The Collector (1965)

William Wyler’s Anglo-American production The Collector was based on the bestselling novel of the same name by John Fowles. It was subject matter that was going to need careful handling in 1965. It was an odd choice for Wyler but apparently he was very keen to do this movie. It’s a kind of horror movie, but a very low-key subtle horror movie with the emphasis on psychological horror.

Gerald Franklin (Terence Stamp) is an odd young man. He’s very shy, very solitary and very lonely. He collects butterflies. Butterflies are beautiful and he likes beautiful things. It occurs to him that there may be more interesting things to collect than butterflies. Girls for instance. He’s already spotted a specimen who would make a fine start to his collection. Her name is Miranda Grey (Samantha Eggar).

Catching butterflies requires skill and patience, and careful preparation. You need the right equipment. And you have to know what to do with them when you catch them. The stalking and the catching are challenging and enjoyable. It’s the same with girls.

Franklin makes very careful plans indeed. And he has a place to put her when he’s caught her. He’s bought an isolated house and it has a large basement that he has turned into what he fondly imagines will be an ideal environment in which to keep a captive girl. He has no intention of hurting her. He just wants to keep her, as a sort of pet. Of course the trouble with girls as pets is that you can’t really release them. Not that he wants to release her.

Franklin is not your usual movie psychopath. He’s clearly a very troubled very disturbed young man. He’s obviously psychotic. But he’s not a killer. He likes Miranda. He wants to be kind to her. Girls are like butterflies. They’re fragile.

Which is of course what makes the movie so disturbing.

Naturally Miranda is not very happy about being kept as a prisoner. At first she assumes that she’s been kidnapped for ransom but Franklin doesn’t want money. So she assumes he wants sex but he assures her that he has no intention of forcing himself on her. Then she discovers the truth, which is even more horrifying. He’s in love with her. He assumes that if he keeps her a prisoner she will learn to love him.

Franklin obviously has no experience at all with women. He also obviously lives in a fantasy world. He really believes that his intentions are honourable. He really believes she will grow to love him.

Of course there is sexual tension. Miranda is a beautiful young woman. Franklin is clearly sexually attracted to her although it’s equally clear that he has no more understanding of his sexual feelings than he has of anything else. Miranda figures that eventually he will be unable to resist the sexual temptation. She asks him to at least not use violence on her - if he cannot control himself she will not resist, but she won’t respect him.

They make a deal. She agrees to stay for a month. She makes various escape attempts, but they are unsuccessful.

A weird relationship develops between them. She almost feels sorry for him, although she also feels contempt.

There’s a definite class dimension to this movie. Miranda is middle-class and privileged with all the self-confidence and unconscious arrogance that entails. She doesn’t have to work. She’s an art student. Franklin is working class. He was a clerk in a bank until he won a fortune on the football pools. He is very conscious of his lack of education and polish. Franklin is the sort of young man that Miranda would never dream of having anything to do with under normal circumstances.

The power dynamics are interesting. On the surface he has the power - he has her locked in the cellar. In practice, most of the time, she has the power. The fact that he is so desperate for her approval, and that she can hold out to him the possibility that she will be nice to him, and perhaps even grant him her sexual favours, gives her the edge. He needs and wants her. She neither needs nor wants him. And of course there’s that class dynamic - her effortless middle-class assumption of superiority.

Franklin is at times almost a sympathetic character. When he tells Miranda that under normal circumstances she would never even speak to him much less go out with him, that she and her friends would make fun of him, he is of course correct. What makes the film more interesting is Miranda’s unawareness of her own incredibly privileged position in society and the extent to which people without her privileges lead lives of misery and despair. She cannot understand how much the contempt of people like her hurts people like Franklin. She cannot put herself in his shoes. She is not only financially secure and middle class, she is also young, female and beautiful. She has the world at her feet. She has men at her feet, if she wants them. She has no idea what it’s like for someone like Franklin to look at a girl like her knowing that such a girl would never even give him a chance.

Obviously Franklin is mad and his behaviour is appalling but while the movie doesn’t attempt to exonerate him it does allow us to understand him.

And while Miranda is the victim she’s oddly unsympathetic. Her contempt for him is so vast that most of the time she doesn’t even fear him.

In the 60s both Terence Stamp and Samantha Eggar seemed destined for brilliant careers. They made successful high-profile movies. They were talented. Eggar was nominated for an Oscar for The Collector and won the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival. The brilliant career just never happened for her. The box-office fiasco that was Dr Dolittle may well have sunk her career. Stamp was a major star in the early to mid 1960s then just walked away from the film business. Ten years later he attempted a comeback, but by that time he’d been forgotten.

They both give brilliant nuanced performances.

The Collector is a psychologically and socially complex movie, disturbing but with a slight black comedy edge to it. It’s not a horror movie or a thriller but it has some affinities with the psychological horror and psychological thriller genres. Great movie. Very highly recommended.