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Poster for The Servant

The Servant

A Terrifyingly Beautiful Motion Picture!

1963 · 1h 56m · UNRATED Drama
Directed by Joseph Losey

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Overview

Indolent aristocrat Tony employs competent Barrett as his manservant and all seems to be going well until Barrett persuades Tony to hire his sister as a live-in maid.

Director and cast

Critics on Rotten Tomatoes

Top critics, in their words

All reviews
88%
Tomatometer
Fresh

Glaciers might be melting, the polar caps might be crumbling, but not even the passage of half a century has taken the frozen edge off this brilliantly icy film.

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
Fresh

A perfect storm of perversity, pre-Persona identity transference, prole pole-positioning and mutually assured psychological destruction, Joseph Losey's masterpiece immediately transformed the director from has-been Hollywood exile to European auteur.

David Fear, Time Out New York
Rotten

The Servant is for the most part strong dramatic fare, though the atmosphere and tension is not fully sustained to the end.

Variety Staff, Variety
Fresh

The performances are note-perfect and Pinter's script is smart, subversive and sly, lifting the lid on our age-old feudal hierarchy and having a good dig about inside.

Tom Huddleston, Time Out
Fresh

It is a flesh-creeping demonstration of human destructiveness that Mr. Pinter and Mr. Losey are presenting in this film, and it is made all the more horrifying by the genteel surroundings in which it occurs.

Bosley Crowther, New York Times

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