"You Can’t Have It On A Plate Forever": the English class system implodes in Losey and Pinter’s The Servant
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5902/2176148523559Keywords:
Harold Pinter, Joseph Losey, The Servant, English cinema, 1960sAbstract
The collaboration between Harold Pinter and Joseph Losey on the 1963 film The Servant represents a high point in the history of British cinema. Whilst acknowledging the film’s technical and cinematic merits, I argue in this paper that The Servant remains an essentially English film. Pinter’s idiomatic dialogue illuminates the intricate hierarchical structures and prejudices of the English class system. This makes the film essentially ’idiomatic’in its depiction of a particular historical and ideological moment, a time when the class system was in crisis and the political and cultural upheavals of the later 1960s were already in sight.Downloads
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