Harold Pinter Movies
It is difficult to determine what was in the psychological makeup of Briton Harold Pinter that resulted in a playwriting style distinguished by tension-filled pregnant pauses. Possibly this minimal use of wordage stemmed from Pinter's own communication problems with his Portuguese-born Jewish father. In the 1950s, Pinter attended RADA and hoped to be an actor under the Anglo-Saxon professional name David Baron. Instead he turned to writing, penning his first play, The Room, for the Bristol University drama department. After a lukewarm response to his first professionally produced play, The Birthday Party (1958), Pinter rose to fame with the 1960 stage production The Caretaker. With 1963's The Servant, Pinter made his bow as a screenwriter, and also essayed his first film role (he has since acted in other films, such as 1985's Turtle Diary, but hasn't declared any intention of making this his life's work). While many of his films (The Caretaker, The Birthday Party, the Oscar-nominated Betrayal) are adapted from his own plays, just as many have been screen originals. Pinter's film scripts aren't quite as enigmatic or confusing as his plays, in fact many have been models of clarity and succinctness, notably his Oscar-nominated adaptation of John Fowles' complex The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981). For a man who wasn't overly fond of excess verbiage, Pinter had considerable success on BBC radio, but here again it's what is not said in Pinter's plays that's most important. In 1974, Harold Pinter ventured into film directing with Butley, an over-the-top comedy by Peter Gray that's as far removed from the usual Pinter style as a Marx Brothers film. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
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
- Starring:
- Dirk Bogarde, Stanley Baker, (more)
This spy saga differs from the usual Bond-styled fare that was popular at the time. There are plenty of gadgets but the hero Quiller (George Segal) never once uses a gun. Quiller is called on by his superior Pol (Alec Guinness) to infiltrate a Neo-Nazi gang in Berlin after two British agents have been killed on the same mission. After a teacher at a school has hanged himself when he is accused of being a war criminal, Quiller meets the late teachers replacement, the lovely Inge (Senta Berger). He willingly goes home with her before being beaten, drugged, and kidnapped by Nazi thugs, but the head Nazi Oktober (Max Von Sydow) allows Quiller to escape in hopes he will lead them to Pol. Quiller is captured again and given until morning to reveal information or he and Inge will die. George Sanders and Edith Schneider make the most of their limited screen time with fine performances. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- George Segal, Alec Guinness, (more)
- 1964
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
- Starring:
- Anne Bancroft, Peter Finch, (more)
Wealthy wastrel James Fox hires insouciant cockney Dirk Bogarde as a valet. No sooner has he donned his working clothes than Bogarde begins exercising a subtle but insidious control over his master. Suggesting that the house could use a little fixing up, Bogarde convinces Fox to spend a whopping amount of money on it. But this is just a warm-up session for Bogarde, who by mid-film is calling all the shots in the Fox household, all the while pretending to keep his place. Fox's fiance Wendy Craig sees through Bogarde's game. Bogarde then brings his own lady friend Sarah Miles into the house. At Bogarde's insistence, Miles seduces Fox, thereby loosening Craig's hold on the confused young man. And so it goes. The homosexual subtext of The Servant disturbed some of the more hidebound critics of 1963; Harold Pinter based his cryptic screenplay on a novel by Robin Maugham. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Dirk Bogarde, Sarah Miles, (more)
- 1963
The Guest is a filmed adaptation of the Harold Pinter play of the same name. Donald Pleasence plays a laconic tramp, who is invited to stay in the home of Robert Shaw, on the implied promise that he, Pleasence, will be hired as caretaker. Shaw's off-in-the-coop brother Alan Bates is delighted to have Pleasence around...to "play" with. In the manner of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Shaw and Bates uses Pleasence as a punching bag for their own hang-ups. Photographed with the proper degree of claustrophobia by Nicolas Roeg, The Caretaker was independently produced by a celebrity consortium including Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Peter Sellers, and Noel Coward. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Alan Bates, Donald Pleasence, (more)
