Closeted star Dirk Bogarde dared to push the envelope with this seductive psychological drama
Welcome back to our queer film retrospective, “A Gay Old Time.” In this week’s column, with late closeted film star Dirk Bogarde in the news, let’s revisit one of his great roles, 1963’s The Servant.Earlier this week, some newly declassified files from the U.K.’s MI5 revealed that Dirk Bogarde—the British actor who was a matinee idol during most of the 1950s and quickly evolved into an icon of avant garde and independent cinema—had been the target of a sting operation from the KGB as a “suspected homosexual.” So this week we’ll be diving into one of Bogarde’s signature roles, a biting and radical teardown of British social classes with heavy undertones of homosexuality and BDSM role-play.
Maybe the KGB was onto something…The Servant is a 1963 British psychological drama film directed by Joseph Losey, an American director who had been working in the U.K.
for years after being blacklisted in Hollywood during the Red Scare (lots of political undertones with the Russians this week).
It was the first of three collaborations between the director with famed playwright Harold Pinter, who adapted a novella by Robin Maughim for the screen.It stars James Fox as Tony, an upper-class Londoner who wastes his days away drinking and seducing women, while claiming that he is actually helping with humanitarian efforts in Brazil.
