Accident (1967)

[my_dogs_are_barking]

Just watched this film for the first time. Didn't think much of it at all. VERY univentful and dare I say boring film.

It just didn't work for me.

What does everyone else think of it?

[lancethecook]

i agree totaly, i found it very hard work , so youre not on youre own.

[MrDrakesDuck]

Good film IMO.



I really like the brooding atmosphere.



The type of movie you need to be in the mood for.

[ollie]

Absolutly love it!,one man's meat(ooh err)horses for courses,etc.

cheers Ollie.

[aaron]

Known as just 'Accident' untill recent release.. Not one of my favourites.. although some excellent performances. Perhaps trys to be to arty.. I love a bit of subtlety and reading between the lines in a film, but this film over does it to the point that you don't care enough about the characters...

Strangely, this was released on UK dvd double-bill with the excellent comedy/drama 'The Family Way' which was a very strange coupling.

[Redstar]

Does anyone have this 1967 film starring Dirk Bogarde and Stanley Baker? Is it worth buying?

[Windthrop]

Does anyone have this 1967 film starring Dirk Bogarde and Stanley Baker? Is it worth buying?

If you like the other collaborations between Losey with Baker and Bogarde then you won't be disapointed IMHO. It is one of Baker's last really worthwhile films before his decline and he is superb. Both he and Bogarde are in tune with Pinter's screenplay. The then Mrs Pinter Vivien Merchant is on fine form in this one as well.

[batman]

Does anyone have this 1967 film starring Dirk Bogarde and Stanley Baker? Is it worth buying?

It's available to buy via amazon.co.uk and is an excellent film. Highly recommended for those who like to see good actors performing good writing.



Amazon.co.uk: Accident [1967]: DVD: Dirk Bogarde,Stanley Baker,Michael York,Vivien Merchant,Delphine Seyrig,Alexander Knox,Joseph Losey



Bats.

[Bilmo]

I am sorry to say that I agree with the first comments. With the cast, one would have expected something more interesting. However, I regret that I found it quite tedious and I really cannot say I enjoyed watching it. I've watched it twice now and still felt the same. The settings and the cast are excellent, but the film somehow just doesn't do anything for me.

[AdrianTurner]

I have to say that I regard Accident as one of the five or six greatest British movies of the 60s. I have the R1 DVD and watch it once a year - in fact I saw it only a fortnight ago. I am not really a Losey fan but this film, along with The Go-Between, I just adore. Accident is a sublime analysis of the British intelligentsia, written by Pinter with stunning insight and blackest wit. It's an incredibly modern movie, clearly indebted to Alain Resnais (Delphine Seyrig's cameo is the more obvious clue), with its elliptical time structure and more-than-meets-the-eye styling. The performances are exemplary - Stanley Baker as the slobbish and womanising Oxford don who rather intimidates Dirk Bogarde's more cerebral character. There is Vivien Merchant as Bogarde's down-to-earth wife, Michael York as the aristocratic student and Jacqueline Sassard as a rather glacial but absolutely pivotal Austrian princess, around whom all the male emotions ebb and flow. It is a movie about character, it's tough and also hilarious - the never-ending lunch-tea-dinner party is a tour-de-force. Only the very last shot is flawed - a dog ruined it. A masterpiece, if you ask me.

[asiamiles]

The then Mrs Pinter Vivien Merchant is on fine form in this one as well.

Unfortunately her hubbie delivers the film's worst performance...not really sure what he's doing in there. I think ACCIDENT is superior to Losey's better known collaboration with Bogarde THE SERVANT, but perhaps not as interesting as one of his even earlier films with Baker, EVA. I do think Losey's work is infused with self-importance (EVA screams of "arthouse!"), and I have a fairly low opinion of some of his films which I think fail even on the most basic level, but curiously I really like some of the others which often seem to work in spite of themselves. I'd really love to have BLIND DATE on DVD; it's a fairly straightforward mystery, but one I have always had a soft spot for.

[Bruce]

I have to say that I regard Accident as one of the five or six greatest British movies of the 60s. I have the R1 DVD and watch it once a year - in fact I saw it only a fortnight ago. I am not really a Losey fan but this film, along with The Go-Between, I just adore. Accident is a sublime analysis of the British intelligentsia, written by Pinter with stunning insight and blackest wit. It's an incredibly modern movie, clearly indebted to Alain Resnais (Delphine Seyrig's cameo is the more obvious clue), with its elliptical time structure and more-than-meets-the-eye styling. The performances are exemplary - Stanley Baker as the slobbish and womanising Oxford don who rather intimidates Dirk Bogarde's more cerebral character. There is Vivien Merchant as Bogarde's down-to-earth wife, Michael York as the aristocratic student and Jacqueline Sassard as a rather glacial but absolutely pivotal Austrian princess, around whom all the male emotions ebb and flow. It is a movie about character, it's tough and also hilarious - the never-ending lunch-tea-dinner party is a tour-de-force. Only the very last shot is flawed - a dog ruined it. A masterpiece, if you ask me.

Yes I agree - I've always counted 'Accident' as one of the great classics of the 1960's and one of the greatest British films ever. I'd better declare that I'm a Pinter admirer anyway, but he did a beautiful job of adapting Nicholas Moseley's novel. One of my favourite moments comes at the end of the long Sunday party when a rather drunk Stanley Baker asks an equally drunk Dirk Bogarde: "Which room is everybody in?"



Of course that last shot unfortunately caused much confusion. When the dog runs out into the road and we hear the sound of the accident being replayed on the soundtrack, many people believed that the dog must have somehow caused the original accident. In fact, the dog was supposed to go into the house. Bogarde held the door open just as long as he could, but the dog didn't co-operate. As the light was fading, they couldn't do another take. A pity, but it doesn't really harm the film significantly.

[vanmunchen]

Accident is a brilliant film. I saw it several times when it first opened in cinemas. Great screenplay, great photography and wonderful subtle performances. A pity that the DVD does not do justice to the original picture quality.

[AdrianTurner]

It is a film of tremendous subtlety. I particularly like the moment during the drunken dinner party when Baker says to Sassard - "you don't have a [driving] licence" which is the first clue that Baker and Sassard have, er, met before. This is Pinter at his absolute best and I like his shrill cameo because it shatters the intellectual quietude and complacency of Bogarde's existence. Nicholas Moseley is also lovely as the quietly flowing don who is clearly disgusted by Baker's earthiness. Oh, what a movie this is. You can dissect these characters for days on end.



As for the dog, I feel Losey could have effectively cut that entire final sequence and ended with the last shot of Oxford. But by doing that he would lose the symmetry. What a pity he couldn't digitalise the dog!

[Lerica]

I have to say, as a Baker fan, when I first watched Accident, I didn't like it all! But after a few viewings it has 'grown' me....as I've tried to see what others have seen and appreciated from the first.

However I have to agree with another poster here, I do much prefer, The Criminal and Blind Date, as the better of the Losey/Baker films.

[Lady Lois]

I love this film... there are so many layers to it and one can 'read' different things into it... one for repeated watchings I think. I can see why people would find it confusing and come to the end thinking, "What was that all about?" BUT I think that is the point - what is it all about?

[moonfleet]

It's not for "gossiping" but I think that the reality of relations between Dirk Bogarde and Stanley Baker (they didn't enjoy each other) was, at least you can say, very beneficial for the film, as their characters don't like each other either.

One can say Baker is the masculine part and Bogarde the feminine, there is a real tension, tangible, between them.....

The DVD bonus is a great on for a change, there are interviews of Harold Pinter, Gerry Fisher and Michel Ciment (french cine-critic).There is an almost fantastic atmosphere in this movie, also the music is strange and beautiful.....

Moonfleet.

[DB7]

Accident, review

Eerie film about the skull beneath the skin of genteel English life.



By Tim Robey

Published: 2:58PM BST 05 Jun 2009



Halfway between The Servant (1963) and The Go-Between (1970), also playing in the bfi's Joseph Losey retrospective, he and Harold Pinter teamed up on this prickly drama of extra-marital intrigue among Oxford dons, which begins and ends with the screech of brakes over the image of a country house. We wonder if this sound is "diegetic" – the film-studies term for "actually happening". It is, but only the first time.



Stephen (Dirk Bogarde) races out to investigate, finding his students William (Michael York) dead and Anna (Jacqueline Sassard) dazed but alive. In flashbacks, a love triangle is suggested, and squared by the interference of Stephen's colleague Charley (Stanley Baker, all poisonous insinuation), who succeeds in bedding Anna. She's a beautiful, blank piece in the puzzle – very Pinter – and the men are like circling lions, going through the rituals of tennis, cricket, afternoon tea, and never owning up to their deadly rivalry. When the screech recurs, an off-screen memory, it's the perfect closing note for this eerie, caustic, surgically calm film about the skull beneath the skin of genteel English life.

[theuofc]

ACCIDENT (1967) will be airing Sunday, 27th March, 10:15 est on TCM-US. Check your local listings. I've uploaded some photos at the Bogarde thread:

http://www.britmovie.co.uk/forums/ac...ml#post1988213


ACCIDENT, dir. Joseph Losey. Screenplay, Harold Pinter

Dirk Bogarde
Stanley Baker
Michael York
Vivien Merchant
Jacqueline Sassard
Delphine Seyrig

[Arfur Teacake]

If its the first time you have seen it, then be prepared for a hard slog trying to work out what the hell it is all about.
I say that as a Harold Pinter fan