| The Birthday Party | |
|---|---|
Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | William Friedkin |
| Produced by | Max Rosenberg Milton Subotsky |
| Written by | Harold Pinter |
| Starring | Robert Shaw Patrick Magee Dandy Nichols Sydney Tafler Moultrie Kelsall Helen Fraser |
| Cinematography | Denys Coop |
| Editing by | Antony Gibbs |
| Distributed by | Continental Motion Pictures Corporation |
| Release date(s) | December 9, 1968 |
| Running time | 123 min. |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
The Birthday Party is a 1968 British drama film directed by William Friedkin, based on an unpublished screenplay by 2005 Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter, which he adapted from his own play The Birthday Party, considered an example of Pinter's "comedy of menace".
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The protagonist is a lodger in his late 30s named Stanley (Webber), played by Robert Shaw, who is staying at a seaside boarding house; he is visited by two unexpected additional guests, menacing and mysterious strangers, Goldberg (Sydney Tafler) and McCann (Patrick Magee). Their neighbour, Lulu (Helen Fraser) brings her a parcel, a boy's toy drum presented to Stanley as his "birthday present." Goldberg and McCann offer to host Stanley's birthday party after Stanley's landlady, Meg (Boles), played by Dandy Nichols, tells them that it is Stanley's birthday, although Stanley protests that it is really not his birthday. In the course of the party, Goldberg and McCann break Stanley down and ultimately take him away from the house purportedly to get medical attention (from "Monty") in their car. The film ends (as the play ends) after Meg's husband Petey (Moultrie Kelsall), a deckchair attendant, who did not attend the party because he was out playing cards, calls after Stanley, "Stan, don't let them tell you what to do"; at the end, Meg, still somewhat hung over, is unaware that Stanley has been taken away, since Petey has not told her that, and tells him that she was "the belle of the ball."
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Robert Shaw | Stanley |
| Patrick Magee | McCann |
| Dandy Nichols | Meg |
| Sydney Tafler | Goldberg |
| Moultrie Kelsall | Petey |
| Helen Fraser | Lulu |
| Bernadette Milnes | (uncredited) |
In his film review, published in The Nation on 6 January 1969, critic Harold Clurman described the film as "a fantasia of fear and prosecution," adding that "Pinter's ear is so keen, his method so economic and so shrewdly stylized, balancing humdrum realistic notations with suggestions of unfathomable violence, that his play succeeds in being both funny and horrific" (excerpted in HaroldPinter.org).
As the reviewer of the Evening Standard observed, in a description of the film published on 12 February 1970, the film, like the play, is "a study of domination that sows doubts, terrors, shuddering illuminations and terrifying apprehensions inside the four walls of a living-room in a seaside boarding-house where Stanley, (Robert Shaw), the lodger, has taken refuge from some guilt, crime, treachery, in fact Some Thing, never named" (excerpted in HaroldPinter.org).
Billington, Michael. Harold Pinter. 2nd ed. London: Faber and Faber, 2007. ISBN 9780571234769. [Updated ed. of The Life and Work of Harold Pinter (London: Faber, 1996).]
Gale, Steven H. Sharp Cut: Harold Pinter's Screenplays and the Artistic Process. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2003. ISBN 0813122449.
–––, ed. The Films of Harold Pinter. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2001. ISBN 0791449327.
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