The Hireling is a 1973 British drama film directed by Alan Bridges, based on a 1957 novel of the same title by L. P. Hartley, which starred Robert Shaw and Sarah Miles.

[3] Set in and around Bath, Somerset, immediately after the First World War, the story opens at an expensive mental clinic in the countryside where the young and recently widowed Lady Franklin is being discharged.

When he takes her to a boxing night at a boys' club that he helps to run, she meets another committee member, the young former officer Cantrip.

His business is failing, his casual relationship with the waitress Doreen brings no joy, his deepening affection for Lady Franklin is no longer returned, and his rage against his more successful rival is intensified by Cantrip's concealed involvement with Connie.

Cantrip's life is considerably more precarious but by marrying a rich and socially superior woman he will enter the landed gentry.

Ledbetter, a working class man with no capital who rose as far as he was likely to get in the army, in civilian life ranks little above a cab driver.

"[10] Joyce Haber, of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "Special Categories – Worst Performances by Any Female Star: Sarah Miles for 'Cat Dancing' and 'The Hireling'.

...What appealed to Bridges about 'The Hireling', which starred Sarah Miles as an aristocratic young widow and Robert Shaw as her chauffeur, was the violent deceptions upon which their relationship was based.

"[15] "Robert Shaw, Sarah Miles, Elizabeth Sellars and a first-rate cast take dead aim at the British class system in a withering adaptation of the L.P. Hartley novel about a chauffeur who helps draw an upper-class woman out of her chronic depression in the mistaken impression she loves him.

"[16] "Robert Shaw plays a chauffeur who helps an upper-class woman (Sarah Miles) out of a mental depression, but mistakenly assumes she is interested in him.