Editing Joseph Losey (section)

==Career in Europe==
{{box quote|width=30em|bgcolor=cornsilk|fontsize=100%|salign=center|quote= “As his many interviews reveal, Losey was an artist who thought long and hard about his work, a man of exceptional candor, as ready to judge some of his films harshly as to express his pleasure in others.” - Critics James Palmer and Michael Riley in ''The Films of Joseph Losey'' (1993).<ref>Palmer and Riley, 1993 p. 2</ref>}}
Losey settled in Britain and worked as a director of genre films. His first British film ''[[The Sleeping Tiger]]'' (1954), a [[film noir|noir]] crime thriller, was made under the pseudonym of Victor Hanbury, because the stars of the film, [[Alexis Smith]] and [[Alexander Knox]], feared being blacklisted by Hollywood in turn if it became known they had worked with him. It was financed by Nat Cohen at Anglo-Amalgamated who also financed ''[[The Intimate Stranger (1956 film)|The Intimate Stranger]]'' (1956), where Losey carried a pseudonym as well.<ref name=archer/><ref name="one">{{cite magazine|magazine=Filmink|date=12 January 2025|access-date=12 January 2025|first=Stephen|last=Vagg|url=https://www.filmink.com.au/forgotten-british-moguls-nat-cohen-part-one-1905-56/|title=Forgotten British Moguls: Nat Cohen – Part One (1905-56)}}</ref> 

His films covered a wide range from the [[British Regency|Regency]] melodrama ''[[The Gypsy and the Gentleman]]'' (1958) to the gangster film for Cohen, ''The Criminal'' (1960).<ref name=french>{{cite news |last=French |first=Philip |title=Blacklisted but unbowed |url=https://www.theguardian.com/film/2009/may/24/joseph-losey-film-director |access-date=April 3, 2013 |newspaper=[[The Guardian]] |date=May 23, 2009}}</ref>

Losey was also originally slated to direct the [[Hammer Films]] production ''[[X the Unknown]]'' (1956), but after a few days' work the star [[Dean Jagger]] refused to work with a supposed [[Communist]] sympathiser and Losey was removed from the project. An alternative version is that Losey was replaced due to illness.<ref name="rusc">{{cite web |title=R U Sitting Comfortably – Dean Jagger |url=http://www.rusc.com/old-time-radio/Dean-Jagger.aspx?t=1028 |website=RUSC.com |access-date=2 May 2016}}</ref><ref name="senses">{{cite web |last1=Sanjek |first1=David |title=Cold, Cold Heart: Joseph Losey's The Damned and the Compensations of Genre |url=http://sensesofcinema.com/2002/director-joseph-losey/losey_damned/ |website=senses of cinema |date=March 18, 2016 |access-date=2 May 2016}}</ref> Losey was later hired by Hammer Films to direct ''[[The Damned (1963 film)|The Damned]]'', a 1963 British science fiction film based on H.L. Lawrence's novel "The Children of Light".

In the 1960s, Losey began working with playwright [[Harold Pinter]], in what became a long friendship and initiated a successful screenwriting career for Pinter. Losey directed three enduring classics based on Pinter's screenplays: ''[[The Servant (1963 film)|The Servant]]'' (1963), ''[[Accident (1967 film)|Accident]]'' (1967) and ''[[The Go-Between (1971 film)|The Go-Between]]'' (1971).<ref>Maras, 2012: “ [H]is most acclaimed and influential films—The Servant, Accident and The Go-Between—were made in the 1960s and early 1970s in collaboration with British playwright Harold Pinter.”</ref>
''The Servant'' won three [[British Academy Film Awards]]. ''Accident'' won the Grand Prix Spécial du Jury award at the 1967 [[Cannes Film Festival]].<ref>{{cite web |title=Accident |url=http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/archives/ficheFilm/id/2777/year/1967.html |work=Festival Archives |publisher=Festival de Cannes |access-date=April 3, 2013 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120118042459/http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/archives/ficheFilm/id/2777/year/1967.html |archive-date=January 18, 2012}}</ref> ''The Go-Between'' won the [[Palme d'Or|Golden Palm Award]] at the 1971 [[Cannes Film Festival]], four prizes at the 1972 [[BAFTA]] awards, and Best British Screenplay at the 1972 [[Writers' Guild of Great Britain]] awards.<ref>"IMDb: Awards for The Go-Between" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067144/awards</ref> Each of the three films examines the politics of class and sexuality in England at the end of the 19th century (''The Go-Between'') and in the 1960s. In ''The Servant'', a manservant facilitates the moral and psychological degradation of his privileged and rich employer. ''Accident'' explores male lust, hypocrisy and ennui among the educated middle class as two [[Oxford University]] tutors competitively objectify a student against the backdrop of their seemingly idyllic lives. In ''The Go-Between'', a young middle-class boy, the summer guest of an upper-class family, becomes the messenger for an affair between a working-class farmer and the daughter of his hosts.

Although Losey's films are generally naturalistic, ''The Servant''{{'}}s hybridisation of Losey's signature [[Baroque]] style, film noir, [[Naturalism (arts)|naturalism]] and [[expressionism]], and both ''Accident''{{'}}s and ''The Go-Between''{{'}}s radical [[cinematography]], use of [[Montage (filmmaking)|montage]], [[voice over]] and musical score, amount to a sophisticated construction of cinematic time and narrative perspective that edges this work in the direction of neorealist cinema. All three films are marked by Pinter's sparse, elliptical and enigmatically subtextual dialogue, something Losey often develops a visual correlate for (and occasionally even works against) by means of dense and cluttered ''[[mise-en-scène]]'' and peripatetic camera work.

In 1966, Losey directed ''[[Modesty Blaise (1966 film)|Modesty Blaise]]'', a comedy spy-fi film produced in the United Kingdom and released worldwide in 1966. Sometimes considered a [[James Bond]] parody, it was based loosely on the popular comic strip ''[[Modesty Blaise]]'' by [[Peter O'Donnell]].'

Losey directed [[Robert Shaw (actor)|Robert Shaw]] and [[Malcolm McDowell]] in the British action film ''[[Figures in a Landscape (film)|Figures in a Landscape]]'' (1970), adapted by Shaw from the novel by [[Barry England]]. The film was shot in various locations in Spain.

Losey also worked with Pinter on ''The Proust Screenplay'' (1972), an adaptation of ''[[A la recherche du temps perdu]]'' by [[Marcel Proust]]. Losey died before the project's financing could be assembled.

In 1975, Losey realized a long-planned film adaptation of Brecht's ''Galileo'' released as ''[[Life of Galileo]]'' starring [[Chaim Topol]]. ''Galileo'' was produced as part of the subscription film series of the [[American Film Theatre]], but shot in the UK. In the context of this production, Losey also made a half-hour film based on [[Galileo]]'s life.{{citation needed|date=September 2015}}

Losey's ''[[Monsieur Klein]]'' (1976) examined the day in Occupied France when Jews in and around Paris were arrested for deportation. He said he so completely rejected naturalism in film that in this case he divided his shooting schedule into three "visual categories": Unreality, Reality and Abstract.<ref name=brody/>  He demonstrated a facility for working in the French language and ''[[Monsieur Klein]]'' (1976) gave [[Alain Delon]] as star and producer one of French cinema's earliest chances to highlight the background to the infamous [[Vel' d'Hiv Roundup]] of French Jews in July 1942.

In 1979, Losey filmed [[Mozart]]'s opera ''[[Don Giovanni]]'', shot in [[Villa Capra "La Rotonda"|Villa La Rotonda]] and the Veneto region of Italy; this [[Don Giovanni (1979 film)|film]] was nominated for several [[César Awards]] in 1980, including Best Director.