UK Premiere: Accident

Dirk Bogarde and Stanley Baker star in a study of masculine malaise among the academic elite told through the elliptical rhythms of Harold Pinter's' script and cool and penetratingly detached direction of Joseph Losey. A metal-rending car crash announces the beginning of a meticulous study of masculine malaise that never swerves from its course. Stephen, played by Dirk Bogarde, is a self-satisfied Oxford don unsettled by the congealing contentment of his family life. His closest companion is Charley (Stanley Baker), a don and a Don Juan with questionable critical credentials. When Anna, a beautiful but benumbed Austrian princess, arrives, the slow undoing of the two tutors begins, alongside the wooing of William (Michael York), a charming upper-class clod. Written by Harold Pinter, it is staged as a summer idyll desperately trying to retain the civility of its surface. The almost vacuous dialogue marks the strained politeness that conceals Stephen and Charley's virile panic. Bogarde and Baker, one a smug scholar, the other all braggadocio, are perfect dupes for their own phallic failings. Losey loses the ornate conceits of previous films in favour of a visual style as detached as its subjects are sullied. Accident is a crash course on how to make a great film. Introduced by Josh Losey, actor and son of director Joseph Losey.