If you ever need an example of a complete arthouse film, then Joseph Losey's "Accident", written by the legendary Harold Pinter, is the perfect choice. It is subtle, low-key and often very quiet. In fact, the music becomes so profound that it is almost like a character in the film. The three central performances are Dirk Bogarde, Michael York and Jacqueline Sassard (with strong support by Stanley Baker),playing seemingly content people with secret delusions and overwhelmed by the general boredom of life. The film starts with a fatal car accident and flashes back to the friendship growing between Bogarde, student York, and York's fiance, Sassard. The enthusiastic York seems to want Bogarde's constant approval, but is unaware that Dirk is gaining strong feelings for his fiance. The tragic situation that results from this ethical tail is worth dealing with all of the quiet, slow moments to get you, and will result in a major shock at the end.

This is a film that will not be for all tastes. There are points where the dialogue is few and far between, but when the characters speak, it is profound and sheer poetry. The camera works around the sets to make them come more alive than the three characters, starting off with the shot of Bogarde's house over the opening credits to where you suddenly hear the speeding car and the crash within seconds after the credits end. The story flashes back to seemingly innocent times that shows the characters baring their souls unknowingly and the tragedies that result from their failings manipulated by circumstances beyond their control.

There is a sequence in a large Hall with beautiful statues where a group of men, including York and Bogarde, play a variation of a game that resembles football, basically the men fighting over what appears to be a large pillow. for such an insignificant sequence to become such a stand out in my memory makes this film surprisingly beautiful in so many ways. The colors are glorious and the camera seems to be a character witnessing the action through the lens of their own eyes. The performances are all superb, soft-spoken and subtle, and under the direction of Joseph Losey, this ends up being an amazing little quiet film that you have to really concentrate on and try to avoid looking away from.

"Accident" was a somewhat ripe little novel by Nicholas Mosley about the sex lives of dons, (of the Oxbridge type rather than the Juan or Giovanni kind). It was a good book but hardly memorable. The film that Joseph Losey made of it, however, was a different kettle of rancid fish altogether. Harold Pinter wrote the script and it's a brilliant piece of work, as acerbic, as nasty and, by God, as intelligent as any of his celebrated theatre work and Losey's direction is pitch-perfect. Perhaps no writer and director were ever quite as in simpatico as Pinter and Losey. The film is told in flashback. It opens stunningly with the accident of the title that introduces us to three of the central characters; the driver of the car, the young woman with him and the don who finds them. The driver is a young Michael York, the girl is Jacqueline Sassard and the don is Dirk Bogarde, magnificent here in a performance as fine as his work in "The Servant" or "Death in Venice". The film then jumps back in time as we meet the other characters caught up in the sexual shenanigans; Stanley Baker as another don, raffish and full of bluster where Bogarde is introverted and ineffectual and Vivien Merchant as Bogarde's pregnant wife. They, too, are superb but then everyone, no matter how small their part, is superb; everyone is there for a reason. Primarily this is a film about sexual tension and unfulfilled desires, about petty jealousies and how all this sublimated sexual longing can lead to disaster. It is a film made up of long, virtuoso passages; a drunken Sunday lunch that turns into a drunken evening of recrimination and which brings all the main characters together, Bogarde's visit to an old flame, (Delphine Seyrig),a cricket match and, of course, the crash itself and it's aftermath which is, naturally, sexual. This is great film-making, quite rare in British cinema. Paradoxically the film is among the most English and, at the same time, among the least English of pictures. Superbly photographed, too, by Gerry Fisher and with another great Johnny Dankworth score this is a masterpiece.

The film begins with an accident outside Dirk Bogarde's home. When he investigates, he finds a car had crashed. The man (Michael York) was dead and the young lady (Jacqueline Sassard) unconscious. Then, the film switches--to well before the accident occurred. Bogarde plays a middle-age professor at one of Oxford's colleges. He has a wife and two kids--and one more on the way. However, it becomes apparent that he feels like he's missing something. And, when he sees two young lovers together who he tutors, he begins thinking about having an affair with the young lady. But, as she's already taken, he has a rather meaningless one-night stand with another woman. Still, he can't get his mind off this young Austrian student--and it's sure to destroy his marriage if he cannot stay focused.

I have reviewed a ton of movies--many of which might be considered artsy or foreign language films. So, I do have a rather high tolerance for the non-traditional or slow movies. However, I STILL had a hard time with "Accident", as I found it incredibly ponderous--way too slow for its own good. In other words, it takes a good story idea and bogs it down because it moves too slowly, the acting is way too subdued (almost zombie--like) and the emotion is totally lacking. It also doesn't help that they deliberately gave the film the absolute minimum of dialog. Sure, all this heightens the sense of depression and longing the characters feel--but it also makes a painfully drab and unappealing film that I would not recommend to friends--unless they had insomnia.