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Last night it was The Homecoming. Vivien Merchant put in a memorable performance, but the rest... it was close to one of those "How could I un-see it?" moments.
Follow Ups:
I just watched The Homecoming on Criterion. I was both intrigued and irritated. My first exposure to Pinter. Early on, I saw that this is one of those movies where people don't talk like people but like characters. OK, that can work. Everyone in the family is either passively aggressive or actively aggressive virtually throughout. They lack any sort of normal human boundaries, Lenny, for example, talking about his urge to kill a woman to someone he just met, just casual conversation. And the returning brother maintains all those family characteristics, and his wife, just meeting the family, adopts them quickly and naturally.There is some wickedly funny dialogue and behavior. It was all quite claustrophobic, inside a shabby house with those few unpleasant people. But the dialogue kept my interest throughout. I will probably watch it again.
I watched this mainly because of a book The Best Movie You've Never Seen, in which Atom Egoyan recommended this as his neglected classic and described all the reasons he loves it.
Edits: 12/21/20
Ok, so I watched it last night for the first time. Started out humorous, then a bit unsettling, then by the end seemed like an abstract vehicle to make some points about the relationship between men and women. Probably will not watch it again.
Am going to watch The Servant again this evening since it's probably been fifteen years. From what I recall it seemed like a film that may have inspired films like Persona, 3 Women, or Mulholland Drive.
The Servant has good moments, but quickly moves into artificial direction, I find the slow degradation rather unconvincing.
First and foremost is that when I was in college majoring in Theater Arts, I played the part of Teddy in a production of The Homecoming. The film version of that play is a bit depressing, but in the stage version the ironic twists and humor can be played up with the right actors playing all the major parts. Pinter as you may or may not know was married at one time to Vivien Merchant who of course was featured in movie version of The Homecoming. Pinter in addition to writing some memorable stage pieces, also wrote several other movie scripts for films that I am also fond of... namely The French Lieutenant's Woman, the remake of Sleuth and of course Elia Kazan's The Last Tycoon. I wish he had a more prolific career in films but sadly that was not the case....
I did not know about those other films, thank you for pointing it out.
BTW - a few days ago we also watched The Go-Between, his stab at Victorian drama.
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This was the third film as result of cooperation between Pinter and Losey, and it is a must, even if such period dram is not necessarily your cup of tea.
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Yes, absolutely. Criterion is currently streaming some. Watched "The Pumpkin Eater" for the third time. First saw it thirty years ago and was fascinated. Will be rewatching "The Servant" and "Accident".
Which I find self-conscious and unsettling. Walken turned up "dark and weird" to 11 in that one.
The Pumpkin Eater is way too depressing...
Like tin said - I also can take that in severe moderation.
time around, I appreciated it more--- Dirk Bogarde, whom I've always thought as very similar to James Mason, was wonderful--- expressive with a nuance beyond most American actors' range. The biggest surprise, though, was Stanley Baker. I've only seen him in macho roles; it was odd to see him in glasses and portraying a don! He nicely brought it off, though.
The women, all 3, were perfect, as well. Seyrig has to be one of the sexiest women in film history, and so effortlessly.
And that brings us to... Michael York. Here, reality meets fiction: he actually attended and graduated from Oxford. When he punted, he did so with a practice that would be hard to come by for the purposes of one short scene...
I am going to revisit several other Pinter films and in advance reserve the right to contradict my earlier facile dismissal...
I doubt I appreciated it nearly as much when we saw it many years ago. I truly don't know why it only gets 6.9 on imdb, to me it is as perfect a movie as they come.
So tonight - The Servant... I definitely have a weak spot for Sarah Miles.
filmed in Marienbad, at all...) last night and marveled at her beauty--- and how central music is to the film.
The two finest modern era French actresses, she and Deneuve, are truly ice queens. Strange, isn't it, considering that the persona of French women is that their passion leads them to cuckold a husband as easily as send back an imperfectly prepared omelet. Then of course, the ultimate complexity... Bardot. Hard to make heads-or-tails about her, though I'd have liked to try. (One would have to compete with several Beatles and Bob Dylan--- among dozens of other famous and filthy rich to do so...).
...I wrote about it a couple of years ago... and if you like Seyrig, do you remember her in Chantal Akerman's moody and gruesome "Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles"
That 15 minute potato pealing scene was something. :)
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More depressing than "Accident" or "The Servant"? "The Pumpkin Eater" is probably my favorite, although I agree it is tough going...
productions. But I don't. For some time now, British theater/film has been an unrelenting hate fest. I can only tolerate so much anger, bitterness, and rage. Has nothing to do with Covid, either, I've always been like this. "Do something about it or shut up!"
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