The Hireling (1973)

“Lady Franklin” (Sarah Miles) is reduced to an emotional black fog following the death of her husband during the War and her close friends seem unable to reach her. It might be that her chauffeur can do that, as she gradually begins to bond with “Steven” (Robert Shaw). He is a fastidious and proud, self-employed, gent who is polite and charming to her. He even lets her sit in the front with him - despite the inappropriateness, familiarity even, of this. She begins to treat him more like a confidant, hiring him more often and spending more time with him for the sake of it. As time progresses, he begins to find himself more drawn to her, but he knows the class divide is immense and that she is also being courted by veteran “Capt. Cantrip” (Peter Egan) whom we can determine fairly easily isn’t so much interested in her as in her fortune. What chance the societal norms can be broken? Can anything ever transpire between them? When it comes down to it, does she actually want it to? Shaw and Miles are on great form here. The former delivers a delicately accumulating characterisation of a man conflicted by an innate understanding of his own position in the great scheme of things, but one increasingly infatuated in and concerned for his employer. The latter plays the emotionally disturbed character equally effectively, with a degree of demure frustration that seems to be desperate to break from her shell of conformity, whilst equally addicted to it’s security. It’s a grand looking production with loads of attention to the detail in the production design, but it is really the cumulating toxicity that emanates from Shaw that seals the seal here, showing the iniquities of the class system don’t just work in the one direction.