Butley (film)

Butley
Directed by Harold Pinter
Produced by Ely Landau
Written by Simon Gray
Starring Alan Bates
Jessica Tandy
Richard O'Callaghan
Cinematography Gerry Fisher
Edited by Malcolm Cooke
Distributed by American Film Theatre
Release date
 January 21, 1974 (US)
April 1976 (UK)
Running time
 129 minutes
Country United States
United Kingdom
Language English

Butley is a 1974 American-British drama film directed by Harold Pinter, an adaptation from Simon Gray's 1971 play of same name. The film starred Alan Bates, Jessica Tandy, Richard O'Callaghan, Susan Engel, and Michael Byrne. It was produced by Ely Landau and released through Landau's American Film Theatre.

Plot

The title character, a literature professor and longtime T. S. Eliot scholar with a recently developed interest in Beatrix Potter, is a suicidal alcoholic, who loses his wife and his male lover on the same day. The dark comedy encompasses several hours in which he bullies students, friends, and colleagues, while falling apart at the seams. Apart from an opening sequence of Butley waking in his flat with a hangover and taking the Underground and occasional shots in the corridor and the pub at lunchtime, the entire film takes place in Butley's office.

In his introduction to the trade edition of the play, the film's director Harold Pinter wrote:

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, it still seems to me, is that the play gives us a character who hurls himself towards the destruction while living, in the fever of his intellectual hell, with a vitality and brilliance known to few of us. He courts death by remaining ruthlessly – even dementedly – alive. It's a remarkable creation and Alan Bates as Butley gave the performance of a lifetime.[1]

The film lasts 130 minutes and was shot at Shepperton Studios. The Executive Producer was Otto Plaschkes and the cinematographer was Gerry Fisher.

Cast

See also

References

  1. ↑ Gray, Simon, Simon Gray: Plays 1, Faber 2010


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