The Sleeping Tiger

Forget the plot, which errs on the wild side as a psychoanalyst (Knox) experimentally instals a handsome young gunman (Bogarde) in his home, only to discover - to no one's surprise but his own - that the sleeping tiger of his wife's id easily outbids his patient's. Enjoy the high-wire tension of Losey's direction, the lurking paranoia that charges his images with electricity. Losey's first British feature, made under a pseudonym in the shadow of the blacklist, it sheds the classic modulations of The Prowler. Instead, you see the birth pangs of what came to be known as Losey baroque, erupting grandiosely in the closing sequence, with the lovers' car crashing through a hoarding to founder beneath the rampant paws of the Esso tiger.