Though his pretty-boy good looks first propelled him to fame as a British matinee idol, there was always something edgy and intriguingly unwholesome lurking beneath Dirk Bogarde’s debonair surface: a complex, neurotic soul that, in his extraordinary later career, he bared before the cameras of iconoclastic auteurs like Joseph Losey, Luchino Visconti, Liliana Cavani, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Through his brilliant performances in frequently controversial art-house provocations such as VICTIM, THE SERVANT, DEATH IN VENICE, and THE NIGHT PORTER, Bogarde became something of an emblem of transgressive sexuality, moral corruption, and decadence—an actorly embodiment of postwar Europe’s bourgeois malaise. The fearlessness with which Bogarde took on these risky roles and the intelligence that he brought to them has ensured that, one hundred years after his birth, he endures as one of cinema’s most captivating performers.
Directed by Anthony Asquith • 1950 • United Kingdom
Five different angles on a woman's personality and murder come to light during the police investigation in Anthony Asquith's murder mystery.
Directed by Lewis Gilbert • 1954 • United Kingdom
Starring Michael Redgrave, Dirk Bogarde, Anthony Steel
In this gripping World War II thriller, four Allied men struggle to survive in a lifeboat on the North Sea after their plane is shot down. One of the men, Air Commodore Waltby (Michael Redgra...
Directed by Lewis Gilbert • 1955 • United Kingdom
Starring Dirk Bogarde, Margaret Lockwood, Kathleen Harrison
Dirk Bogarde twists his matinee-idol charm to dark ends in this tense British noir. His name may be Teddy Bare, but you’d better not cuddle up to this psychopath, who murders his wealthy...
Directed by Basil Dearden • 1961 • United Kingdom
An extraordinary performance by Dirk Bogarde grounds this intense, sobering indictment of early-sixties social intolerance and sexual puritanism. Bogarde plays Melville Farr, a married barrister who is one of a large group of closeted London me...
Directed by Joseph Losey • 1963 • United Kingdom
Starring Dirk Bogarde, Sarah Miles, Wendy Craig
Director Joseph Losey and playwright Harold Pinter kicked off their celebrated trio of collaborations with this provocative deconstruction of class, power, and identity adapted from the novella by Ro...
Directed by John Schlesinger • 1965 • United Kingdom
Starring Julie Christie, Dirk Bogarde, Laurence Harvey
Julie Christie won a best actress Oscar for her star-making performance as a restless model ascending the social ladder of swinging-sixties London as she bounces between affairs with two m...
Directed by Joseph Losey • 1967 • United Kingdom
Starring Dirk Bogarde, Stanley Baker, Jacqueline Sassard
Mysterious, subversive, and endlessly fascinating, ACCIDENT is a tantalizing modernist puzzle from director Joseph Losey and writer Harold Pinter. Stephen (Dirk Bogarde) is a middle-aged pro...
Directed by Luchino Visconti • 1969 • Italy
Starring Dirk Bogarde, Ingrid Thulin, Helmut Griem
Selected by none other than Rainer Werner Fassbinder as his favorite film of all time, Luchino Visconti’s deliriously perverse vision of Nazi decadence charts the fortunes of the industrialist von Esse...
Directed by Luchino Visconti • 1971 • Italy
Starring Dirk Bogarde, Björn Andrésen, Marisa Berenson
Based on the classic novella by Thomas Mann, this late-career masterpiece from Luchino Visconti is a meditation on the nature of art, the allure of beauty, and the inescapability of death. A fastid...
Directed by Liliana Cavani • 1974 • Italy
Starring Charlotte Rampling, Dirk Bogarde
In this unsettling drama from Italian filmmaker Liliana Cavani, a concentration camp survivor (Charlotte Rampling) discovers her former torturer and lover (Dirk Bogarde) working as a porter at a hotel in postwar ...
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1978 • West Germany
Starring Dirk Bogarde, Andréa Ferréol, Klaus Löwitsch
Adapted by Tom Stoppard from a novel by Vladimir Nabokov, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s first English-language film is a perversely stylized investigation of identity and duality. Dissat...
Directed by Bertrand Tavernier • 1990 • France
Starring Dirk Bogarde, Jane Birkin, Odette Laure
Dirk Bogarde delivers a spirited final screen performance opposite Jane Birkin in this poignant and perceptive tale about the regrets that mark a lifetime. As a father to his screenwriter daughter Car...
