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Very disappointing...

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

American screenwriter and director Joseph Losey's nineteenth feature film which was written by English playwright, screenwriter, actor and director Harold Pinter (1930-2008), is an adaptation of a novel from 1965 by British author Nicholas Mosley. It was screened In competition at the 20th Cannes International Film Festival in 1967 and is a UK production which was shot on locations in the county of Oxfordshire, the county of Surrey and London in England and produced by Joseph Losey (1909-1984) and British producer Norman Priggen. It tells the story about Stephen, an Oxford philosophy professor who lives a quiet life with his wife Rosalind and their children. Stephen is on friendly terms with one of his students named William who is about to marry a woman named Anna, but when Stephen meets Anna he is transfixed by her.Distinctly and precisely directed by American filmmaker Joseph Losey, this finely paced fictional tale which is narrated mostly from the protagonist's point of view, draws an invariably intriguing portrayal of a middle-aged man's irrational and possessive infatuation with a young German student. While notable for it's atmospheric milieu depictions, sterling production design by English production designer Carmen Dillon (1908-2000), cinematography by English cinematographer Gerry Fisher, fine editing by Russian-born English film editor Reginald Beck (1902-1992) and use of sound, this character-driven, dialog-driven and narrative-driven psychological thriller depicts and in-depth and internal study of character and contains a prominent and efficient score by English Jazz composer John Dankworth (1927-2010).This pessimistic though incisive study of human nature which is set during a summer in the 1960s in Southern England and which emphasizes the interior suspense and the mind states of the five central characters, is impelled and reinforced by it's fragmented narrative structure, substantial character development, underlying tension, foreboding atmosphere and the brilliant acting performances by English actor and writer Sir Dirk Bogarde (1921-1999), Welsh actor and film producer Sir Stanley Baker (1928-1976), French actress Jaqueline Sassard, English actress Vivien Merchant (1929-1982) and English actor Michael York. A formalistic, imaginative and exceptional neo-noir from the late 1960s which gained the Grand Prix Spécial du Jury at the 20th Cannes International Film Festival in 1967.Dramatist Harold Pinter and theatre and film director Joseph Losey's second collaboration is as their first cooperation, a film adaptation of a novel by a 20th century British novelist and an artistic character piece. While examining themes like middle-class life in England during the 1960s, infidelity, rivalry, materialism, generational distinctions, the clash between traditional and untraditional views and the duality between masculinity and femininity, this study of the human conscience where the characters are in a constant struggle between their sexual desires and their morals which instigates their destructive nature, forms a multifaceted triangle drama which involves one woman and three men who are magnetically drawn to her and where the radiant surface diverges from the inner darkness of the spellbound characters.

Late one evening in the English countryside two inebriated students on their way to visit Stephen (Dirk Bogarde) an Oxford professor who has been tutoring both, crash the car they are in killing the male ( Michael York). Stephen pulls Anna (Jaqueline Sassard)from the wreck and then possibly covers up for her part. The story then moves backwards in objective and dispassionate detail that first brings them and others together before the climax returns you with a group of facts to assess your own feelings about each character as the film plays itself out. Accident is one cold and remote study of human behavior even for English academia. Director Joseph Losey and writer Harold Pinter erase any hints of compassion and understanding while ironically rendering men of vast knowledge non communicative to intimates as they try to come to terms with their own repressed desires. Bogarde is tailor maid to play Stephen. Defrosting little from his character in The Servant created by the same team he remains in a perpetual dark night of the soul even during moments of bliss. Fellow prof Charley ( Stanley Baker) is more nuanced and well played against type by Baker, even more deluded in his mid life crisis. The two have some excellent scenes together as Pinter's script and Losey's long takes build suspense fully but sometimes misleadingly. Vivien Merchant provides her usual laid back style of deceptive power while Michael York exudes youth and life with Jaquelline Sassard beautiful and comatose. There's also an excellent cameo by Harold Knox as a senior provost foreshadowing Stephen's future, who has to be reminded of his daughter's name. It's an almost soul less existence with all emotion cut off. Accident reflects its title perfectly and in doing so makes it impossible for you not to look away. It is a challenging, exasperating and for some rewarding experience.

I can't agree with one reviewer here who states that "Accident" is the best of the Losey-Pinter collaborations. I much prefer "The Servant." "Accident" is about just that -- the film begins with a dreadful car crash and Stephen (Dirk Bogarde), an Oxford don, coming to the site and rescuing the young woman, Anna (Jacqueline Sussard) and taking her back to his house. The other occupant is dead.The story unfolds from there, going back to what led up to this event. Stephen is going through a midlife crisis. He has two children, a pregnant wife, and not quite the success of his friend Charley (Stanley Baker) who has a television show. Stephen finds himself attracted to one of the students he tutors, Anna, but can't quite muster up the courage to approach her. Another student, William (Michael York) is a friend of hers; Stephen can't quite figure out the relationship, even after a night of boozing it up a la Virginia Woolf. Then he finds out something very interesting.This has to be one of the slowest-moving films on record, filled with those famous Pinter pauses and emotions underneath the surface. And here, they're really underneath. Buried. John Coldstream quotes Michael York in "Dirk Bogarde" about being told "you can't underact," that film is so subtle a medium, the less you do, the better it is. Well, in "Accident," that's been taken to a new art form. York was impressed that while doing the scenes, it didn't come off like they were doing anything until you saw it on film. I don't know what film he saw.The other problem with this film, and maybe it was just me going into an advanced stage of blindness, which I wasn't aware of, is that the night shots were black. I really couldn't see what was going on.That all being said, the basic story is certainly a compelling one, of people leading normal, outwardly successful lives, with turgid emotions and unhappiness churning underneath. The scenes after the accident between Sussard and Bogarde are very striking and disturbing, as is the final moment of the film. We are reminded that what's on the surface has nothing to do with what really is in the heart."Accident" was a terrible emotional drain on Dirk Bogarde; unfortunately, because of the direction, we don't get to see why. He was a remarkable actor, but like any actor, he's a victim of the director's pacing and concept, not to mention the script he's handed. This could have been much better, right up there with the searing drama of "The Servant." Alas, it isn't.

People need to remember that the whole film is seen from Stephen's perspective; thus the other characters are not depicted as they "are" but as he perceives them at the time and many- perhaps even all- of the events may not happen except in his imagination (how likely, for example, is a crash that kills one person in a car and leaves the other without serious injury?)- or even someone else's imagination of his imagination. Indeed, there is a key scene where Charley begins to narrate the plot of a novel inspired by the people in the film and this is the film of that novel- are we in Charley's fantasy inspired by the friend who is the basis for Stephen or in Stephen's fantasy or is William taking Charley's advice and imaging a world?