Joseph Losey and Harold Pinter

After leaving his native America as a political exile in the early 1950s, Joseph Losey (1909-1984) came to the UK and re-invented himself as a British (and later European) filmmaker. Losey's outsider status gave him a unique perspective on British life and society, but his most incisive portrayals of his adopted country came about through his collaborations with the Hackney-born playwright Harold Pinter (1930-2008). Their first film together, an adaptation of Robin Maugham's 1949 novella, The Servant (1963), was a searing critique of the British class system and heralded the beginning of long, productive and affectionate working relationship.

To coincide with the Joseph Losey retrospective running throughout June and July, this display draws on the BFI's unique collections to explore the films Losey and Pinter made together - The Servant, Accident (1967) and The Go-Between (1971) - as well as their long-cherished, but ultimately unrealised adaptation of Marcel Proust’s À la Recherche du Temps Perdu.