The Spaces Between the Words: A Tribute to Harold Pinter july 21 - 31, 2001 photo: the comfort of strangers

film descriptions and times Harold Pinter is quite simply one of the finest artists we have, and we’re happy to join our friends at the Lincoln Center Festival 2001 with this week-long tribute. Pinter first brought his tense, unnervingly dramatic rhythms to the movies in 1963, with his brilliant compression of Robin Maugham’s novel The Servant. Although he’s written only adaptations for the cinema – often of his own plays – every script is unmistakably his. Whether the source material is an Adam Hall spy thriller (The Quiller Memorandum) or an L.P. Hartley novel (The Go-Between), the voice and the vision belong to Pinter: harsh, pitiless, but crackling with excitement, the words and emotions as precisely notated as in a musical score. We’ll be including a rare showing of Sir Peter Hall’s 1973 adaptation of Pinter’s The Homecoming for the American Film Theater, as well as Clive Donner’s 1964 version of The Caretaker. We’ll also be showing some rarities, including the 1989 HEAT OF THE DAY, starring Michael Gambon and Dame Peggy Ashcroft, and the 1980 LANGRISHE, GO DOWN, with Jeremy Irons. And we’ll be winding up with two of Pinter’s most famous collaborations with director Joseph Losey and actor Dirk Bogarde, THE SERVANT and ACCIDENT, which will take us into our August salute to Bogarde. Come help us celebrate the work of a towering artist named Harold Pinter. We would like to thank the BBC, BFI, Granada Television, Judy Daish, Max Rosenberg, Jessica Rosmer, Nigel Redden, and Harold Pinter. Master British playwright Harold Pinter speaks about his own work with Mel Gussow of The New York Times on Friday July 27 from 5:30 to 7 at the Julliard Theater at Lincoln Center. Free admission.

accident the servant

THE PUMPKIN EATER Jack Clayton, 1964; 110m Anne Bancroft is the woman with six children who fastens herself to a new man, a screenwriter named Armitage (Peter Finch). As she is pregnant with baby number seven, she discovers that her new husband can’t be faithful, and soon suffers a breakdown. She learns from a lecherous older man (James Mason) that Armitage is expecting a child with another woman, and continues her gliding spiral downward. A magnificent film of hushed resignation and anguish, adapted by Pinter from Penelope Mortimer’s novel, beautifully acted by Bancroft, Finch and Mason and perfectly mounted by perennially underrated director Jack Clayton. Music by Georges Delerue. Sat July 21: 3:30 & 8:30 Mon July 23: 1 & 6 Tue July 24: 3:15 THE GO-BETWEEN Joseph Losey, 1971; 118m Michael Redgrave is Leo Colston, remembering back to 1900, when he was 13 (Dominic Guard plays Leo as a boy) and spent the summer at the Norfolk estate of his friend Marcus. Marcus’s sister Marian (Julie Christie) takes a shine to Leo, and eventually starts asking him to take secret messages to their neighbor Ted (Alan Bates), behind the back of the man to whom she’s engaged (Edward Fox). L.P. Hartley’s novel is a modern classic, as powerful an inquiry into the nature of veiled motivations and emotions in Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier. In their final collaboration, Pinter and Losey crafted an acutely perceptive, quietly tragic film out of Hartley’s classic. Thanks to their addition of the framing device with Redgrave as the older Leo, THE GO-BETWEEN ranks as one of the finest "memory films" ever made. "When I first read The Go-Between I burst into tears on the last page," Pinter admitted. Sat July 21: 6 Mon July 23: 3:30 & 8:30 Thurs July 26: 8:15 ACCIDENT Joseph Losey, 1967; 105m Summer in Oxford, and beneath the genteel surface there’s a network of resentment and cruelty between two professors (Dirk Bogarde and Stanley Baker). They’ve both dallied with the same student, who’s just been killed with her boyfriend in a car accident. Pinter’s second collaboration with Joseph Losey is even bolder than THE SERVANT; the time shifts, the nuanced performances and the astonishing use of color and sound contribute to a quietly devastating film. One of the boldest works of a bold era. With Michael York, Vivien Merchant, Jacqueline Sassard, Alexander Knox, Delphine Seyrig and Pinter himself as Bell. "[A] movie of real suffering that is clever, delicate and urbane with the most elegant infighting in acting between Dirk Bogarde and Stanley Baker" (Manny Farber). Sun July 22: 3:30 & 8 Mon July 30: 6:30 BETRAYAL David Jones, United Kingdom; 95 minutes A drama of deception, between a husband (Ben Kingsley), his wife (Patricia Hodge) and their best friend (Jeremy Irons), with whom the wife has been having a long-standing affair. Pinter moves the action backward in time, and every step back uncovers a new layer of discomfort and hurt. One of Pinter’s finest plays, beautifully modulated and toned for the screen by director David Jones and his cast. Kingsley is rivetting as the husband - the viewer hangs on his every emotional change-up. Sun July 29: 7:20 & 9:30 THE SERVANT Joseph Losey, 1963; 115mbr> A breakthrough: a long, elegant swan dive into the intricacies of the British class system, with a tone unlike that of any other film before or since, at once urbane, nasty and cool. Dirk Bogarde is Barrett, the servant hired by a lazy young aristocrat (James Fox) named Tony to manage his newly acquired Georgian townhouse. When Barrett realizes that Tony’s upper-crust girlfriend (Wendy Craig) is a threat to his supremacy within the household, he sets his sluttish girlfriend (Sarah Miles) to work. By the end, the tables have turned, and master and servant are equals on a field of loathing. It took quite a bit of doing for Losey, Pinter and Bogarde to get this adaptation of Robin Maugham’s novel off the ground, but it was worth it: "The film still seems as fresh as a daisy to me," wrote Pinter, "whilst stinking of moral corruption." Sun July 22: 5:45 Sun July 29: 5 & 9:30 MonJuly 30: 4 & 8:45 Tue July 31: 4

the comfort of strangers the quiller memorandum

THE COMFORT OF STRANGERS Paul Schrader, 1991; 105m Rupert Everett and Natasha Richardson are a bored, unfulfilled British couple having a tense holiday in Venice. Christopher Walken and Helen Mirren are the mysterious older couple who befriend them, lure them to their palazzo and slowly enmesh them in their own very private, very mysterious intrigue. Walken lets out all the stops here, and blankets the movie with his off-kilter menace. But the real star of Paul Schrader and Harold Pinter’s Ian MacEwan adaptation is the puzzle of human behavior, reflected in the dark, bewitching surfaces of Venice. THE COMFORT OF STRANGERS makes the most creative use of that city since Don’t Look Now. "The two victims did go through that door," commented Pinter, "and the fearsome Christopher Walken ate them up." Tue July 24: 1 Wed July 25: 3:45 Sat July 28: 5 THE QUILLER MEMORANDUM Michael Anderson, 1966; 105m In the era of James Bond, Matt Helm, Modesty Blaise and The Ipcress File, a taut, precise spy film without flash or gimmickry was bound to be overlooked, but THE QUILLER MEMORANDUM ranks with the finest films in the genre. A young George Segal plays Quiller, the spy brought home from his holiday by his Cockney superior (Alec Guinness) to look into the deaths of two Berlin operatives. When he arrives, Quiller uncovers a secret neo-Nazi organization, run out of a school and led by Oktober (Max von Sydow). A solid movie filled with patches of ominous quiet, perfectly acted by Segal, Guinness, von Sydow and Senta Berger. Wed July 25: 1:30 Thurs July 26: 6 Sat July 28: 7:10 LANGRISHE, GO DOWN David Jones, 1978, video; 105m A young Jeremy Irons starred in this adaptation of Aidan Higgins’s legendary "Big House" novel. Judi Dench is Imogen Langrishe, the youngest of four single sisters ("In reality my three brothers and myself in drag," said Higgins) living in Celbridge, County Kildare, in the late 30s. She remembers her one great love affair, with a German student named Otto Beck. "It was a brilliant, haunting book," wrote Pinter, "and I much enjoyed adapting .... The film was true to both the script and the book and I thought it tough and delicate. Jeremy Irons scored a bull’s-eye with his portrait of the unscrupulous German student." Wed July 25: 6 Thurs July 26: 1:30 THE HEAT OF THE DAY Christopher Morahan, 1989, video; 106m A solid adaptation of Elizabeth Bowen’s 1949 novel about a woman in wartime England named Stella (Patricia Hodge) who is delicately accosted by a "counter-spy" (Michael Gambon) and drawn into a plot to incriminate her lover (Michael York), an intelligence officer who may be peddling secrets to the Germans. "Patricia Hodge gave a very intelligent and touching performance," wrote Pinter, "Michael Gambon one of his very best and Michael York his best. The film was shown at 10pm on a Saturday night the day after Boxing Day and about three people saw it." Wed July 25: 8:30 Thurs July 26: 3:45 THE CARETAKER Clive Donner, 1964; 105m One of Pinter’s favorites among the many adaptations of his plays for the screen, this movie, also known as The Guest, was privately financed by a group of 10 that included Peter Sellers, Noel Coward and Mr. and Mrs. Richard Burton. Alan Bates and Robert Shaw are Mick and Aston, two warring brothers. Aston invites a tramp named Davis (Donald Pleasence) to stay at Mick’s house, and the brothers use the poor man as both a shield and a weapon. Brilliantly directed by Clive Donner, and shot by future director Nicolas Roeg. Fri July 27: 1 Sat July 28: 2:45 & 9:15 THE HOMECOMING Peter Hall, 1973; 111m Cyril Cusack, Ian Holm, Michael Jayston, Vivien Merchant, Terence Rigby and Paul Rogers repeat their brilliant performances from the original 1965 production of Pinter’s masterpiece, brought to the screen for the American Film Theater series in the 70s and perfectly staged by the great Sir Peter Hall. Jayston is the son returning home with his wife (Merchant). They find the family nest buzzing with anger and ill feelings, a small colony of people — father (Rogers), Uncle (Cusack) and brothers (Holm and Rigby) — who can never get away from the terrible, cozy comforts of family. A towering achievement in the theater, and a great film - incidentally, THE HOMECOMING is a favorite of Atom Egoyan’s. Fri July 27: 3:10 & 8 Email this web page to a friend! Enter the recipient's e-mail address: