristocratic student (Michael York). Jacqueline Sassard, as the object of the far reaching sexual obsession is a curious mix of beguiling beauty(those amazing eyes!) and very little personality while York is boyishly vacuous and we know his ultimate fate in the opening scene. Baker's character is perhaps the most unpleasant. He brags about his success as a resident expert on TV panel-shows and flaunts his sexual conquests and sporting prowess to an increasingly frustrated Bogarde who then goes in search of an old flame while attempting to secure a TV position of his own in order to keep pace on all fronts. Predictably the three male leads Bogarde, York and Baker) are instantly under Sassard's spell and jealousies which have so far largely rumbled along for many years, flare up, if rather slowly, and with a great many heavy silences and moments of extended tension. Screenwriter Harold Pinter's theatrical background does tend to show through in such sequences. One can easily envisage many of the scenes playing out on stage And while the acting is first rate there is sometimes an irritating element of theatricality about the whole thing. One long single-take involving the making of an omelet, which is clearly terribly significant, is a perfect example of how it often resembles a filmed- play. Beautifully filmed, it must be said, and directed with a firm hand at a very deliberate pace. But it does seem somewhat self-regarding and dated now. It's undoubtedly thought provoking, but exists in a world far removed from anything most of us will recognise and as such can be hard to relate to and a little tiresome to stay with. In the end the characters don't engender enough sympathy for us to care what transpires.

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.

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.