Accident

Dirk Bogarde having been TCM's Star of the Month last September, it gave me the chance to record quite a few of his films that I hadn't seen before, since most of his work was in Europe. Among those movies was one with an intriguing premise, Accident.

The opening credits are over what looks like one of those large houses on the outskirts of town, with some traffic sounds in the background. As the credits come to a conclusion, we hear what sounds like a terrible crash. It is indeed a terrible crash. Hearing it and coming out of the house to investigate is Stephen (Dirk Bogarde). He's a professor at Oxford who lives in the house with his wife Rosalind and their two children, although it's about to become three.

In the car are two of Stephen's students, William (Michael York) and the Austrian Anna (Jacqueline Sassard, who must have been yet another of those Europeans that English-language studios were trying to groom for stardom since I don't recognize the name. Sadly, William is dead, while Anna is in shock. So Stephen brings Anna into the house before calling the police, and keeping Anna from having to deal with the police. Since Stephen's house is out in the middle of nowhere, the police realize that William and Anna were on their way to visit him, and ask the obvious question of why.

Flash back to the rest of the story. Stephen has already been working as a sort of thesis advisor to William when Anna first shows up, supposedly the daughter of a former prince. She's good-looking, so naturally everybody becomes interested in her. Stephen is of course already married, so he shouldn't show any interest in her. William's the right age, and he's going to be one of Anna's fellow students, so it seems more natural for him to try to start a relationship with her. Even some of Stephen's colleagues seem to want Anna.

So we get a bunch of talky scenes where all of the prinicpals are together in some fairly nice-looking locations since this is Oxford, after all, and Stephen's house has some nice gardens. Stephen goes looking for nookie while his wife is in confinement, various people keep pursuing Anna, and there's a bizarre party scene where all the men play what seems to be a British grown-up version of keep away.

And this is where I had huge problems with Accident. It's one of those movies that seems like it's trying to be daring, and a bit arthouse, with the ultimate result that it's just boring and overcomplicated. None of the characaters are worth getting emotionally invested in.

Unfortunately, when it ran on TCM, Ben Mankiewicz seemed more concerned with the fact that the film's director, Joseph Losey, was one of those Americans who left for Europe as a result of the blacklist, as though this makes the movie immune from criticism. Accident is just plain lousy. But as always, judge for yourself.