ACCIDENT: an academic's life under the microscope

After he outgrew his matinee idol beginnings Dirk Bogarde moved on to some very interesting work, essaying a variety of challenging and varied roles which allowed him to show his true talent as a serious actor.
I've always found his 60s films particularly worth watching, but ACCIDENT tested the limits of my admiration. This 1967 Joseph Losey directed drama is ponderous in the extreme, full of meaningful silences and lingering shots which give the impression that he forgot to call 'cut!' at the end of the scene.

Bogarde plays Stephen, an Oxford University don fretting about the onset of middle age, who becomes entranced by one of his female students. Anna (Jacqueline Sassard) is an Austrian princess with striking features, a frosty demeanor and all the personality of a tree stump, and I've read criticism elsewhere that ACCIDENT doesn't work because Sassard's not a good enough actress to play a convincing temptress. But that ignores the fact that a man going through a mid-life crisis is highly likely to be less interested in a great personality than looks and youth and Anna has both.
Stephen faces competition for Anna's attentions from another of his students,William (Michael York), and - more creepily - Charley (Stanley Baker), one of his colleagues who's also married with kids.
This bizarre love triangle plays out at a glacial pace under the hot sun and rural splendour of Oxfordshire in the summer, with Stephen mostly a passive and frustrated observer of William and Charley's considerably more pro-active pursuit of the emotionless Anna.
The film's languid pace plays up to the characters' sense of boredom and frustration. Stephen and Charley latch onto Anna more as a shortsighted reaction to middle age and their stagnating marriages  than because they're smitten by her particular charms. William's life is equally unfocused beyond the immediate gratification of his feelings for Anna. It all adds up to a pretty depressing picture of life among Britain's academic elite, condemned to live out their years in the emotionally unrewarding splendour and comfort of ivory towers and country homes.
Bogarde is pitch perfect in his portrayal of Stephen's angst and ambivalence over the situation he's created for himself. He clearly sees himself as morally superior to the increasingly loathsome Charley but the expression in his eyes constantly gives himself away. ACCIDENT may challenge your patience but it's worth rising to that challenge for the pleasure of another masterclass from one of British cinema's most talented names.