“THE SERVANT”

The Servant by Robin Maugham (1948) & Joseph Losey’s Film (1963)

For our August meeting, we’re reading The Servant by Robin Maugham (the nephew of the great Somerset Maugham) and watching the 1963 film adaptation directed by Joseph Losey, with a screenplay by Harold Pinter.

This time, the focus is very much on the film. It’s quite different from the book, and it’s the film, not the novel, that made its way into cinema history. What it shows, long before psychologists put it into words, is the full cycle of an abusive relationship - stage by stage, almost like a textbook example. The striking part is that psychology would only describe these stages decades later, in the 1970s. Art, once again, was ahead of science.

It’s a brilliant film, though not an easy one to watch. Yet between the suffocating tension, there are short, quiet shots of autumn and winter — moments of beauty and fresh air. The Servant feels like a mathematical formula: every frame, every movement, every detail matters.