A year after his death, a new Losey film opens in the cinemas. STEAMING raises special expectations: Is it a sort of testament? Or did Losey, as a director, with more than 30 feature films to his credit, die – so to speak – intestate? STEAMING, Losey's only film after returning from French exile, is in some ways a work in the “minor” genre of the filmed play. One thinks of the American Film Theatre productions (for which Losey did GALILEO), and Altman's SECRET HONOR, or COME BACK to the FIVE & DIME. It would have been more satisfying, if for the sake of symmetry at the very least, if Losey had directed Pinter's Betrayal, instead of the all-female cast of Nell Dunn's successful stage debut.

Nonetheless, STEAMING could be seen as a parable of English society in the Pinter mode. The Turkish baths are after all, a sort of microcosm, a refuge and place of comfort, but also of decay. “This Empire-rich society provided edifices of marble with beautiful fixtures.” That it should be demolished, to make way for a car park, is a fitting, though perhaps slightly too obvious an allegorical hint. On the other hand, the situation is also typical of many Losey films: the home, the refuge that turns into a beleaguered fortress. It recurs regularly, from THE PROWLER to THE SERVANT, from BOOM and SECRET CEREMONY to THE ASSASSINATION OF TROTZKY and A DOLL's HOUSE.

Usually it is a guest, regardless of whether invited or not, whose presence disrupts a precarious equilibrium, bringing into the open or engineering the tensions that lead, after a brief flash of self-awareness, to inevitable mental or physical self-destruction. The intruder who disturbs the peace this time is not a policeman (THE PROWLER), an insolent stable boy (THE SLEEPING TIGER), an au pair student (ACCIDENT), a self-styled angel of death (BOOM), a German gigolo (THE ROMANTIC ENGLISHWOMAN), a Jewish Resistance member (M. KLEIN) or a ruthless nymphet (THE TROUT), but a less symbolic or mysterious provocation – property speculators hiding behind a London borough council.