critics consensus

A film arguably ahead of its time, Accident boasts strong performances to match its thought-provoking themes. Read critic reviews

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Accident Photos

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Movie Info

Stephen (Dirk Bogarde) is a professor at Oxford University who is caught in a rut and feels trapped by his life in both academia and marriage. One of his students, William (Michael York), is engaged to the beautiful Anna (Jacqueline Sassard), and Stephen becomes enamored of the younger woman. These three people become linked together by a horrible car crash, with flashbacks providing details into the lives of each person and their connection to the others in this brooding English drama.

Genre:

drama
Original Language:

English
Director:

Victor Hanbury
Writer:

Harold Pinter
Box Office (Gross USA):

$17.2K
Runtime:

1h 45m
Production Co:

Royal Avenue Chelsea

Cast & Crew

Dirk Bogarde
Stephen

Stanley Baker
Charley

Jacqueline Sassard
Anna

Delphine Seyrig
Francesca

Alexander Knox
Provost

Michael York
William

Show all Cast & Crew

Critic Reviews for Accident

All Critics (25) | Top Critics (14) | Fresh (19) | Rotten (6)

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

July 3, 2018 | Rating: 3.5/4 | Full Review…

Roger Ebert
Chicago Sun-Times
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.

March 12, 2015 | Full Review…

Bosley Crowther
New York Times
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).

March 12, 2015 | Full Review…

Dave Kehr
Chicago Reader
A sharp and complex British film that his by turns witty and engaging.

March 12, 2015 | Rating: 4/5 | Full Review…

Kim Newman
Empire Magazine
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.

March 12, 2015 | Rating: 3.5/4 | Full Review…

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

June 12, 2014 | Full Review…

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

February 17, 2021 | Rating: 4/5 | Full Review…

Eddie Harrison
film-authority.com
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.

November 23, 2020 | Full Review…

Robert Hatch
The Nation
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.

August 4, 2020 | Full Review…

Robert Kotlowitz
Harper's Magazine
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.

November 29, 2018 | Full Review…

Tony Mastroianni
Cleveland Press
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.

March 12, 2015 | Full Review…

Penelope Houston
The Spectator
A subtly poised film of middle-class life in an Oxford academic milieu.

March 12, 2015 | Full Review…

Philip French
Observer (UK)

View All Critic Reviews (25)

Audience Reviews for Accident

Dec 05, 2010

Understated and complex. A fine collaboration of Bogarde, Losey and Pinter.

Stefanie C Super Reviewer
Nov 23, 2009

Intense, compelling film with Michael York, Dirk Bogarde and Stanley Baker meeting gorgeous Jacqueline Sassard, and clashing verbal swords over her in that creepily repressed, passive-aggressive British style. Also interesting to see screenwriter Harold Pinter turn up in a cameo as a television executive. I looked up Sassard on IMDB, and was intrigued to learn that she had quite a solid acting career and then abruptly quit at age 28. I wonder why?

Eric B Super Reviewer