Very Cool!!!

Truly Dreadful Film

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

I think that Roger Ebert pinned this work down when he said that adapting the Pinter play would inherently cause some problems - what one can buy as a little more fantastical and hermetically sealed on a stage, where one can be just stuck with these two people on the 'job' with their assignment as Mr. Stanley Webber (Robert Shaw) is a little harder to buy in a film because the reality is different (at least in this case. While I would recommend the film to people, especially for those who want to seek out Friedkin's oeuvre, and it has some terrific performances, it is an exceedingly strange and odd sit.The film is about... well, what is it really? I suppose it's about what happens to a man when he cracks under the weight of pressure and has a nervous breakdown, but that's the sort of main-ultimate point, if there is one. I felt like Pinter was challenging me and the audience, though to what end I am sure I don't know. Of course there is a great deal of suspense - what Shaw knows that the owners of the house don't about these two stranger-boarders (Patrick Magee, who you may recall as the Writer from Clockwork Orange, and Sydney Taffler who is really razor-sharp and wonderfully sadistic as Nat Goldberg) - amid this 'birthday party' which is now really on his birthday.Of course this is what is called 'theater of the absurd'. And to this point there are a few funny moments, but I wouldn't necessarily call it a comedy, at least in Friedkin's hands. Perhaps it's because of the edge of Robert Shaw, who is probably the main reason to watch the film is for his startling performance that keeps an emotional through-line. When he first starts off in the movie he's mad at Dandy Nichols for... something or other (the tea, the corn flakes, the milk, for not, uh, talking to him in a particular way). One almost wonders if he's about to strike her, it's that sort of intense screen persona. But there's a lot more to his character and Shaw conveys this in this big early scene (he's also, I think, an ex-concert pianist or something).You have to be set in the right frame of mind for this movie, and it definitely won't spoon-feed you easy dramatic answers to questions that are posed. By the end I was still not sure who Goldberg and McCann represented (my first thought was they were in some criminal organization - the "job" aspect made me think of a heist, and perhaps that's not that far from the truth by the very end, in a sense). Maybe it's a metaphor for how easily people can crack up, how manipulation and torture are so insidious, especially when pressed hard enough, and meanwhile the mostly happy old Mrs Bowles has her own dimensions too and works as a counterpoint for everyone else (she, along with her husband, has nothing to hide).There's also some dazzling and bizarre camera and lighting choices, though these mostly come in the last couple of reels as the birthday party 'amps up' so to speak, with a camera at one point latched on to a character's head for dizzying perspective and when the lights go out at one point it's... I can't even. The point is, The Birthday Party is a good little find that is Friedkin in love with a piece of material that is bold, difficult and gives himself some chance to take what he learned directing television (I'm not sure if he did live theater but it wouldn't surprise me) into cinema and make it alive and thrashing. Whether it all makes sense is another story.

I thought the first ten minutes or so were great as the film has a really nice gritty, dark, grimy look to it. The storyline and pace started off OK and I was interested to see how it would develop. However, after about twenty minutes or so, the non sequiturs and random unexplainable dialogue (that seemed to imply there was something more to everything that was being said but never actually went anywhere) started to become really boring.Once those two fellas entered the scene it started to drag even more. Just a bunch of rambling nonsense. I couldn't bear it any longer and flicked through the last half hour.

I remember stumbling across this movie on late-night TV many years ago and being utterly enthralled. I was familiar with Robert Shaw, who now rates as one of my favourite character actors - think of his work in "Jaws" and "The Hireling", among others - and I recognised Patrick Magee from Kubrick movies and Dandy Nicols from "Till Death Us Do Part". But I had never heard of Harold Pinter, and I was simply blown away by his script, the acting, and the originality of this movie's overall vision.Of course, "The Birthday Party" is a fairly straight filming of a stage play, and so it lacks many of the unique pleasures of the cinematic experience. But there is still much here to interest lovers of film. There is terrific use of darkness and light, a sparse yet perfectly judged soundtrack, odd angles, close-ups, and highly effective editing and pacing. Everything adds up to create an unparalleled atmosphere of claustrophobia, menace, and dread. I feel this must have been Pinter's intention for the play, and yet that's probably just because Friedkin's interpretation feels so "right" that I can't imagine it any other way -surely an indication that this is a successful realisation of Pinter's drama.I can well imagine why this film would be lost on many. There is nothing solid for the viewer to grasp - no background, no real sense of time or place (well, OK, it's set in a British seaside boarding house), no explanation for the sudden intrusion of the two visitors. And there is virtually no plot, just maddeningly circuitous dialogue which only serves to mystify. Yet this is the whole point. Nothing is really explained, any clues thrown our way turn out to be misleading, we know something sinister and complex is happening yet we remain locked out. Thus do the playwright and his director build in us a sense of foreboding and (to borrow a phrase from Bret Easton Ellis) "nameless dread". There is high drama, momentous and awful things are happening before us, yet we cannot begin to understand the why's and wherefores.Some brilliant touches: the artless snare-drum solo, rising to an insane climax then stopping abruptly (heard at several crucial turning-points in the movie); the newspaper-tearing sequence, so laboured, so pointless, yet perfectly defining the character played by Magee (especially when he snarls "LEAVE THAT!" as Nicols tries to clean up his neatly laid-out strips of torn newsprint); the absurd, unbelievable, yet extraordinarily intense characterisations of the main players. In this respect especially, Sidney Tafler's performance is a revelation.It's quite a unique cinematic experience, highly original, fascinating and menacing in a way I've never seen before or since in a movie. For this reason I hold "The Birthday Party" in very high esteem and wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone interested in experiencing something a little different from any other movie they've watched.

I must say I will take a little umbrage at the meagre critical reception this film has got; it seems to have largely been just written off as "well acted, *but* not suited/adapted to film". I would have to say it's a good thing to try and broaden the audience for what is undeniably a fine play in my opinion, by making a film. The film sticks very closely to the dramatic text, and it's a critical truism to say that the immediacy of theatre performance is lost. It may well be that Pinter is particularly good on stage (certainly judging by a recent run of "The Collection" that I saw in September), but he's also been very effective cinematically, in the adaptations of "The Servant" and "Accident". This is certainly a more constrained film than "Accident", and a little more so than the claustrophobic "The Servant"; one could say the director and others involved with the film are playing it safe, but that's no problem really, as the formula was excellent to begin with. Certain exterior shots do add a lot I feel, as does the subtle, suggestive opening in the car. For a film as "theatrical" as this is claimed to be, it has good camera sense, and handles the dialogue neatly. The scene where it shifts to monochrome in the dark light I did like. I feel that the scotched, grim, mundane colour stock of the film is certainly in tune with the play and the though.Most important perhaps, in a performance of Pinter on film, are the performances, and I must declare them to be excellent and overlooked. Robert Shaw, an actor I always enjoy ("A Man for all Seasons" and "From Russia With Love" making up a decidedly contrasting threesome of Shaw films I've seen...), is proficient as Webber, the absurd "mystery man" laying low in a seaside boarding house. Most impressive to my mind though, are Dandy Nichols, Patrick Magee and Sydney Tafler. Nichols certainly plays the darkly hilarious role of the unknowing, deluded Meg to a veritable tee. Magee and Tafler define the roles of Goldberg and McCann, the sinister, well-versed double-act, to such an extent that I'll definitely think of them in the roles from now on, when I think of the play. Magee is a foreboding, but often unwittingly droll presence in the film, timing his acting brilliantly. His Irish tones contrast finely with Goldberg's sophisticated Jewish-London accent. Tafler is an absolute marvel in this role, walking away with the film in many ways, embellishing another elusive, odd Pinter character, the most erudite in the play. He fills the screen amply and times the dialogue perfectly; a stunning performance, by a somehow obscure actor. The chap who played Petey Boles is also good, in a small but certainly necessary part.Of course, one unfamiliar with Pinter may be bemused by the oddball plot, struggle to come up with instant meanings and then describe it as weird and incoherent, as if those were bad things... Of course, it isn't truly incoherent; there are meanings and interpretations to be made if one pays close attention to the dialogue. And it is the dialogue, that, as ever with Pinter, dazzles. Suffice to say, I am not truly in a position to analyze and describe why his dialogue is so brilliant in a mere film review such as this is, but trust me, his dialogue is remarkable; making the banal seem rich and sinister, and the rich seem banal and ritualistic (in Goldberg's case). A worthy effort really, this film, I'd say, as it captures so much of the Pinter brilliance.Rating:- ****/*****