“Starting with an accident and ending with its echo, constructed out of a chain of interlocking emotions which lead right back where they started from, gradually generating a beam of light to illuminate the central situation before it dies away again, Accident is as simple, as bafflingly perfect--and as difficult to take apart--as a circle” (Tom Milne, Sight and Sound). Dirk Bogarde stars as an Oxford don who lives a contentedly splendid life with his children and pregnant wife, but who desires in the worst way to be having an affair with his beautiful Austrian pupil. What he doesn't know yet is that his friend Charley is having an affair with this same beautiful Austrian (who remains just that throughout the film, a catalyst for accidents, as it were). While wives, old girlfriends and new boyfriends look on, the three engage in a struggle typical of Losey's films of this period (e.g., The Servant): “Everything is calm, unruffled, lacquered in a veneer of civilization, yet underneath it all, one gradually begins to realize, the characters are tearing each other emotionally to shreds” (Milne, National Film Theatre).