Director Joseph Losey (1909-84) was a significant figure who would on his own volition work independently in Britain. Losey was artistically distanced from the British 'New Wave' and London's 'Swinging Sixties' scene. The American expat set up shop in England in the early 1950's, after becoming yet another victim of the HUAC chopping block. At first, Losey penned scenarios for shorts, directed endless adverts and finally two feature-length films; 1954's Sleeping Tiger, which was accredited to producer Victor Hanbury, and The Intimate Stranger in 1956 - which was accredited to Losey's pseudonym Joseph Walton (Walton was Losey's other forename).
In 1957 some fresh British independent producers enabled him to make Time Without Pity under his actual name. Whereas the two preceding films were notable as sketches or 'roughs' for his subsequent work. Time Without Pity was a key film in his development. The film although a melodramatic thriller in which a father, portrayed by Michael Redgrave attempts to save his son (Alec McCowen) from a death sentence hanging - it gave Losey an ideal opportunity to convey his ideologies concerning capital punishment.
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| Original lobby card for 1957's Time Without Pity. |
Losey structured his cinema on the reconciliation of two disparate principles: observation of externals and determined preoccupation on the most violent and innermost emotively dramatic moments.
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| Who is the master and who is the servant - Losey's cosmic riddle in The Servant (1963) |
His was essentially a cerebral cinema. Although he managed to include emotion and even an arrow straight perception of the surrounding material world, whatever the subject at hand - excepting Modesty Blaise (1966), (a folly which highlights the inimitable Losey touch) - the predominating factor in his cinema was at first glance, the seriousness of a man concerned with general concepts - concepts of social critique and at times, metaphysics. This did not suggest that Losey was at pains to prove theories or propose resolves for them. On the contrary, for Losey, as was and is the case with many a fine American director; this device was primarily the spectacular presentation of character conflicts. Therefore his predilection for debating ideas rarely spilled over into the schematic development of the film.
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| A Pinter Play, the Losey way - I'll drink to that! |
The finest of Losey's canon were all scripted by prolific playwright Harold Pinter (1930-2008). The Servant (1963) was the story of a weak young Nouveau-riche man (James Fox) exploited, gaslighted and ultimately humiliated by his recently hired manservant (a formidable Dirk Bogarde). Accident (1967) unearthed a web of frustrations, and deceptions beneath the surface calm of Oxford academic life and 1970's The Go Between which starred both Alan Bates and Julie Christie was an elaborate adaptation of J.P. Hartley's novel, concerning a lower-middle-class boy's traumatic holiday with an affluent family - carefully and sensitively examine the repressions and resentments inherent in the British class system. In addendum to his seasoned understanding of complex relationships and painstaking attention to details of decor - which unfortunately tended to undermine some of his latter films. Mr Klein (1976), Don Giovanni (1980) La Truite (The Trout,1982) and his last film, though he gave it the old college try, Steaming (1985). Losey will forever be remembered for summoning the untapped potential of the actors Dirk Bogarde, James Fox, Edward Fox and Stanley Baker.
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| Joseph Walton Losey |