Accident

As much a creation of writer Harold Pinter as of director Losey, Accident depicts a series of romantic entanglements during the hot summer session at Oxford. Dirk Bogarde and Stanley Baker play contrasted dons, close friends and deadly rivals whose relationship is brought to a critical point by an enigmatic Austrian princess, a doomed British aristocrat and an off-screen accident. Silences are as important as words in a world dominated by lies and self-deception, and the only truly honest person is destroyed as the film delves beneath the surface to study simmering class conflict, sexual tension and the British character with barbed wit and engrossing complexity. A newly restored BFI print to mark Joseph Losey’s centenary year.