Harold Pinter 1930-2008

By FocusFeatures.com  | January 09, 2009 @ 09:45 am

Harold Pinter – playwright, screenwriter, poet and polemicist – died on December 24 2008, aged 78.

In 2005 Pinter was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Academy’s citation noting that he “is generally seen as the foremost representative of British drama in the second half of the 20th century. That he occupies a position as a modern classic is illustrated by his name entering the language as an adjective used to describe a particular atmosphere and environment in drama: "Pinteresque".”

Among Pinter’s most acclaimed works for the cinema are a trio of screenplays that he adapted from novels for director Joseph Losey: The Servant (1963), Accident (1967), and The Go-Between (1971). In 1990 Pinter’s adaptation of Ian McEwan’s novel The Comfort of Strangers, directed by Paul Schrader, was the closing gala presentation of that year’s Cannes Film Festival.

By way of tribute to Pinter’s passing, what follows are a sequence of extracts taken from Pinter’s own specially-written introductions to his Collected Screenplays, Volume I and Volume II (Faber and Faber, 2000), in which he remembers the Losey collaborations; and also some thoughts on the experience of working with Pinter from Paul Schrader, these taken from Schrader on Schrader (Faber and Faber, rev. ed, 2004, edited by Kevin Jackson).

Below Pinter makes reference to being the author of some 24 screenplays; but there would be further additions to this tally in the years after 2000, his last filmed work being the 2007 adaptation of Anthony Shaffer’s stage play Sleuth.

Pinter on Adaptation

I have never written an original film. But I've enjoyed adapting other people's books very much. Altogether, I have written twenty-four screenplays. Two were never shot. Three were rewritten by others. Two have not yet been filmed. Seventeen (including four adaptations of my own plays) were filmed as written. I think that's unusual. I certainly understand adapting novels for the screen to be a serious and fascinating craft.

Pinter on the Losey Films

I wrote the screenplay of Robin Maugham’s The Servant for Michael Anderson in 1962 but he wasn't able to find finance for the film. The script found its way to Joseph Losey. I went to see him in his house in Chelsea. "I like the script." he said. "Thanks." I said. "But there are a number of things I don't like about it."

"What things?" I asked. He told me. "Well, why don't you make another movie?" I said and left the house.

Two days later he called me. "Shall we try again?" he said.

I said "Okay." I went back to his house, we did further work on the script and over the next twenty-five years we worked on three more screenplays and never had another cross word.

It's strange to think that The Servant was written almost forty years ago. The film still seems as fresh as a daisy to me, whilst stinking of moral corruption. I think Joe Losey and the cameraman Douglas Slocombe did a superb job and Dirk Bogarde and James Fox made a wonderful couple…

Sam Spiegel financed the writing of Accident on which I worked with Joe Losey. When I had finished the script Spiegel read it and asked us to meet him in his office. He sat behind his classic producer's desk, the script in his hand, and stared at us.

"You call this a screenplay?" he said. "I don't know who these people are, I don't know what their background is, I don't know what they're doing, I don't know who's doing what and why, I don't know what they want, I have absolutely no idea what is going on, how can you call this a screenplay?"

Joe and I sat in silence. Joe finally said "I know what's going on."

"So do I." I said. "You two might know what's going on." Spiegel said. "But what about all the millions of peasants in China?"

We took the screenplay elsewhere.

The novel by Nicholas Moseley was a first person narrative, highly subjective, incorporating "streams of consciousness". I tried to go with that in an early draft but very quickly realised that "streams of consciousness" are fatal in the cinema. I settled for a hard, spare, tight, objective scrutiny and Joe Losey carried that scrutiny through in the shooting of the film. In consequence, I think it's a film of great economy and poise and a truly chilly beauty…

When I first read The Go-Between I burst into tears on the last page so that when Joe Losey asked me if I'd like to write a screenplay of it I said "Impossible. I can't write a screenplay with tears streaming down my face." However, I managed to pull myself together and get down to work. Joe and I decided quite early on that we would bring the present into the past throughout the film. This entailed the arrival of Michael Redgrave (the elderly Leo) to the village he last saw as a boy in 1912 where he witnessed or rather participated in the disintegration of a society. This structure was not popular with the distributors. Coming away from an early screening I heard a moneyman say "If they just get rid of all that Michael Redgrave crap it could do well." Pressure was brought to bear on us but Joe and I would not budge. I'm very glad we stuck to our guns.
Someone asked me once why I kept so much of L P Hartley's dialogue. I replied "Because it could not be bettered."…

© Harold Pinter 2000

Paul Schrader on Pinter

I was pretty pleased with the way The Comfort of Strangers came out, and I loved working with Pinter. That was just a hoot - Harold is definitely a major customer…

It’s the kind of piece he might well have written as an original – it has a lot of character similarities, it has action similarities to his plays. Venice has always been important in his plays, one of the characters is very much like the one in Betrayal, there’s a bit of action in it that is right out of The Birthday Party and so on…

Harold and I would have wonderful conversations. I remember one time getting into an argument about whether the end of a particular line should be a dash or an ellipsis. The argument was getting more and more intense, and then I thought, ‘Wait a second. The actors are going to be saying this, there’s not going to be a dash or an ellipsis on screen…’

I remember that the actors, all four of them [Christopher Walken, Helen Mirren, Rupert Everett, Natasha Richardson], had been bugging me about things in the script they didn’t like, but I like that elliptical way Harold writes, so I called him up and said, ‘Would you come down and do rehearsals with us for a week?’ And I said to the actors, ‘We’ll rehearse like a stage play, Harold will be in the room, I won’t say anything. Then Harold will go back to London, and we’ll rehearse it again as a movie, and at that point, I’ll address all your questions and comments.’ So Harold came down, and we just took the script and read it and read it. And at one point, Natasha Richardson said to Harold, ‘This woman I’m playing has two children but no husband. Is he dead, are they divorced, what’s the situation?’ And Harold growled back, ‘Natasha, I have never answered a question like that, and I’m not going to answer it now. Read the text!’ The point being that if she reads it enough, she’ll answer that question herself, and her answer will be a better answer, because she will have come up with it. After Harold went back to London, I said to the actors, ‘Okay, let’s talk any concerns you have.’ And Chris looked at said, ‘You know, I like the script the way it is. I think it’s pretty good.’ And the others said, ‘Yeah…’ So we didn’t make any changes…