Why I love Dirk Bogarde’s per­for­mance in The Servant

Dirk Bogarde’s career was a con­tra­dic­tion. In the 1950s he reg­u­lar­ly topped the movie charts as one of Britain’s most pop­u­lar stars, but pri­vate­ly he admit­ted that beneath the glam­our of it all he was deeply unsat­is­fied. At first, he wore his star­dom with a cool non­cha­lance, as best summed up in one of his auto­bi­ogra­phies ​‘Snakes and Lad­ders’: “[John Davis] would make me into one of the biggest Stars, or biggest Box Office Attrac­tions, Rank had ever had. How did I feel about that? I felt fine.”

Born in West Hamp­stead on 28 March, 1921, to for­mer actress Mar­garet Niv­en and Ulric van den Bogaerde, Art Edi­tor of The Times, Bogarde’s act­ing career seemed almost pre-des­tined. But, in stark con­trast to his even­tu­al movie star­dom, he first served as a lieu­tenant in World War Two – the bru­tal­i­ty of which changed him irrevocably.

After mak­ing around 30 com­mer­cial pic­tures with The Rank Organ­i­sa­tion, Bog­a­rde found greater free­dom by select­ing more per­son­al ful­fill­ing projects. In 1961 he played a gay lawyer in Basil Dearden’s Vic­tim, express­ing how at last he felt he was in a film which both ​“edu­cat­ed and illu­mi­nat­ed”, and fol­lowed this by reunit­ing with direc­tor Joseph Losey, with whom he had made The Sleep­ing Tiger almost a decade earlier.

At that time, Losey had men­tioned his inter­est in turn­ing Robin Maugham’s nov­el ​‘The Ser­vant’ into a film with Bog­a­rde as Tony, the afflu­ent young Lon­don­er seek­ing a manser­vant. But by now the actor was, in Losey’s words, ​“too old to play the boy.” Or, as Dirk lat­er put it: “[I] had to play the ser­vant because there was no mon­ey for a star like Ralph Richardson.”

Bogarde’s per­for­mance as the sly Hugo Bar­rett is one of his great­est, and it earned him his first BAF­TA win. He dom­i­nates the screen with sear­ing charis­ma in a film that explores, to a dis­turb­ing degree, the ser­vant-mas­ter rela­tion­ship. Gone is the per­fect­ly coiffed hair and shoul­der padding of his ear­li­er com­e­dy crime noir roles. Instead, Bog­a­rde looks suit­ably unglam­orous with slicked greasy hair and heavy bags under his eyes.

The bril­liance of Bogarde’s per­for­mance is that we nev­er quite know what Bar­rett is think­ing. We have only glimpses which are empha­sised by Dou­glas Slocombe’s mas­ter­ful cam­er­a­work. The open­ing track­ing shot sur­veys the bare win­try trees and rooftops of Chelsea before focus­ing on Bog­a­rde. From there the cam­era starts to pan as he keeps walk­ing, remain­ing in sight but get­ting fur­ther and fur­ther away. With a suit­ably pal­pa­ble air of mys­tery, Bar­rett is just out of reach. How­ev­er, what we do see is a glim­mer of his unflap­pable com­po­sure as he cross­es the busy street, casu­al­ly swing­ing a brol­ly back and forth while mak­ing no attempt to hurry.

His umbrel­la makes notable appear­ances through­out the film, not least in the scene where Tony (James Fox) is inter­view­ing Bar­rett for the epony­mous posi­tion. As Tony quizzes him on his cook­ing prowess, Bar­rett leans the umbrel­la han­dle pre­car­i­ous­ly between his legs, bare­ly mask­ing it with a bowler hat. His eye­brows dance sug­ges­tive­ly as he boasts of his souf­flé mak­ing abil­i­ty. Of course, the key to a good souf­flé is a per­fect rise. There’s a delight in his sly innu­en­dos which only add to the film’s tension.

Where­as Vic­tim was more explic­it, the first Eng­lish-lan­guage film to say the word ​‘homo­sex­u­al’, The Ser­vant only alludes to it. One rea­son being that Bogarde’s agent who he was secret­ly in a rela­tion­ship with, Antho­ny For­ward, was con­cerned by the pos­si­bil­i­ty of him acquir­ing a ​“homo­sex­u­al image.” Gay ren­dezvous between men were not yet decrim­i­nalised, and in The Ser­vant Bog­a­rde expert­ly demon­strates a more embed­ded approach.

Bogarde’s main weapon were his eyes: boy­ish­ly wide yet just as intense and pur­pose­ful, as though they’re undress­ing you and mock­ing you simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. Bar­rett seems aware of the pen­e­trat­ing pow­er they pos­sess, and like a sin­is­ter fox­trot – quick, slow, quick – he occa­sion­al­ly slows right down in between whisk­ing around the house, zon­ing in on his sub­ject with that steely gaze. ​“I’m afraid it’s not very encour­ag­ing, miss,” Bar­rett starts as he sees Tony’s girl­friend Susan (Wendy Craig) out. He lingers on her, a lit­tle too close for com­fort, before con­tin­u­ing: “…the weath­er fore­cast.” She leaves bemused, lat­er telling Tony that she doesn’t feel total­ly at ease around Barrett.

As the film goes on, Barrett’s errat­ic behav­iour esca­lates from over­step­ping his bounds to betray­ing the cou­ple com­plete­ly: ​“I’m nobody’s ser­vant, I run the whole bloody place!” he roars in stark con­trast to his soft­ly spo­ken ​‘yes sirs’ at the start of the film. In the final scene he push­es Tony about like a rag doll, treat­ing his zomb­i­fied, intox­i­cat­ed state as just anoth­er sin­is­ter game – not unlike the men­ac­ing ver­sion of hide-and-seek they play ear­li­er. Bar­rett goes from phys­i­cal­ly dom­i­nat­ing the space to emo­tion­al­ly dom­i­nat­ing his mas­ter, and Bogarde’s elec­tri­fy­ing turn makes the entire descent into chaos seem entire­ly plausible.