The Birthday Party *** (1968, Robert Shaw, Patrick McGee, Sydney Tafler, Dandy Nichols) – Classic Movie Review 6801

Harold Pinter’s highly respected and greatly admired classic play about lodger Stanley Webber, a tatty paying guest (Robert Shaw) in a seedy rooming house at an English seaside resort, who is threatened by two mysterious visiting weirdoes, Nat Goldberg and Shamus McCann (Sydney Tafler and Patrick Magee), is given an ideal cast (particularly Dandy Nichols as the landlady, Meg Bowles), who give strong performances, and a solid production.

The then young American film-maker William Friedkin (The Exorcist, The French Connection) is a surprise candidate as director, but he keeps it effectively claustrophobic and properly theatrical and stylised. Pinter, adapting his first full-length play here in 1968, eschews any judicious cutting, so the film runs a perhaps lengthy-seeming 123 minutes.

But, still, The Birthday Party impresses, and it is a useful documentation of Pinter’s quality dialogue in a typically enigmatic play that is timeless but still very much of its time, etching its way permanently into the theatre repertory as a standard for regular revivals.

The other cast members are Moultrie Kelsall as Pete Bowles and Helen Fraser as Lulu. It is a useful documentation of some lovely actors’ admirable performances.

The Birthday Party is directed by William Friedkin, runs 123 minutes, is produced by Continental and Palomar Pictures, is written by Harold Pinter, based on the play by Harold Pinter, is shot in Technicolor (with some sequences in black and white) by Denys N Coop, is produced by Edgar J Scherick, Max Rosenberg and Milton Subotsky, with Art Direction by Edward Marshall.

Friedkin and Pinter spent a year working together, there were 10 days of rehearsal, and then the shoot went smoothly.

Friedkin saw the play in San Francisco in 1962 and said it was ‘the first film I really wanted to make, understood and felt passionate about’. Funding came from Palomar Pictures partly as it was low budget. Pinter both wrote the screenplay and was active in the casting choices. Friedkin adds: ‘I don’t think our cast could have been improved.’

Friedkin refused a request from Joseph Losey via Pinter that he should cut out a mirror shot as it was like Losey’s trademark style.

Friedkin filmed another play: The Boys in the Band.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6801

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