MIRANDA: We all want what we can’t have.
FREDDIE: We all take what we can get.
Terence Stamp and Samantha Eggar won Best Actor and Actress at Cannes. Eggar went on to earn an Oscar nomination, along with the Screenplay and Direction. This is all deserved. While there’s a very suspenseful sequence involving a bath and a couple of physical fights, they’re not nearly as interesting as the two leads engaging in psychological battles.The bulk of the film is the interplay between Freddie (Stamp) and Miranda (Eggar). Rather than rely on sensational suspense pieces or tawdry violence and sexuality, The Collector gets under your skin merely on the basis of the great verbal interactions.
It’s cat and mouse where the mouse must constantly talk the cat out of eating her. That being said, there is a perverse air to the claustrophobic setting. The film feels as sleazy as you can get for 1965, a mixture of Freddie’s disturbing look at the world and Miranda’s inability to hide her disdain – which Freddie interprets to be based on social class and not the fact that he’s her captor – as well as her spectacular beauty.
During a great, very telling moment at the beginning of the film Freddie grabs hold of Miranda, and is in such close proximity can’t help blurting out “I love you.” He immediately recoils in shame, begins to make excuses like a lover who suffered from (*ahem*) premature release. Freddie constantly insists his attraction to her isn’t sexual, yet time and again his actions show a man fighting with his primitive nature. He says he wants her to get to know him, but when she asks questions his answers are terse. He’s walled off. She constantly tries to appease his requests, but he’s too damaged by this point to let his guard down and trust her. He finds reason to fault her for not trying to connect, but the problem is his own.
Part of what I love about The Collector is you can interpret the relationship different ways. As an engaged observer, it’s clear that Freddie is damaged, and being a movie, it’s just as easy to judge mistakes Miranda makes in her difficult situation. With the distance of the screen, some might make a case that Miranda could’ve ended things sooner. In trying to save herself, she ends up making things worse.
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