The Servant

Dirk Bogarde - Hugo Barrett
Sarah Miles - Vera
Wendy Craig - Susan
James Fox - Tony
Catherine Lacey - Lady Mounset
Richard Vernon - Lord Mounset
Patrick Magee - Bishop

Based on the novel by Robin Maugham, Harold Pinter's superb study of brooding hatred and hypocrisy within the ever-shifting borders of the class struggle include some viciously good performances and an unsettling plot.

Set in London, The Servant is ultimately a class struggle played out as a power shift between a sinister manservant (Dirk Bogarde) and his rich young employer (James Fox), as they jockey for control over a Georgian townhouse. Tony, a wealthy young land developer has just acquired a new two-story townhouse and a servant named Barrett. Barrett seems the right combination of faithful butler and prissy maid, despite the fact that Tony is perfectly satisfied with him, Tony’s well-to-do fiancé, Susan (Wendy Craig) is suspicious of Barrett despite his apparently impeccable behaviour.

Barrett becomes concerned that Susan may undermine his hold over Tony, and so asks Tony if his sister Vera (Sarah Miles), can come to stay and work as maid, and Tony agrees. Barrett's plan is to push Susan out of the way by encouraging Vera to seduce the naive Tony. When Vera arrives, Tony becomes immediately distracted by her earthy manner, and when Barrett leaves to visit his parents, Vera makes her move to seduce Tony. Returning home late one night, Tony and Susan catch Barrett and Vera making love the master bedroom, and the truth comes out: Vera is Barrett’s fiancée. Barrett, in front of Susan, declares that Tony and Vera have been at it too. Tony kicks them both out of his house.

Later Barrett asks Tony to forgive him and take him back. Vera, he tells him, has taken the manservant for his money and left him, and he needs his job back. Tony accepts, but this time, the balance of power between master and servant start to change perceptibly. It is Barrett who now complains that the house should be cleaner, and the two are soon engaged in a weird game of symbiotic one-upmanship. Susan returns, worried about Tony and with a message from Vera, who is pregnant - or so she says - by Tony. But by this time Tony is a ghost of his former self, and Susan returns in time to see his final transformation into Barrett’s dog. Barrett doesn’t get Susan – Susan is attracted by Barrett’s power, but she rejects him – and the last scene of the film has a bitter sting of reproach.