Word: losey
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...against each other, she speaks to a nonexistent lover, fakes a rape scene and pretends to be pregnant by stuffing security toys under her dress. In such a warped triangle, nothing can go straight, and after a lot of lallygagging around the mansion and a seaside resort, Director Joseph Losey provides the anemic story with an inappropriately gory ending...
...many of his previous films-notably Accident and The Servant-Losey has shown skill at conjuring up corruption and terror. Here he is undone by his scenarist, George Tabori, who attempts a ghostly esthetic melodrama in the style of Henry James. Tabori provides all of the mannerisms of the master, but brings none of his talent to the task. Nor is Losey much aided by his actors. Farrow continues to radiate a fragile elegance and a shrewd sense of character and timing. But she alone cannot make a movie...
Accident by Joseph Losey. Like all things Harold Pinter touches, Accident smacks of ambiguity. It is at once a penetrating analysis of the university system, a story of acceptance of middle-age, its corresponding disillusionment, and like all of Pinter, simple and compelling storytelling. Theoretically Pinter's dialogue is perfect for motion pictures: the lines in themselves have little substance, and the meaning emerges gradually, thus providing a complement rather than a distraction to cinematic stylization. Pinter command of language, though, transcends Losey's sense of style, and Losey does not always get a firm grip on the subtle...
...over Ingmar Bergman's Persona. An intense and deeply personal statement, Persona, to me, seemed largely an illustration of uncinematic ideas. Therefore, I didn't include it. But this was also the way I felt about Accident, and its selection over Persona simply indicates personal preference for Losey over Bergman. A point is invariably reached when objectivity breaks down and is replaced by whim...
This year that policy seems wiser than ever. In the past, Lincoln Center featured new films by the creative experimenters of the art-house circuit-Bufiuel, Resnais, Kurosawa, Losey. The 1967 scene offers an old and a new Godard (Les Carabiniers, Made in U.S.A.) and a sluggish Rossellini (The Rise of Louis XIV), but otherwise gives itself over to cinematic unknowns. Unfortunately, few entries rise above mediocrity...