THE "ACCIDENT" TO END IT ALL...

Behold another acute psychological portrait from Joseph Losey. If nothing else, my degree has helped me discover this director. I had categorically never heard of him in my life before studying film studies, and I am enjoying his work so much that I am honestly unclear as to how I managed to get through life without knowing him before. In my mind, this film is a very close second to The Servant, a film I have pretty much eulogized about above. It has the same sharp insights into the human mind, especially the bits of it that we may in fact prefer to not discuss.
Stephen is a middle-aged university professor. He has a reasonably happy, yet monotonous life with his wife and two young children. This existence however, will be upset when beautiful Austrian princess Anna enters his life. Anna is his student, she is also involved with William another one of his students in college. Yet all this cannot stop Stephen from yearning for her. And as if this love triangle is not complicated enough, events begin to show that Anna is not the kind of person her admirers think her to be either… Is there any way out of this for Stephen?
This is a difficult one to review. It depends a lot on plot twists and turns so it is hard to write what it’s about without giving something away and thus dashing the enjoyment of the whole affair for all and sundry. I have to admit I had a few “Wait, what??” moments but they were very short lived. There is a certain skill to throwing in a convincing curveball; it has to be completely surprising and original in the context of the story, and yet has to be completely believable as well. Losey is, I have to admit, a master at doing this.
Another thing Losey seems to be interested in is power. If you notice in both The Servant and The Accident, we see people who are in positions of power being “overpowered” and manipulated by people who they are supposed to have power over. And it is fascinating really isn’t it, the whole concept of psychological power and how the most unexpected people get a hold over one? The concept seems to be a running theme through all three films of Losey’s that I have seen; The Go-between is also a matter of power-struggles, the only difference being that Leo’s age and innocence make him the underdog by default; whereas in the other two films, the positions of the protagonists might lead us to suppose greater authority. The “problem” with ?? is that he is largely a man of thought and letters. But not, sadly a man of action. This is why he is constantly overpowered by “men / women of action”. In this sense he is largely comparable to Leo who is placed at a definite disadvantage due to his youth and innocence. The main difference from Leo however, is that Stephen has the opportunity to use his wits to get himself out of the situation he is in; whether he is able to do so or not of course is another story altogether. Definitely another good one and a lot of food for thought.