Losey has worked in Britain since the early fifties when he left Hollywood
as a result of the witch-hunting of the McCarthy era. His first British
films were directed under pseudonyms. Losey's preoccupation with class
and social order are discernible as far back as The Gypsy and the Gentleman
(1958) and recur in Eve (1962), The
Servant (1963), King and Country (1964), Accident
(1967), The Secret Ceremony (1968), Figures
in a Landscape (1970) and The
Go-Between (1971).
Constantly demonstrating the limitations that beset his heroes, Losey
traps them in a struggle they cannot win. His visual sense is acute,
his poetic awareness intense. Losey moved to France in the early 1970's
before returning to make one more film in England (Steaming) before
his death in 1984.
