Butley **** (1974, Alan Bates, Jessica Tandy, Richard O’Callaghan, Susan Engel, Michael Byrne, Georgina Hale) – Classic Movie Review 8,594

‘His wife just left him for another man. And so did his boyfriend.’ Alan Bates gives a dazzling performance in director Harold Pinter’s brilliant 1973 drama film Butley, based on Simon Gray’s masterwork play.

‘His wife just left him for another man. And so did his boyfriend.’

Director Harold Pinter’s 1973 drama Butley is a stage-bound but brilliantly entertaining and revealing film of one of the Seventies most ear-catching London West End theatre plays, based on the masterwork play by Simon Gray.

Butley is a valuable recording of Alan Bates’s dazzlingly waspish and mannered performance (which probably did look even a little better in the theatre) as an emotionally and professionally troubled English professor, Ben Butley, whose life starts falling apart.

Gray’s jaundiced screenplay exactly captures the alienated British middle-class mood of the Seventies. Maybe Pinter (making his film director début after directing the play on the London stage in 1971) was not the ideal choice as director here, and perhaps pruning of a long play would have tightened the film. But Butley is still top-notch, provocative, thoughtful entertainment for intelligent grown-ups.

Butley was made for the American Film Theatre, a short-lived but brilliantly useful attempt to preserve important plays on celluloid. It was produced by Ely Landau and released through Landau’s American Film Theatre on January 21, 1974 (US) and April 1976 (UK).

Butley (Alan Bates),

The cast are Alan Bates as Ben Butley, Jessica Tandy as Edna Shaft, Richard O’Callaghan as Butley’s close friend Joey Keyston, Susan Engel as Butley’s estranged wife Anne, Michael Byrne as Reg Nuttal, Georgina Hale as Miss Heasman, John Savident as James, Simon Rouse as Mr Gardner, Oliver Maguire as Train Passenger, Susan Wooldridge, Patti Love, Darien Angadi and Colin Haigh as male student.

Butley was filmed at Shepperton Studios, Shepperton, Surrey, England.

Butley runs 129 minutes, is executive produced by Otto Plaschkes, and is shot by Gerry Fisher.

Surprise choice Richard Briers took over from Alan Bates and greatly impressed in the original London stage version of Butley in 1972.

Harold Pinter wrote about the play: ‘Simon Gray asked me to direct Butley in 1970. I found its savage, lacerating wit hard to beat and accepted the invitation. The extraordinary thing about Butley is that the play gives us a character who hurls himself towards destruction, while living in the fever of his intellectual hell with vitality and brilliance. It’s a remarkable creation and Alan Bates as Butley gave the performance of a lifetime.’

Butley (Alan Bates, Richard O’Callaghan).

Richard O’Callaghan (born Richard Brooke; 7 March 1940, London) is the son of actors Patricia Hayes and Valentine Brooke. He played in two Carry On films: Carry On Loving (1970) as Bertram Muffet and Carry On at Your Convenience (1971) as Lewis Boggs. He also played Fulganzio in another American Film Theatre film, Galileo (1975).

Georgina Hale won the 1975 BAFTA Film Award for Most Promising Newcomer for Mahler.

Georgina Hale won the 1975 BAFTA Film Award for Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles for Mahler, Ken Russell’s 1973 film biopic of the composer. She also appeared in Russell’s The Devils (1971), The Boy Friend (1971), Lisztomania (1975), and Valentino (1977), and in Russell’s bizarre 1995 TV movie Treasure Island, in which she plays the young Jim Hawkins’s flirtatious bingo-calling Mum.

Georgina Hale (4 August 1943 – 4 January 2024) received a Laurence Olivier Award nomination for her performance in the original London stage production of Steaming, but even so she was overlooked for Joseph Losey’s 1985 film version Steaming.

Her other films include Butley (1974), Sweeney 2 (1978), The World is Full of Married Men (1979), McVicar (1980), The Watcher in the Woods (1980), Castaway (1986), Preaching to the Perverted (1997), Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont (2005), and Cockneys vs Zombies (2011).

She enjoyed a long and successful film, TV and stage career, but remains best known for her roles in the films of Ken Russell, especially Mahler. Russell said she was ‘an actress of such sensitivity that she can make the hair rise on your arms’.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8,594

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