I had high hopes for this movie given the many bright lights involved in its making, especially Dirk Bogarde. Unfortunately, "Accident" did not live up to its promise. I found myself getting restless and fidgety as the characters laid their overeducated, upper-crust depravity on quite thickly in scene after scene. There's a lot of very heavy drinking and a lot of bed hopping here, with a dollop of death and a dash of spoofing the Oxford dons, but in the end it doesn't seem to amount to very much really...just a couple of middle-aged gents chasing the same skirt, that skirt being predictably much younger than themselves, while their wives are left to piece things together, or not, off on the sidelines. The fact that these middle-aged men succeed in their shared conquest of a girl half their age while their boyishly virile, handsome rival (Michael York) doesn't get any makes the whole premise rather implausible.
If I could rewrite this plot I'd have Dirk Bogarde's Stephen and Stanley Baker's Charley suddenly discover their suppressed lust for one another amidst their frustration in being bested by Michael York's William. Michael York would get the girl of everyone's dreams after many trials and tribulations and Bogarde and Baker would make beautiful gay music together. Scandalous...piquant...but alas it was not to be...
If I could rewrite this plot I'd have Dirk Bogarde's Stephen and Stanley Baker's Charley suddenly discover their suppressed lust for one another amidst their frustration in being bested by Michael York's William. Michael York would get the girl of everyone's dreams after many trials and tribulations and Bogarde and Baker would make beautiful gay music together. Scandalous...piquant...but alas it was not to be...