Closeted star Dirk Bogarde dared to push the envelope with this seductive psychological drama

Image Credit: ‘The Servant,’ The Criterion Channel

Welcome back to our queer film retrospective, “A Gay Old Time.” In this week’s column, with late closeted film star Dirk Bogarde in the news, let’s revisit one of his great roles, 1963’s The Servant.

Earlier this week, some newly declassified files from the U.K.’s MI5 revealed that Dirk Bogarde—the British actor who was a matinee idol during most of the 1950s and quickly evolved into an icon of avant garde and independent cinema—had been the target of a sting operation from the KGB as a “suspected homosexual.”

So this week we’ll be diving into one of Bogarde’s signature roles, a biting and radical teardown of British social classes with heavy undertones of homosexuality and BDSM role-play. Maybe the KGB

READ MORE OF THIS POST AT Queerty