![]() ![]() If Bogarde was a matinee idol looking for a hard turn into work that would reflect the hard-bitten realities of his war trauma, the social divisions that exacerbated his disillusionment and made his private life private under penalty of law, he couldn’t have found a better partner than Joseph Losey. A feudal lord without a serf, after all, has to work his own land. But without a person who owes his well-being to him, the casually thoughtless, thoroughly ordinary (but for his wealth) Tony feels less. It seems clear at first, as Hugo needs Tony because of the employment Tony offers. The question of the film will be the identity of the title’s “servant” in much the same way Bong Joon-ho’s “ Parasite” wants to know who’s the leech and who is its host. Tony is the light of idealized class, carefree with pretensions to elegance Hugo is his shadow, the manifestation of shame of the things done to make atrocities like Tony possible. Tony is towheaded and aquiline, aristocratic in a specifically British landed gentry way, and Hugo is Bogarde, dark-featured, heavy countenanced, a midnight cove harboring black secrets. Hugo wakes Tony for their appointment, a job interview in which Hugo hopes to become Tony’s manservant. It’s the first of two streets he crosses during these opening minutes before letting himself into a recently let row house that’s filthy and stripped to the wires save for a folding chair where wealthy, aristocratic Tony ( James Fox) is sprawled in a midday drunk. He’s waiting for an opportunity to cross, to transgress as it were, in a film about violating social boundaries. ![]() We first see Bogarde as Hugo in Joseph Losey’s “The Servant” (1963) from across a busy street as he’s standing before a storefront, clad in a black hat and overcoat with a closed umbrella serving as a walking stick. Though he’s not often thought of as such, he must be considered among his generation's best, most nuanced and complex, most moral and intelligent actors. Bogarde carried the weight of these histories, ultimate and proximate, on his brooding countenance. It was a decision that stunted any kind of move to Hollywood despite his early stardom. ![]() In his personal life, Bogarde was gay at a time when homosexuality was a criminal offense in the UK, but refused to enter into a lavender marriage to further his career by disguising his truth. ![]()
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