Setting Up House in Joseph Losey's The Servant

Abstract

The figure of the house in Joseph Losey's The Servant (1963) plays as essential a role in the narrative as the eponymous servant himself. A classed and gendered labyrinthine structure, it both determines and participates in the fate of its quartet of inhabitants, whom it pits against one another in a succession of power games. The constant redefinition of zones of influence within the house results in a reversal of situations as the servant gradually gives up all pretence of propriety and takes over the master's property. His gradual empowerment takes various cinematic forms and ultimately leads to his master's entrapment in an increasingly dark and claustrophobic mausoleum-like house.

Keywords:

• Losey
• servant
• house
• decor
• power game
• claustrophobia

Notes

1 Dialogues quoted from the script are those used in Joseph Losey's film The Servant (UK, 1963, screenplay by Harold Pinter from the novel by Robin Maugham).

2 This Shakespearean reference is later made explicit in the hide-and-seek game, with Barrett's threatening ‘I can smell a rat’ (Pinter, 1991: 53).

3 Richard MacDonald, who was the art director for The Servant and several other films by Losey, though sometimes uncredited, was instrumental in helping the American director develop his concept of ‘pre-designing’.

4 Another meaningful artefact of this drawing-room setting is the small cannon directed towards Susan, suggesting her imminent elimination.