Accident

One night in Oxford there is a car crash outside the house of Stephen, a college don. The young man killed is his student. So is the girl in the car, and she survives. Before calling the police, Stephen takes her inside. From there the film goes back to that summer: the desire and jealousy circulating between the don, his colleague Charley and two students. The film is not interested in the accident. It is interested in the appetite under the politeness: these people say nothing directly, they drink tea, play cricket and dismantle each other slowly. Even in the hardest scene no voice is raised. The form is calm and threatening: Oxford gardens, long summer days, silences. Harold Pinter's screenplay uses the gaps more effectively than the speech. Joseph Losey directed, from Nicholas Mosley's novel. It sits in the middle of the three-film partnership between Losey and Pinter, and won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes in 1967. Dirk Bogarde plays Stephen and Stanley Baker plays Charley. Who it is for: viewers who like British academic drama and Pinter's language. Who it is not for: anyone waiting for events. The film is built from scenes in which almost nothing happens, and its female character exists entirely through the men's gaze.