University of East London Institutional Repository: http://roar.uel.ac.uk This paper is made available online in accordance with publisher policies. Please scroll down to view the document itself. Please refer to the repository record for this item and our policy information available from the repository home page for further information. Author(s): Tobe, Renée Title: Plato and Hegel stay home Year of publication: 2007 Citation: Tobe, R. (2007) ‘Plato and Hegel stay home.’ Architectural Research Quarterly, 11 (1). pp. 53-62. Link to published version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1359135507000498 DOI: 10.1017/S1359135507000498

As we watch a film, we let filmmakers take us by thehand and tell us a story until they lead us into aworld visually constructed to captivate us for aspecific amount of time. The worst thing afilmmaker can do is not to terrify us, or fool us withspecial effects, but to rob us of our illusion that whatwe are seeing is ‘true’ even if just for now. Throughthe mimetic power of film, we, the viewer, picturethe film set as if it is real architecture, and assemblethe walls and floors we see into an architecturalwhole. This paper focuses on what we see ‘behind’the screen rather than the cinematic experienceitself. The premise is that by examining the nature offilmic ‘reality’ we will be helped to understandarchitectural form and order.

The film examined here, Joseph Losey’s The Servant(1963), depicts a conventional, familiar architecturaltype, the London terrace house. During the course ofthe film, the house undergoes an architecturaltransformation and relations of rooms, openings,stairs, and other kinds of circulation space changefrom stage to stage as the narrative unfolds. Thesedivergent morphological shifts baffle ourexpectations and thus inform our understanding ofthe conventional house plan which purports tounderlie the film set. Film exploits both themetaphorical and practical values of a home, and indoing so clarifies and makes explicit connectionsbetween front and back, upstairs and downstairs.

In The Servant, master and servant play a gameenacting G. W. F. Hegel’s master and servant dialectic,1

in which Hegel describes two self-consciousnesses,reflecting one another over and over again in aconfrontation broken only when they battle to thedeath. It is an allegory of political control. EquallyPlato’s cave metaphor, which expounds on subjectiveperception and external reality can be seen in thispolitical light.2The terrace house, the allegory of thecave, the dialectic of Hegel, the film set, the lighting,the filming, and the screenplay by Harold Pinter allcombine in the visually stylised game scene. Thegame is played between the master of the house,Tony, played by James Fox, and the servant, Barrett,Dirk Bogarde. The house, which is purchased by themaster at the outset of the film, can also be seen as a

main character. The class structure of the film’snarrative relates to the growth of consciousnessdiscussed by Hegel and the class structure of societyas described by Losey.

The allegory of the caveGenerations of scholars have examined the caveallegory and Plato’s exegetical comments on theprogress of enlightenment as a journey fromdarkness to light. For example, Martin Heideggerexamines the role of light and shadow in freedomand delusion. Others provide contemporarymanifestations of Plato’s underground cave whereimages of our ‘real’ selves contrast with thesurrounding world outside. An example is BrunoQueysanne’s sensitive interpretation of DaniKaravan’s monument to Walter Benjamin at Port Bouwhere the visitor descends a stair into anunderground shaft where one encounters one’s ownreflection superimposed on the crashing waves ofthe sea. Frances Cornford suggests that a modernPlato would compare his cave to a cinema with itsdarkened room, single source of light and movingimages.3

Plato’s parable suggests that that which we see andbelieve to be real is only a shadow of the ideal. Thefilm takes place within this field. In Plato’s caveallegory, prisoners sit and watch the play of shadowson the walls of a subterranean cavern. They believethe shadows cast by a small fire and the sounds theyhear emitting from the mouth of the cave to be thesights and sounds of the real world. Since this is theonly life they have known, the prisoners are satisfiedto live their lives this way. In the allegory it remainsunclear as to whether the prisoners, who mistaketheir own shadows for themselves, see themselves asindividuals or have yet to acquire this sense of the self.

The cave metaphor is ambiguous and there areconsequently many interpretations. Plato’s cave isnot capable of precise reconstruction; hence it isalways open to interpretation. It has the ambiguityand potential of a film set where we understandwhat is going on, even if it does not have spatial, letalone structural logic. My representation of Plato’scave metaphor builds on Cornford’s suggestion of

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theoryIn Joseph Losey’s film The Servant, master, servant and houseplay a game of political power and control in which the houseitself shifts morphologically as the narrative unfolds.

Plato and Hegel stay homeRenée Tobe

the cave as a cinema [1]. Plato places a low wall toprevent the prisoners in the cave from seeing boththe fire and the people outside the cave, walkingback and forth. In my attempt to determine how thefire can shine on these passing figures (some ofwhom carry animals) to create shadows on the backof the cave, I add a mirror reflecting the light of thefire back into the cave. This mirror also correspondsto the lens of the camera that both reflects anddistorts the world of ‘reality’ from the shadow worldprojected on the screen. The mirror emphasises theparallel with the filmic experience and helps me tointerpret the cave as premise for the world presentedon the film screen, adding the dimension of thecamera as filter for the shadows presented on thewall of the cave. The attachment of the mirror is theaddition of the lens to filter reality. The notion of‘direct’ light in my interpretation corresponds to the‘director’ who directs the lights, the action, and theshadow world of the flickering images on screen.

Many filmmakers have drawn inspiration fromPlato’s metaphor, for example, Bernardo Bertolucci’sThe Conformist (1969) deliberately illustrates Plato’sshadowy allegory on political control.4 The film,which takes place in 1938 Fascist Italy, invokes thepolitical situation of the prisoners who wish toremain ignorant of their state. Another film, TheMatrix (Andy and Larry Wachowski, 1999), suggeststhat reality as we know it is an artificial constructthat we only think we see, hear, feel, taste, smell,experience, learn and remember.5 The Matrix suggestswe are all unwitting prisoners in a cave-like existenceemphasised by the anagrammatic name of the maincharacter who begins as Neo, a copy, and after hisemancipation becomes the One, the original.

Hegel’s master and slave dialecticHegel introduces architecture and its origins in theAesthetics. Both Denis Hollier and Anthony Vidlerexpand on Hegel’s architectural discourse. As Hollierpoints out, in Hegel’s account, the architecture thatstarted as a cave, became a monument, thendeveloped into the Temple, a meeting place between

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1 Plato’s cave

peoples. Hegel reflected on subterraneanarchitecture, such as hollowed-out caves, asprefiguring the same thing above ground, theinhabited structure, the house or temple.6 While mydiscussion acknowledges architecture’srepresentational capacity, and looks deeply into thecave (both Plato’s and Hegel’s), I focus specifically onthe master/servant dialectic from Hegel’sPhenomenology of the Spirit, a means to understandwhat it is to be human, conscious, aware, and self-aware in a world of sensation, emotion, material,and moral good.

Hegel’s dialectic appears in many references todeliberations of power. For example, in Leopold vonSacher-Masoch’s novel Venus in Furs the protagonistawakens from a dream after falling asleep reading abook by Hegel. Sacher-Masoch does not state the titlebut the description of the dream and the games ofdominance that follow suggest to the reader that hereads the chapter on the Master Slave dialectic in thePhenomenology of the Spirit.

Losey’s Communist leanings (and pre-war visit toRussia) led to his being subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1954 and hisresulting exile from the USA. Both Losey and Russianborn philosopher Alexander Kojève claimed (albeitsomewhat ironically) to be Stalinist. Kojève, whoselectures in Paris in the early twentieth century andseminal reading of Hegel from a Marxist perspectiveinfluenced French thinkers, provides an appropriatelens with which to view Losey’s film. Losey, whosuggests that his film describes the entrapment ofclass, and servility of attitudes of both masters andservants, grew up in a house with domestic servants.He defines the meaning of The Servant as the servilityof people who are afraid.7

The Servant A description of the master/slave relationship can serve as a plot summary of The Servant. In Losey’sThe Servant, a butler struggles for power over hisemployer, a young man of property. Master andservant struggle for dominance, and in the other, see their own self. The master loses his freedom and becomes enslaved to his servant whose ownquest for prestige and recognition also ends infailure.

The action takes place within a single season,winter. In the first stage of the film Barrett, thebutler, installs himself within the house, and makeshimself invaluable to Tony, the master. Together theyset up house. In the second stage, Barrett furtherinfiltrates himself by convincing Tony to hire a maid,Vera, who seduces the master, thereby causing a riftbetween Tony and his fiancée. Tony fires Barrett andthe maid when he discovers them together in hisbed. The third stage begins after a brief interlude ofsolitary dissipation; Tony re-hires Barrett, whom he‘chances’ upon in a pub. In a quick series of scenes,that includes a nightmarish and surreal sequence ofgames, Barrett asserts mastery over Tony, and theexchange between master and servant is complete. Asthe film ends Tony is left lost and alone, a prisoner inhis own house.

House as Plato’s caveThe title of Losey’s film suggests an inherentambiguity in the master/servant relationship andquestions who the servant of the title actually is. Thisambiguity follows on from Plato’s description of theprisoners in the cave, people ‘like us’.8 Losey’smetaphor for the house, as a snail, curling andcurving on itself, and as a labyrinth (with theminotaur of one’s own soul at the centre) aptlyrepresents the house as cave. In The Servant, the houseis a metaphor that conveys social and humancontradictions; it reflects and defines the charactersand comments upon them and their lives. Barrett’sentrance to the house introduces themes that run asvisual motifs throughout the film. Barrett insertshimself into the house insidiously and his shadowthickens into substance as he controls andmanipulates both the house and its unwitting master.

The protagonists who enter the house becomedecreasingly able to leave, chained within the houseby their emblematic identity. At first, when Barrettarrives, he is able to go to the pub for beer or meet atrain at King’s Cross and Tony can have lunch in arestaurant or visit a country house, but once thehouse settles into the third stage, the filming isentirely within the house. The two male protagonistsretreat into a darkened interior, darkened bothfiguratively and metaphorically.

Throughout the film the outside world is shown asa foreign, puzzling, slightly mysterious, andinaccessible place. In the first scene Barrett stands bythe window for a moment and looks out. A netcurtain hangs in the window; already the real worldis veiled in literal as well as Marxist terms. The motifof inside as opposed to outside continues throughthe film. Outside where one might be in control,compared to inside where the house is in control andall who enter are prisoners.

House topographyThe house is established as the central setting fromthe beginning of the film. Unusually for a film, morethan 80 minutes of the film’s 110 minutes runningtime takes place within the house. Exterior scenesare narrative driven (they are there primarily tomove the plot along) and comprise a mere 14minutes of film time. The other 16 minutes areinterior scenes within pubs, nightclubs, restaurants,or Chiswick House.

The exterior scenes of the house were filmed onlocation in Royal Avenue [2] (off the King’s Road) andinterior house shots at Shepperton studios. In theopening scene, Barrett approaches a house halfwaydown the Royal Avenue [3]. The exterior location shotdiffers significantly from the filmic house that iswider but shorter. There is no concern as to thepalatial interior fitting into the modest exteriordimensions of the location house. On the groundfloor, the living room (as Losey calls it) or the drawingroom (as Barrett refers to the room in the script)extends from the front of the house to the back. Onthe first floor, three steps lead up to the master’sbedroom. This is a large ‘L’ shaped space. The cross ofthe ‘L’ at the front supports the logic of the house asfull width of the stairs. The top floor consists of ashort hallway with three rooms, Barrett’s bedroom, abathroom, and Vera’s boxroom [4].

Losey created a set where from the basement to thetop floor you can enter and leave every room,whichever way you go. The circularity was planned inthe spiral design of the house to express a sense ofthe infinite, impossible to evade. The only exceptionis the servants’ floor, described by Losey as a trap, orcentre of the labyrinth. This cave has no exit onceone becomes enslaved to its shadows. GeorgesBataille’s description of language as a labyrinth fromwhich death is the only escape suggests the exchange

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2 Royal Avenue,Chelsea2

of words and meaning as the primary currency ofinterpersonal relationships and the inescapabilityinherent in the master/slave relationship. Languageis an apt study for a film scripted by Pinter; hisdistinctive repetitions, pauses, silences, and ellipsescreate yet another entrapment. An escape from thisparticular snare opened in the editing suite whenthe producers suggested the film was too long. Inorder to shorten the film (and to Pinter’s greatdispleasure), Reginald Mills, the editor, simply cutout the repeated dialogue.9

My plans show the house as it might look based onstandard Edwardian houses of the era and otherhouses on Royal Avenue. The shaded areas show partsof the plan that would defy architectural logic if theyformed different floors of one house. While most of

the rooms make sense spatially, the stairs themselvesdo not, often going up where they should go down,or extending into the house next door, but always inways that lend meaning to the narrative text of thefilm.

The main stair in The Servant begins with fourcommode steps at the bottom and again at the top ofa straight run of rectangular treads parallel to theaxis of the house. The helical turns at top andbottom extend the stair into the space of whatshould be the neighbouring house. While notuncommon to have the stairs turn a corner at thetop, in order to face the correct direction in the hall,it is rare in the ground floor, where the stairgenerally rises from a straight run. The curved wallsgive the poché effect of a stately home, where stairs areoften embedded within the plan and service areas (oreven secret stairs) hidden in the small areas created.This also clears the way for the camera’suninterrupted view directly from the posterior ofthe house to the front door.

A narrow vestibule between the hall and themaster bathroom leads to the servants’ stair that hasa door at the first floor level, but not on the top floor,as though the very stair is constituent of the closet inwhich the servants are expected to reside. Thegradient reveals that the height and width in plan donot correspond in section one with the other. Thiscreates ambiguous or inaccurate (in terms ofarchitectural logic) areas, although not necessarilyunderstood as such by the viewer, and enables thecoming in to being of strange or unheimlichoccurrences that transpire in these spaces. Thegentleman’s dressing room conveys this feeling ofdis-ease. It has the feel of an awkward ‘in between’space. The dressing area, approached by three stepsup from the bedroom exactly where the servants’stair would penetrate if realised in plan and section,

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3 Location Houseused in The Servant,Royal Avenue

4 House plans

5 Film times chart

must have three steps down to get back to the samelevel as the hall. The three steps are in the bathroom,enabling Tony to ‘look down’ on his maid in a scenewhere Tony interrupts a naked Vera in the bathroom.

Another stray three steps in the upstairs hallpossess visual assonance (and no logicalcorrespondence) with the three steps in the dressingroom. At first they seem to account for the closedarea of the entrance hall but it has a lower not ahigher ceiling. However, as in Escher’s drawings, thestairs continue to ascend in the same direction.Other roving stairs include external stairs front andback, almost impossible to locate on plan due todiscrepancies between set design and location.Although these ambiguous or seemingly unresolvedareas conform to no architectural logic, theyperform an important task in establishing theschematic mood of the film. The viewer rarelyperceives these inconsistencies in plan but may sensediscomfort, although the source of this disquiet isnot always recognised.10 This distortion increases asthe narrative evolves until the house feels ‘upsidedown’ as the viewer gets absorbed into the shadowworld and the master and servant roles reverse. Theinterior also seems to shrink claustrophobicallyduring the course of the film. While not generallyunusual in film, in The Servant, the intermingling ofthe actual film set and the ‘real’ house in the mind ofthe viewer produces a sense of confusion as illusionenhances fiction with error.

Three stages of houseThe Royal Avenue house interiors evolve from anearly barren state to a correctly appointed and laterunkempt state at the film’s end. Losey’s depiction ofthe house demanded three overlapping moodsreflected in the lighting and furnishing: at first it isan empty shell that becomes bright and smart, thenit is gradually rotting away, and finally it is garishand ambiguous. The transformation of the RoyalAvenue house in The Servant manifests the spiralingpower shifts of the characters as well as of the largersocial order contemporary to the film’s production.

In the first stages the house is in disrepair, withendless doors that go nowhere. In the second, in fullEdwardian gentleman’s club style, doorways areopened up, and structure added, to formalise theperspective that frames the characters. In the thirdstage, an air of dissolute bachelordom pervades thehouse. These also represent three stages of the sameperson, Tony, the master, an empty shell, who is firstconstructed, then dominated by the servant.

The Servant begins with a comforting narrativecommunicated through a series of short scenes ofsimilar length. In the second stage Losey sets up aplayful relation of alternating long and short scenes,during which the editing draws attention to itself,relating the vicissitudes of Tony, Barrett, and thewomen, with the house as a silent third. Anaggressive staccato of short scenes alternating witheven shorter ones follow in the third stage, to beconcluded by a long and bewildering final scene. Thepattern of the film’s editing demonstrates arhythmic structure, different for each stage of thefilm [5].

In addition, both writer and director use differentmeans to express a similar mood. The script’s firstdescription of the house is as dilapidated, shabbierthan others on the street, with no carpets, no signs ofoccupation. In the second stage, Losey suggests thelighting is distinctively white and there areconstantly fresh flowers. In the third stage, Pinterspecifies ruffled carpets, rugs askew, magazines onfloor, full ashtrays, stained wallpaper, stair rodsloose, and bottles scattered. Losey’s note simply reads‘house more sinister’. Losey’s handwritten notes inthe shooting script describe this stage as an ‘overlayof Barrett’ everywhere. As the film becomesincreasingly diabolical areas appear black, whenonce they were white. The change in furnishingsmarks a change in the moral atmosphere.

The stair gameAn examination of the staircase in The Servant bringsto light the relationship between the servant and themaster as well as the relation between the two menand the house. As important ordering devices,staircases determine both plan and section. InLosey’s film, stairs take on greater significance as therelationship between Barrett and Tony replaces one(in filmic terms) of more conventional romance. Thestair appears in the opening scene, in crucial centralscenes, in the final scene, and occupies almost onequarter of the film’s running time representing asizeable proportion of screen time.

The exchange of power between master andservant exercises the architectural setting assymbolic and actual battleground of play. In thethird stage, Losey sets up a game on the stair thatepitomises a diametrical opposition to the Englishnotion of ‘fairness’ and the level playing field. Thebreaking of rules serves only to emphasise them.Throughout the film Losey uses games to introduceand explain the powerplay between the characters.This scene establishes the house as arena in whichthe relationship of master and servant will unfold.The structure of the game is a closed world but play isalways for someone. Its significance is only completebecause it is open to us, the viewer. As Gadamer,following Huizinga, argues: ‘Human play requires aplaying field’.11

Framing and staging illustrate the various stages ofthe power struggle. Barrett’s constant dominance inthe frame evinces his ascendancy despite his lowerstatus as servant. The formal structure closely relatesto the dramatic progression lying at the heart of the

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film, the domination of one person by another.Bogarde’s interpretation is edged with ambiguity asto whether Barrett only pretends to share in Tony’sdeterioration or whether he too has collapsedbecause the master/servant structure has beenundermined. The conclusion with Barrett in utterdissipation, suggests that he needs the class system asmuch as Tony.

The stair scene begins with the ball flung directlyat the camera (and the viewer). This simultaneouslybridges and emphasises the set distance from theaction of the audience in the cinema. Losey invitesthe spectator into the space through this aggressiveact that also excludes them thereby emphasising theplayers’ experience of the game as a reality. The roleof the spectator is essential; Gadamer argues that

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6 Stair game, TheServant (JosephLosey, 1963)

7 Exchange of Tonyand Barrett

8 Interior, Joseph LoseyHouse, Royal Avenue

9 Interior, Joseph LoseyHouse, Royal Avenue

10 Exterior, LocationHouse from TheServant, viewed fromsitting room windowof Joseph Losey’shome

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play is always play for someone, that the fourth wallof the audience completes it as in a work of art. Tonybegins in the master’s position, at the top of thestaircase and Barrett remains in the subservientposition, below him. From a high level the cameratilts down towards the front of the house. Due to thediagonal framing, the bottom four commode stepsof the stair itself are higher than the top,foreshadowing the exchange of roles about to takeplace [6]. This comprises the primary shot for thescene. Losey employs different sized framing so eachsegment of the sequence has either Tony or Barrett ina position in the frame reflecting their status.Barrett and Tony appear as small figures in theframe, affording primacy to the stair.

The stair is lit as a sports arena for play. Carefullighting creates two extra players in the game, forbehind Barrett and Tony their shadows loom on thewall like phantom opponents, larger, insubstantial,but commanding, as if the shadow contest is thetruer picture of the conflict. The shadows, likeextensions of their spirit, play out a drama ofmastery and subservience as in a shadow puppettheatre turning the characters into emblems orsymbols. The line of the light in the centre dividesthe frame and the characters one from the other. Thesingle lamp fixture (which could not actually cast allthe shadows) ‘suggests’ it is the source of the light inthe scene. Losey employed more than seven lights toget the desired effect. The brightly-lit balustradesform a ring of bars around the players and cast alarger shadow image on the walls emphasising thesense of enclosure. The figures move up and downtheir ends of the staircase, dwarfed by their ownshadows, which give form to their emblematic selves.At stake in this particular game, with the exchangeof positions of the two players and the involvement

of the viewer, is a more universal issue of theshattering of morality.

Tony and Barrett play a ball game of which thescreenplay states: ‘according to the rules, the ballmust be bounced off the wall or on the stairs past theopponent’. Their game continues until Tony throwsthe ball in Barrett’s face. Power, place, advantage areat stake as the contestants gloat at one moment in apoint scored and protest in the next they are beingunfairly treated. The ‘game’ with its arbitrary andoften illogical rules and implied notion of ‘fairness’is referent of the disintegration of class. Losey andPinter used a similar device to divide the upper fromthe middle classes in Accident (Losey, 1967).12 InAccident, the interior world of the Oxford donsreplaces the Royal Avenue house and Bogarde playsthe middle class interloper in a relationship with anupper class student. Losey intended these games toserve as a metaphor for and demonstration of theprinciples of entrapment.

In The Servant, Losey’s intention was to reverse theroles completely at a certain point in the narrative.The stair game marks this point as the pivotal centreof the film. This scene would constitute a moral oremotional centre to the film in a conventionalapproach except that here the characters do notthink or act in terms of emotion or morality. Itmarks the centre in the balance of power when theHegelian dialectic of master and slave reverses onitself. Barrett (the slave) transforms the Royal Avenuehouse for (master) Tony. The stages of house designreflect different stages of the power politics andgame playing. Barrett fulfils the master’s desires (aswell as anticipating and creating them) in such a waythat Tony becomes entirely dependent on him. Tony,recognising his need for Barrett, becomes animalisticin his anxiety to serve his servant. The two men are

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Notes1. The Servant, dir. Joseph Losey,

Springbok/Elstree, 1963; Georg W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit,trans. by A. V. Miller (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1977), §178–196.

2. Plato, The Republic, trans. byDesmond Lee (London: PenguinClassics, 1987), VII, 510–20.

3. Martin Heidegger, On the Essence ofTruth: On Plato’s Cave Allegory andTheaetetus, trans. by Ted Sandler(London: Continuum, 2002); BrunoQueysanne, ‘Dani Karavan’s WalterBenjamin Monument in Port Bou:On the Double Sense ofArchitectural Meaning’(conference paper, Architecture asPhilosophy/Philosophy as Architecture,CongressCATH 2004, Bradford);Frances M. Cornford, PrincipiumSapientiae (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1952), p. 136.

4. The Conformist, dir. BernardoBertolucci, Mars/Marianne/Maran,1969; Julia Annas, An Introduction toPlato’s ‘Republic’ (Oxford: ClarendonPress, 1981); Robert Kolker,Bertolucci (London: British FilmInstitute, 1985).

5. The Matrix, dir. Andy and LarryWachowski, Warner Bros, 1999.

6. Denis Hollier, Against Architecture,The Writings of Georges Bataille, trans.by Betsy Wing (London: MIT Press,1993), pp. 57–65; Georg W. F. Hegel,Aesthetics, Lectures on Fine Art, 2 vols.,trans. by T. M. Knox (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1975), II,‘Architecture’, p. 625; AnthonyVidler, The Architectural Uncanny(London: MIT Press, 1992), p. 131.

7. Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, VenusIn Furs, trans. by Uwe Moeller andLaura Lindgren (New York: BlastBooks, 1989), p. 59; AlexandreKojève, Introduction to the Reading of

Hegel, trans. by James H. Nichols, Jr.(New York: Basic Books, 1969); Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hegel’s Dialectic:Five Hermeneutical Studies, trans. byP. C. Smith (London: Yale UniversityPress, 1976); Jean-Luc Nancy, Hegel:The Restlessness of the Negative, trans.by Jason Smith and Steven Miller(Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press, 2002); CharlesTaylor, Hegel and Modern Society(Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1979), pp. 153–157; JosephLosey, ‘Interview’, in Isis (1963).

8. Plato, VII, 514c.9. Hollier, p. 10; Roger Hudson, ‘The

Secret Profession’, in Sight andSound (Summer, 1965), 116–118 (p.117).

10.Siegfried Kracauer, The Nature ofFilm: A Redemption of Physical Reality(London: Oxford University Press,1960).

11.Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and

dressed alike to make plainer the role reversal andsynthesis. There is a crucial inset scene, a mid-shot ofthe two men sitting on the stair, where theyexchange positions [7]. The ‘master’ and the ‘servant’characters reverse roles at the end of the game. AsLosey describes:

‘In addition to this reversal, and partly because of it, thewhole style of the film changes; not necessarily the visualstyle, but the tempo, the degree of reality, the degree ofextension of reality, and the morass of nightmare.’13

Tony may give the impression of being a weaklingwho overcompensates for his weakness by anapparent lordly manner, just as Barrett may give theimpression of being a coward who overcompensatesfor his feeling of powerlessness in the world by anapparent brutality. However, dependent on Barrett,Tony is only falsely the master. Barrett, who starts thegame in the inferior position, ends up standing atthe top of the stair where he dominates Tony,ordering him to run off and pour him a brandy. Bothcharacters exit the frame, and the camera remainson the stair.

No matter how one translates Hegel’s Herr undKnecht, as master and slave, Knight and Knave, or Lordand Bondsman, the bondage in question invokes apower struggle involving endless games andmanipulations. Losey’s film expounds upon notionsof self-awareness, enlightenment, mastery andservitude, where Plato’s cave allegory and Hegel’smaster and slave dialectic converge. The notableabsence of a happy ending compounds Losey’semphasis on domination and subordination thatreveals The Servant as an exceptional and informativefilm of its era. It may be understood, with the singlesource of light, and the large shadows on the wall,

and the characters who see only themselves, or theirshadows, as a depiction of Plato’s cave.

The film helps us to understand notions of placeand identity. Part of our job as architects is to create a‘home’ from an empty shell, to establish a placewhere individuals may feel ‘at home’, and to expresspersonal identity within the repeated pattern of theterrace house. Working within the familiar templateallows scope for ‘opening up’ or formalising volumesto give order and distinction to an interior that maybe a surprise from the neutral exterior.

For example, Losey’s own home supports Hegel’s(and others’) suggestion that we are all caught up asagents in a drama whose meaning is never clear atthe time, but understood only later. Before themaking of The Servant, Losey describes himself as ‘verydown, lonely, and alone’. The film was a criticalsuccess and set Losey back on his feet in thefilmmaking world. He was able to move out of hisflat on Montpellier Street and purchase a largerhouse. Losey was one of the first to embracecontemporary furniture design promoted byTerence Conran and David Hicks. He had glass diningtables, elongated ottomans upholstered withTurkish carpets tapestry-woven with geometricdesigns in rich, brilliant colours, walls of black glassmirrors, and open tread stairs with chromebalustrades [8 & 9]. In an upstairs study, dozens of small, framed photographs depict the directorwith the actors and writers with whom he worked. In an ironic escape from the cave, that for Losey washis self-imposed exile, Losey’s new house was onRoyal Avenue directly across the gravel-coveredsquare from the house used as location shot in The Servant [10].

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Method, trans. by Joel Weinsheimerand Donald Marshall (London:Sheed and Ward, 1989), p. 107.

12. Harold Pinter, Five Screenplays(Haverhill: Eyre Methuen, 1973), p.50; James Palmer and MichaelRiley, The Films of Joseph Losey(Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1997), p. 57; Accident, dir.Joseph Losey, London IndependentProducers, 1967.

13.Joseph Losey, Losey on Losey, ed. byJohn Milne (London: Secker andWarburg, 1967), pp. 34 & 134.

AcknowledgementsI wish to thank Patricia Losey for hergracious generosity in allowing me tophotograph her home. I also wish tothank the Gerda Henkel Stiftung.

Illustration creditsarq gratefully acknowledges:Author, 1–5, 7–10Springbok/Elstree, 6

BiographyRenée Tobe has a Diploma from theArchitectural Association and a PhD

from Cambridge University. She isSenior Lecturer in History and Theoryat Sheffield Hallam University.

Author’s addressDr. Renée Tobe Built Environment DivisionFaculty of Development & Society City CampusSheffield Hallam University Howard StreetSheffield, S1 1WB UKR.Tobe@shu.ac.uk

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