Accident is nasty fun -- a fascinating, rather preposterous movie, uneven, unsatisfying, but with virtuoso passages of calculated meanness.

| Sep 19, 2023

Accident is a vain and over-stylized film of relentless aesthetic stringency.

| Sep 14, 2022

Pinter conveys this progressive, irreversible disaster with words, and Mr. Losey conveys it with precise pictorial correlatives. The two men make an exceptionally gifted and intelligent team, and I hope they will go on working together for a long time.

| Aug 15, 2022

[Accident is] a film to watch with fascination and brood about afterward. And if ultimately we are left to question whether it is worth the brooding, at very least we are left also with the satisfaction of having watched two master craftsmen at work.

| Aug 8, 2022

...less of a kitchen sink drama than an Aga saga. Accident taps into a vein of hidden misogyny with intrepid verve...

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 17, 2021

The spectacle of a pair of rivalrous dons dangerously tir- ing themselves over a bit of narcissistic fluff is too miserably commonplace to be animated by lavish décor and cunning photography.

| Nov 23, 2020

In the end, for all the fairly sensational things that have been brought to pass, it is the audience that is left forlorn and lonely, excluded from the often boring private visions of Harold Pinter's characters.

| Aug 4, 2020

The screenplay for Accident, an English film, was written by playwright Harold Pinter and therein seems to lie the problem. His characters have no outward life conversationally.

| Nov 29, 2018

The subtle, controlled performances of the principal actors make this work.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 3, 2018

The honours for sheer accomplishment and speed of reaction go to Dirk Bogarde and Vivien Merchant: the honours for playing against the grain to Stanley Baker.

| Mar 12, 2015

A subtly poised film of middle-class life in an Oxford academic milieu.

| Mar 12, 2015

The whole thing is such a teapot tempest, and it is so assiduously underplayed that it is neither strong drama nor stinging satire. It is just a sad little story of a wistful don.

| Mar 12, 2015

Dirk Bogarde's crumbling don is the sharpest of the many similar performances he has given, and Stanley Baker is superbly chunky as Bogarde's rival for a young Austrian student (Jacqueline Sassard).

| Mar 12, 2015

A sharp and complex British film that his by turns witty and engaging.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 12, 2015

In short, Accident is Losey's most accomplished film because of the perfect adequation of form to content, and vice versa; but also because of the degree to which he penetrates the surface.

| Mar 12, 2015

Of Losey's three collaborations with Pinter (the other two are 1963's The Servant and 1970's The Go-Between), it is the most challenging and influential.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 12, 2015

The film's didactic indifference also makes it unclear whether Stephen ups the ante or gets his comeuppance in the end.

| Jun 12, 2014

Bring a date, because you'll need to talk this one through.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 20, 2014

Losey and Pinter locate the pain that lurks deep within complacency, and the film positively throbs with it. It's an old idea, perhaps. But in their hands it hurts anew.

| May 20, 2014

A firstrate cast is headed by Bogarde, who wins sympathy for his superficially cold character, and his contained way with emotion is superbly right. But the main acting surprise is contributed by Stanley Baker.

| Feb 23, 2012