[8][9][10] Wealthy Londoner Tony, who says that he is part of a plan to build cities in Brazil, moves into his new house, and hires Hugo Barrett as his manservant.

As he grows more brutal, Susan struggles to free herself from his embrace, and Tony, rising from his drunken stupor, attempts to intervene.

[11] The Servant was directed by Joseph Losey, an American director who spent the last part of his career and life in England, after being blacklisted by Hollywood in the 1950s.

Originally separately commissioned by director Michael Anderson, Pinter stripped it of its first-person narrator, its yellow book snobbery, and the arguably anti-Semitic characterisation of Barrett—oiliness, heavy lids—replacing them with an economical language that implied rather than stated the slippage of power relations away from Tony towards Barrett.

"[9]Losey's other collaborations with Pinter, Accident and The Go-Between, share a resemblance to The Servant in that these offer the same savage indictment of the waning English class system,[16] a theme which had been rarely addressed in British cinema.

[15] Upon release, Variety commended the film for its direction, acting and the "sharp incisive dialog" in Pinter's screenplay, writing: "The Servant is for the most part strong dramatic fare, though the atmosphere and tension is not fully sustained to the end."

"[17] Penelope Gilliatt of The Observer called it "a triumph" and wrote "the thing that is most exhilarating about the film is that it has been written by someone who is obviously excited by the cinema and made by someone who obviously respects words".

The website's consensus reads, "Thanks in no small part to stellar work from director Joseph Losey and screenwriter Harold Pinter, The Servant strikes at class divisions with artful precision.

“In the spirit of Brecht and Meyerhold, the movie’s rejection of a passive, purely observational style and its creative use of sound, framing and editing, sensitized audiences not just to the destructive relations inside the master’s London home, but to those of British society at large.

—Critic Robert Maras in the World Socialist Web Site (2012)[24] Critic Robert Maras, art critic at the World Socialist Web Site notes the significant of the film among Losey’s contemporaries:"The Servant was widely praised in European filmmaking circles and helped encourage a period of greater social and psychological realism in British cinema.

"[25] Writing in Senses of Cinema, critic Dan Callahan reports that The Servant “consolidated” Losey’s reputation internationally.

[26] Film historian David Thomson writes: The Servant marked Losey’s coming of age among the artistic elite… the man who had made The Prowler and M as gripping, low-budget thrillers was now working in a world ready to acclaim his seriousness.