The Hireling (1973)

Director: Alan Bridges
Writers: Tito L.P. Hartley, Wolf Mankowitz
Stars: Robert Shaw, Sarah Miles, Peter Egan    
Runtime: 95 minutes    

PLOT: A young British woman suffering from depression over the loss of her husband develops an unusual relationship with her chauffeur.

REVIEW: "The Hireling," Alan Bridges's film version of the L. P. Hartley novel, is about England in the nineteen-twenties, about county aristocracy, about the cruelties of a class system that Hartley remembers with an outrage so tempered that it often seems a kind of fondness. Lady Franklin (Sarah Miles) is recovering from a mild breakdown she suffered following the loss of her husband, a young Tory Member of Parliament for whose death she feels vaguely responsible. In a hired limousine, a magnificent old Rolls-Royce, which takes her from the clinic to her mother's house in Bath, Lady Franklin engages the chauffeur in small talk. She talks to the back of his head, to one eye seen in a mirror. But after they arrive, the chauffeur, Ledbetter, is not just the back of a head, an eye and a uniform. He is a singular man, youngish, handsome, polite and, above all, calculating. Lady Franklin has been so invigorated by the depth of their communication that she engages Ledbetter to take her on a series of afternoon drives.

"The Hireling" is very good in individual scenes, in the look of its landscapes, in its observation of manners and especially in its refusal to over explain narrative details. However, by effectively reducing the conflicts within the English social order to a misunderstanding, It becomes not only silly but grossly misleading.The excellent supporting cast includes Peter Egan, as an ambitious young Liberal politician, who succeeds with Lady Franklin without half trying; Elizabeth Sellars, as Lady Franklin's mother, who is as self-absorbed as Lady Franklin will one day be, and Caroline Mortimer, as Egan's cast-off mistress.

Reviewed by Mohaiminul Islam