Discuss The Ways In Which Director, Jospeh Losey, May Be Said To Have Authored Anxiety In His Film The Servant (1963), Paying Particular Attention To Mirrors And Lenses In The Film.
When Joseph Losey’s 1963 film The Servant opened to a cool reception in Vienna, few envisaged it would eventually bring the director his first worldwide success. The fact that this acclaim began to emerge at the openings in London and New York (Palmer and Riley, 1993: 42), suggests something culturally identifiable captured the imaginations of the audience, and mirrored a fear (perhaps unconsciously) concerning the state of hierarchy in post-war Britain. Losey’s distinct authoring of anxiety was partly responsible for this. The methods he used to convey the inner emotions of his deeply three-dimensional characters ensured his later films were much more than tightly constructed plots. The assumption however that the impact of The Servant was wholly due to the authorship of Losey, raises questions in itself. Not only did he have to contend with an already precarious film project with various risks included, he had influences from set-designers, cinematographers and actors whose own authorship must surely have been felt in the final work of art. Following his exile from the United States, Losey adopted many techniques in building suspense and anxiety which can be compared to the work of director Alfred Hitchcock: Shadows, night-time settings and…lighting effects help [Hitchcock] establish a mood of unfathomable mystery. Mirrors heighten the sense that characters are split…signaling the inner or outer world of the main character as precarious or volatile. (Gottlieb and Brookhouse, 2002: 38) Many of these elements are incorporated into The Servant to similar effect. One which stands out at a particularly important thematic moment in the film is the use of the ‘Dutch Angle’, a technique Hitchcock would use to add an atmosphere of anxiety to a seemingly tranquil scene by slanting props or the background within the mise-en-scene of a shot. This achieved a feeling of unease, and often acted as a precursor for an anticipated shocking or significant event. A similar method is applied in The Servant’s seduction scene, where Vera enters the kitchen having ostensibly heard a noise to find Tony alone. The wall lamps are pointing diagonally down to the left, and one is immediately visible upon Vera’s entry. Although use of the ‘Dutch Angle’ is present here, Losey’s deploying of it goes deeper than to simply build anticipation or unease for a later scene, and with closer scrutiny it becomes apparent that sexual energy is an immediately malevolent force. As the shot cuts back from Vera to Tony, the lights which were once inconspicuous become the prime focus, and two of the three are now pointing in his direction. Vera asks “Can I get you anything?”, and Tony says no, briefly breaking free from her pull, at which time the lamp is pointing away from him. When the phone rings however, and the water drips rhythmically from the tap, the unseen energy re-emerges and yet again the lamp points directly at him. In this scene, I believe, the values in which the middle-classes (represented by Tony) depend and rely upon are for the first time being physically threatened, and the anxiety is derived from the consequences of turning hierarchy on its head, thereby disturbing the natural order of society. This theory is strengthened by the fact that following this scene Tony’s security and protection begin visibly to collapse, and his world goes into rapid decline. In many scenes the use of mirrors also contributes to a similar feeling of anxiousness. Throughout the aforementioned seduction scene Vera is reflected in the mirror, as is Tony in the cabinet, creating a ‘doubling effect’. Palmer and Riley (1993: 51) write: ‘Such doubling suggests the divided personalities of the central characters.’, and this is a fair statement, but one I would develop further: Tony’s reflection is not simply a split, but a complete detachment from self, as it is protected from Vera’s penetrating gaze. This represents Tony’s unconscious longing for protection against the inexorable and deeply effecting threat the proletariat poses to his aristocratic stability. His ‘actual’ self however has a deep yearning and lust for Vera’s seduction which he can, unlike his reflection, be penetrated by. Vera’s detachment however is different, because she takes on the role of an actress, tempting Tony with her charms, but her reflected self is the money grabbing alter-ego, and source of malevolence, we later discover. The concept of fear and resultant anxiety, as I have mentioned, in The Servant has been authored with a similar deployment of lenses. In the orgy scene at the end of the film, a drugged Tony looks through a clear glass ornament at the arrangement of women which Barrett has so maliciously constructed, and the shot is taken upside down. The audience’s viewpoint represents the world of Tony, now also completely turned on its head. The lens, therefore, acts almost like a crystal ball of history: The disillusionment felt by the people of Britain after the Second World War is mirrored, and the aristocracy has finally been brought down by the working classes. Another function of the lens, it can be argued, is to allow Losey’s film ambiguity in its interpretation. An auteur touching on a socio-political issue is inevitably documenting their arguments as fact, but Losey ensures his use of anxiety is not allowing for a biased polemic about the decline of the aristocracy. When Barrett first brings Vera into the house, he constantly refers to her as his sister. At the point where he calls her from downstairs, and actually says the word ‘Vera’, his face is blurred by Tony’s Beer glass. Interestingly, in Portiere di notte, Il (The Night porter) (1974), director Liliiana Cavani blurs a violent slap from Dirk Bogarde’s character, Maximilian, by positioning the camera so a glass vase obstructs the view of the audience. The fact that Barrett achieves the upper hand in power upon Vera’s introduction to the house, suggests the reason for the decline in power was because of her as a proletariat, and by blurring this moment Losey avoids committing himself to answers and the film remains ambiguous. Perhaps the relevance of this blurring then, in Cavani’s film also, is to suggest that because obtaining rock solid, factual evidence is difficult in itself, the notion of truth is destined to be blurred. It could also be both directors convincing their audience that what they are viewing is not fact, but simply a fictional story. Similarly this distortion of the truth is illuminated in the revelation scene, when Tony demands Barrett come downstairs having discovered both servants in his bedroom. The concave mirror allows the three key players to be placed in a revised order of status, with Barrett at the top, Tony at the bottom, Vera between them and Susan out of the reflection. The resultant distortion of the characters represents the increasingly distorted world of Tony as a direct result of the proletariat’s actions. The significance of this distortion, therefore, could be the director making a conscious distinction between what is real and what is the work of an author. This explanation might also answer the question as to why Tony struggles toward a sexual conquest (Vera) in a similar concave mirror earlier in the film. His weaknesses are being manipulated by the weaker classes, and by shooting this scene through a mirror Losey removes his own subjective opinions from the text. Paradoxically though, it is obvious by the excessive use of antiques and artworks in the film that he heavily encourages the audience to derive individual meaning. ‘A statue’, Walther Benjamin (1999: 217) writes, ‘has a different meaning to Greeks than it does to the clerics of the middle ages’, which highlights one of the most successful attempts at underpinning the action with anxiety. At the point in the film where Tony and Barrett argue over spilt tea dregs, they are briefly separated by a white statue. To Tony this connotes class, high-status and is a false representation of his aristocratic for-bed, upon which he could once rely. To Barrett, the man-servant, however, it is a symbol of the hidden power he holds. It is made clear that Barrett is responsible for the majority of the furnishings in Tony’s house, and it can also be said that many of the antiques, artifacts and paintings are not originals, rather cheap imitations. The notion of using imitations is vital because: ‘that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art.’ (Benjamin, 1999: 215), which suggests as a work is reproduced it loses its cultural connotations, and in this case the statue is no longer a sign of elegance and high-status, rather the opposite of both. This, Losey knew only too well, would serve to strengthen the mocking of the aristocracy. The art is used, therefore, to act as a looming threat in an environment of false security for Tony, and makes clear Barrett’s intentions to manipulate him from the inside. The anxiety here is possibly greater than any other aspect of the film, because this ever present art doesn’t draw direct attention to itself, rather poses as stylish wallpaper, all the while the feeling of unfathomable uneasiness looms dangerously. What can be ascertained from these examples is that the arranging and planting of objects is almost certainly the work of Losey the auteur. Indeed one can relate authorship to the person with primary control over a text, which presumably results in a particular filmic style dependant on that persons own nuances. However, any number of on-set influences could have directly affected the resultant feeling of anxiety, which questions the very meaning of authorship. For example, the influence of screenwriter Harold Pinter, whose screenplay was adapted from Robin Maugham’s novella, The Servant, could also be considered. Perhaps this anxiety was already a part of Maugham’s work, and if Pinter did his job properly this atmosphere would have been translated accordingly. From textures of wood, metal, petals of flower and plaster wood, which, it can be argued, contribute to the mysterious surroundings in Tony’s house, Pinter’s notion of anxiety would have been present even before the script came Losey’s way. The factor most trying to Losey’s authorship may perhaps be the contributions of actor Dirk Bogarde. Not only did he adopt the role of all important commodity whose name everything else was built around, but also as stand-in director in the absence of Losey. ‘…Losey was a weakened man, and exactly one week after we started shooting the film he collapsed…with pneumonia.’ (Bogarde, 1979: 274), and a telephone call to Bogarde from Losey’s sick bed indicates how the directorial baton was handed over: Losey: ‘Collect the insurance money and forget all about it...unless…’ Bogarde: ‘Unless what?’ Losey: ‘Could you take over?’ Bogarde: ‘And direct?’ Losey: ‘Yes…I could give you instructions by telephone.’ (Bogarde, 1979: 274) A key point to consider is that by accepting the role of director, surely those scenes under Bogarde’s direction, are a product of his own authorship. ‘I never strayed from Losey’s style…’ Bogarde writes (1979: 275), but if my assumption that style is based on certain innate nuances and personal arbitrations is correct, it would be impossible to stray from the work that had been previously produced. It is also difficult to know which scenes were, in-fact, the work of Bogarde, so to measure his impact would be beyond the reach of critical analysis. It is significantly easier to determine the author of a book than to determine the author of a film, for aforesaid reasons, but Auteur Theory offers a solution to the problem. It suggests that the elements at work in a film, such as the mis en scene, lighting, scene length, etc. are all decisions ultimately made by the director. Hence it can be assumed (in so far as Auteur Theory is concerned) that the absence of a director results in the absence of a film being produced, thus giving the credit of authorship to director. There is, however, no academically sound evidence that enables us to ascertain the auteur of The Servant, but the collaborative effort ensures the ominous anxiety which underpins the action serves to highlight the hierarchical rotation in post-war Britain. By using inner violence, mirrors, lenses and antiques, the concerns of the culturally conscious bourgeoisie in the 1950’s and 1960’s are reflected, and with the power of mass culture switching to the working classes, made a reality. References Benjamin, W. (1999) “The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction” .Arendt, H, (Ed) Illuminations. Random House, London. 217. Ibid, 215. Bogarde, D. (1979) Snakes and Ladders. Triad Grafton, London. 274. Ibid, 275. Gottlieb, S and Brookhouse, C. (2002) Framing Hitchcock. Wayne State University Press, Detroit Michigan. 38. Palmer, J and Riley, M. (1993) “An Extension of Reality: The Servant”. Carney, R, (Ed).The Films of Joseph Losey. Cambridge University Press, New York. 42. Ibid, 51.
Copyright © 2006 Daniel Christo |