In The Fixer, Bogarde again played a barrister representing a doomed prisoner, this time as the Russian Bibikov, defending a persecuted Russian Jew played by Alan Bates. From the outset, Bogarde had been unhappy with what he considered an inept script: ‘The script, the dialogue to be exact is frightful. Not Malamud’s. Why, when they have spent so much money on a book, must they re-write the author’s dialogue... It happens constantly and it never works.‘ (A Particular Friendship, 42) The role of Bibikov was poorly conceived, limited, and not written to allow him to develop the character. Instead, Bibikov was conveniently killed off to focus on the protracted angst of Bates’ character. ‘I stuck as closely as possible to the Malamud lines, it was the best any of us could do.’ Unhappy with director John Frankenheimer and the crew, he was glad to be rid of the film. (Castell, June 1974, 387)

By the end of the decade, Bogarde found himself once again with his friend George Cukor, who had been called in to salvage the direction of yet another film, this time Justine. Bogarde thought the script ‘not bad at all’, noting that ‘at least it has some of Durrell’s “feel” about it.’ (A Particular Friendship, 114) Portraying Pursewarden, a jaded British consular official assigned to Alexandria, he did an excellent job of conveying an ennui that masks the inner pain of his character who was trapped in a disillusioning career and a hopeless incestuous love. In writing about the film the critic Robert Emmett Long noted that under Cukor’s direction ‘Dirk Bogarde overshadowed all the other players, including the leading lady Anouk Aimee.’ (ix)