Harold Pinter Movies

The complex relationships among an Oxford professor, one of his students, and the young woman who captivates both of them is the subject of this difficult but rewarding drama. Director Joseph Losey and writer Harold Pinter had previously collaborated on 1963's The Servant, and they surrounded this recasting of a Nicholas Mosley novel with a similar atmosphere of ominous mystery. The story is presented through flashbacks and disconnected memories that trace the characters' interactions. Though the mood is occasionally brightened by satirical views of the academic world, the overall effect is rather somber, concerned with missed opportunities, unhealthy obsessions, and unavoidable regret. Dirk Bogarde superbly captures the pensive professor's torment, with able support from Jacqueline Sassard and Michael York as the younger couple. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide

Director David Jones adapted Harold Pinter's play of the same name -- with the help of Pinter himself -- to better fit this chronologically reversed drama of love and betrayal to the medium of film. The action starts with a scene in a London pub in which Jerry (Jeremy Irons) and Emma (Patricia Hodge) hold a subtly sardonic conversation on the nature of human failings as they meet for the first time after the end of their affair. The next scene, introduced by an intertitle, details how their romance fizzled and is followed by the next vignette, one year earlier, on how Jerry broke the news to Emma's husband Robert (Ben Kingsley) that he and Emma were lovers. And so it continues, through a total of nine scenes, back to the beginning of a complex, interpersonal drama. The film benefits considerably from Kingsley and Irons as the lead males, and the backwards story is in no way hard to follow. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

The American Film Theatre has made movies of a number of significant theatrical performances, including Laurence Olivier's Othello. Another of these filmed theatricals is Simon Gray's Butley, which was brought to the screen by playwright Harold Pinter, and which features an astonishing performance by Alan Bates. The story focuses on one very bad day in the life of Butley (Bates), a feisty, sharp-tongued, lazy and pathetic professor of English. His professional ascendancy is challenged by a slick, accomplished woman many years his junior; his ex-wife gives him conniptions when she announces her remarriage to someone he cannot bear; and his male lover of several years chooses this time to announce that he is leaving him for a sweeter-tempered but very ordinary man of the sort Butley despises. Bleak though this sounds, Butley's unconquerable wit and biting repartee transform this otherwise tragic tale into something of a celebration of survival. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Years before they became two of the most celebrated British actors of their generation, Jeremy Irons and Judi Dench were paired up for this dramatic tale of love and betrayal, produced for British television. Imogen Langrishe (Judi Dench) is a woman in her early thirties who lives with her sisters Helen (Annette Crosbie) and Lily (Susan Williamson) in a decaying mansion in rural Ireland as the men in her once-wealthy family are off at war. Struggling to keep herself and her siblings afloat, Imogen takes in a boarder, Otto Beck (Jeremy Irons), a moody graduate student working on his master's thesis. Spinster Imogen is quickly captivated with Otto's scruffy good looks, and he is more than willing to satisfy her sexual longings. It doesn't take long, however, for the relationship to turn sour, with dire consequences for Imogen, as well as her sisters. Langrishe, Go Down was adapted for the screen by Harold Pinter and was based on a novel by Aidan Higgins. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Jez Butterworth directed this adaptation of his own play about the 1958 rock scene in London's Soho. Silver Johnny (Hans Matheson) performs at the Atlantic Club where he catches the eye of big-shot Sam Ross (Harold Pinter). Ross invites Johnny and Johnny's manager Ezra (Ricky Tomlinson) for a meeting to discuss Johnny's jump to a bigger plateau. Skinny (Ewan Bremner), a member of Johnny's group, discovers Ezra sawed in half, and Ezra's associate Mickey (Ian Hart) announces that Ross intends to take over the Atlantic Club, setting the stage for major power struggles. Shown at the 1997 Venice Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

Based on the film Man Hunt, the BBC-produced Rogue Male stars Peter O'Toole as a British aristocrat who attempts to assassinate Hitler. After he fails, he is hunted down by the German Gestapo. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Movie Guide

Harold Pinter's theatrical piece The Birthday Party was committed to celluloid in 1968 by future Exorcist director William Friedkin. Robert Shaw plays a boarder in a sleazy British seaside-resort rooming house. The landlady (Dandy Nichols) holds a cheerless birthday party for Shaw, which is invaded by a couple of shady characters named Goldberg (Sidney Tafler) and McCann (Patrick Magee). No one knows why they're there except for Shaw, who after being repeatedly humiliated by the despicable duo is taken away by them to parts unknown. The Birthday Party ends with 30 seconds of a totally blank screen. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Listed variously as a 1975 and 1978 release (it was actually produced in 1976), The Collection is a videotaped staging of the play by Harold Pinter. Described by one observer as the theatrical equivalent to a musical chamber work, this production stars Alan Bates, Malcolm McDowell, Helen Mirren and Laurence Olivier. Little is said, but much is implied, in this story of an unorthodox romantic triangle. Running 64 minutes, The Collection was coproduced by Olivier for Britain's Granada Television. It was one of six works selected by the eminent actor for his "Best Plays of the Century" series: others included Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Hindle Wakes, Come Back Little Sheba, Daphne Laureola and Saturday, Sunday, Monday. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

John Fowles' original novel The French Lieutenant's Woman was distinguished by a literary technique that involved telling a story of Victorian sexual and social oppression within the bounds of a 1970s viewpoint. How does one convey this time-frame dichotomy on film? The decision made by director Karel Reisz and Harold Pinter was to frame Fowles' basic plot within a "modern" context of their own making. While we watch as Sarah (Meryl Streep), a 19th-century Englishwoman ruined by an affair with a French lieutenant, enters into another disastrous relationship with principled young Charles (Jeremy Irons), we are constantly made aware that what we're seeing is only a film. This is done by surrounding the story with a modern narrative, focusing on a movie production company which is on location--filming The French Lieutenant's Woman. Meryl Streep doubles in the role of Sara and the American actress who plays her, while Jeremy Irons essays the dual role of Charles and the handsome Briton playing Charles. Likewise, everyone else in the cast is seen as "themselves" and as their French Lieutenant's Woman characters. Not surprisingly, the "real" Streep and Irons enter into an affair which closely parallels their characters' relationship. The commercial TV version of French Lieutenant's Woman eliminates 30 minutes' worth of "extraneous" scenes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this dystopian fable, a librarian wife and mother becomes the childbearing pawn of a Christian theocracy. In the near future, as war rages across the fictional North American Republic of Gilead and pollution has rendered 99 percent of the female population sterile, Kate (Natasha Richardson) sees her husband killed and her daughter kidnapped while trying to escape across the border. Kate herself is transformed into a handmaid -- a surrogate mother for one of the privileged but barren couples who run the country's fundamentalist regime. Although she resists being indoctrinated into the bizarre cult of the handmaids, which mixes Old Testament orthodoxy and misogynist cant with 12-step gospel and ritualized violence, Kate soon finds herself ensconced at the home of the Commander (Robert Duvall) and his frosty wife, Serena Joy (Faye Dunaway). Forced to lie between Serena Joy's legs and be penetrated impersonally each month by the Commander, Kate longs for her vanished earlier life; she soon learns that since many of the nation's powerful men are as sterile as their wives, she may have to risk the punishment for fornication -- death by hanging -- in order to sleep with another man who can provide her with the pregnancy that has become her sole raison d’être. When that other man turns out to be Nick (Aidan Quinn), the Commander's handsome, sympathetic driver, Kate grows attached to him -- and eventually pregnant with his child. Only the mysterious rebel affiliations of her fellow handmaid, Ofglen (Blanche Baker), seem to offer any chance of giving her unborn child a life of freedom -- or finding the daughter she already lost. Loosely adapted by Harold Pinter from the novel by Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale also features Elizabeth McGovern in a small but pivotal role as Moira, a "gender traitor" who befriends Kate at the handmaids' reprogramming center. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide

In The Homecoming, adapted from the play by Harold Pinter, Michael Jayston brings his wife Vivien Merchant home to visit his long-estranged family. Jayston's father Paul Rogers is a washout, his uncle Cyril Cusack is on the edge of senility, and his brothers Ian Holm and Terence Rigby are, respectively, a slimy pimp and a brutish boxer. The sparser the dialogue, the thicker the tension in the air. Though British in origin, The Homecoming was presented as part of the American Film Theatre series. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Anne Bancroft stars as a restless, twice-married British woman with six children, whose third husband is a fledgling screenwriter (Peter Finch). When success spins Finch's head around, he begins to dally with women other than his wife. Meanwhile, Bancroft is forced to stay home and play "domestic goddess", a role for which she is utterly unsuited. After suffering a nervous breakdown, Bancroft wanders the streets of London in a vain search for a sympathetic ear. She eventually comes to grips with the situation at hand--but as in most of playwright Harold Pinter's works, the characters of The Pumpkin Eater are just as unfulfilled in the last scene as they were in the first. Anne Bancroft won a Cannes Film Festival award for her performance in this film. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide