Harold Pinter

(pause)

Yes.

"Is the corn bread good?"

...

"Yeh, it's good corn bread."

i've never seen any of his plays (except one for the road), which i accept is a bad position to start from: i've seen several of the movies he wrote scripts for — i think they're all pretty terrible... partly this is down to dirk bogarde allergy i'm sure

Why I like it so: I haven't time to get it right, but: I read it at 17, saw it at 18; it feels rooted in the real, but also strange and unreal; it's local and colloquial, to jaw-dropping lengths; above all, it's astoundingly funny, or at least has been, to me, at enough times in my life.

PinterMovies: The Servant is pretty gd, I'd say, plus it has Davey Graham in it... and have always wanted to see 'Accident', for Delphine Seyrig if nothing else. I like the previously mentioned Peter Hall version of 'The Homecoming', esp. Ian Holm's performance. Holm just seems like the perfect actor for Pinter - small, twitchy, secretive, paranoid, dangerous...

why did he accept his knighthood?

even as a major benn-hater, i can't think of a figure i want more to say "you now this isn't actually about your feelings" to...

I thought that The Servant and Accident were superb films. I've only seen a few of his plays, but I'd say that it's difficult to dislike Pinter when you see him in the theatre, because the conversational rhythms are so funny. And his themes are worthwhile - the way that life is a constant power struggle, the way we reinvent memory, the difficulty of understanding other people, the differences between men and women. Whatever you say about him, he has some integrity.

I just saw The Homecoming -- my first experience with Pinter. Amazing language, but not quite sure I got the point as far as the plot. What started as disturbing realism became somewhat absurd by the end - I couldn't quite believe that Ruth would opt for whoredom. Maybe something was missing in the direction or acting?

thanks for the spoiler

it's 45 years old

i guess it's got cats beat, then

his screenplay for The Comfort of Strangers (dir Paul Schrader, from the novel by Ian McEwan) is very ... Pinteresque.

If you watch it online, make sure it's not an edited version.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2IFqPKq0Jc

that film + too much speed = me properly messed up for weeks

hahaha

Schrader did a Q&A last night and talked about Pinter coming in to watch the actors do rehearsal/readthrough for a week. He loudly refused to answer any extratextual questions.

Schrader/Pinter/McEwan is a perfect triangulation of the emotional nausea that underpins this - i've never gone back and watched it sober so i couldn't honestly say whether i rate it or not, but as a psycho-horror it shares the same desolate/comic space as Don't Look Now i think

well i think it's funnier, if not as scary. also MUCH queerer.

Rupert Everett getting punched in the gut is a YAAAAY moment i'd been waiting decades for.

Schrader said that he found himself introducing the Mishima-esque theme of the danger of beauty, in addition to McEwan's "men and women are hostile enemies" and HP's "language is a tool of noncommunication."

'The Homecoming' is great, particularly the film version with Vivien Leigh.

― Momus, Tuesday, April 2, 2002 12:00 AM (13 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I know it's kind of nakhchivanesque to arbitrarily pluck a post out of nowhere to hold up to ridicule 13 years later but it's Momus so I think it's allowed.

never arbitrarily

Probably not, strike arbitrarily.

Talking of films of Pinter movies, (William Friedkin's) "The Birthday Party" isn't very good but Sydney Tafler gives the single best filmed performance in a Pinter play I've ever seen - better than Donald Pleasance in "The Caretaker".

The Homecoming film -- I think this is the full London stage cast of six, including Ian Holm

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2vkk0a

I love when Michael Jayston says

"It smells like a u-RINE-al."