More Pinter and theatre made for film

 More on the cavalcade of Harold Pinter films recently offered on the Criterion Channel. Unlike the films reviewed in last week’s post, the two films I’m reviewing here were actually films of stage plays. These were produced by a fascinating company Ely Landau's American Film Theatre. This was an American company that in the early 1970s was formed to make reproductions of often avant-garde theatre restaged for the camera. These filmed stage plays were shown at theatres across America. The two presented by Criterion are Butley and The Homecoming.

Butley (1974) was directed by Pinter based on the play by Simon Gray. It’s an astonishing tour de force of acting by Alan Bates. Bates plays a private college English teacher, Ben Butley, specializing in T. S. Eliot. The play is a day in the life of this tormented but extraordinarily eccentric character. And he’s a verbal fire hose, spouting a virtually non-stop fusillade of philosophically laced sardonic wit on any person or subject he decides to ruminate about. For example, commenting on nicking his face shaving: “It’s no pleasure slicing open my chin with my estranged wife’s razor blade - the symbolism may be deft, but the memory still smarts.” Any thought of reconciliation with said spouse? “I’m a one-woman man and I’ve had mine, thank you.” And, to a student accusing him of being rude. “That’s another way of taking the fun out of teaching.” Bates’s performance is electrifying and breathtaking and I guess I hadn’t seen anything quite like it. 

The Homecoming (1973). This is the only title in the series that actually films (d. peter Hall) an original Pinter play, one of his most famous. Pinter said this about his plays, “There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal and what is true and what is false….It can be true and false.” And “our beginnings never know our ends.” The Homecoming is about an English working-class father and his three sons. Paul Rogers as the dominating Max, who alternately growls commands and upbraids his sons for their shortcomings. Yet the dynamics are constantly changing as a son might align with another against the father or with Max against his siblings. Everyone seems to be manipulating each other. Son Teddy (Michael Jayston) and his wife Ruth (Vivien Merchant, FYI Pinter’s first spouse) visit from America. Ruth seems placid. Yet, when tested, she reduces Len (Ian Holm) from intimidator to groveller. In Pinter’s plays, superficiality is the flip side of profundity, appearances are deceptive and subterranean forces like the id emerge as motivating factors. If the play at times seems absurd (ie., Ruth’s abrupt departure from her husband) mind the deeper forces at work.