Worksheet
William Friedkin’s ‘The Birthday Party’
Based on
Harold Pinter's ‘The Birthday Party’
The triviality of life, the menace, the boring and filthy activities of daily life is displayed in the postmodern works which have a symbolic effect and one of such works is Harold Pinter's 'The Birthday Party'. The trivial things become the subject matter of modern literature.
It is Pinter's purpose in both the play and the film to magnify trivia to a state of grotesquerie. But where, in the play, the trivia resides primarily in the language, the film presents a genuine, almost literal magnification, both in terms of its amount and size, of both the sounds and objects which overwhelm the characters. Even the sounds seem threatening.
The film captured ecstatically the spirit of the play by the style that shows the way in which one shot fades, transfers and ends into another scene/shot, it's a continue series of shot that can be read with audio. The plays is characterized by displaying its sense of emptiness and menace of routine modern life.
This blog is formed on the basis of a worksheet (Post- viewing task) assigned by Prof. Dr Dilip Barad Sir, Head of English Department, M K Bhavnagar University. Click on the link to navigate the worksheet of Dr Dilip Barad Sir on Film Screening - Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party
1) Why are two scenes of Lulu omitted from the movie?
Harold Pinter has written a full-length play titled 'The Birthday Party' and also has written the screenplay of the film adapted from the play of the same name. The 1968 film 'The Birthday Party' directed by William Friedkin has a few modifications apart from that the film is most faithful to the play.
In the film, there is an addition of an outdoor framing action which is absent in the original text and one of the important thing to note is that there is an absence of the two short scenes with Lulu in the film. Hence, these changes in the absence of Lulu's scenes don't affect the sequence of the events but as observed by Harriet Deer and Irving Deer, it affects with the way Pinter treats the texture of the play.
One can hardly figure out the intentions behind the omission of Lulu's scene because, in a larger context of the play, it is not making any significant difference. The gullibility of Lulu's character is flexible, she can be easily trapped by anyone either with the help of words or with actions.
Pinter was aware of the medium what changes are required from play to film. The dramatic experience is more important in the adaption from book to stage and from stage to screen. Events, dialogues and its sequence are more important. In Film the camera becomes the point of view/ perspective.
In the film, the explicit rape is unnecessary, since Pinter has already communicated in film terms the contradictories of sympathy and disgust which the stage blackout and rape achieve. Instead, what we see is the reduction of a human being to a crouching, nocturnal animal who cringes in a corner before the light. Thus, in the film, the blackout sequence objectifies for us the inevitable failure of Stanley's efforts to find order within the chaos both of the external world and of his own soul. (Deer)
2) Is movie successful in giving us the effect of menace? Where you able to feel it while reading the text?
In the film, the sense of emptiness and menace comes primarily from the way the camera records and magnifies the trivia and sloth of Meg's world rather than from the dialogue between Meg and Petey. For example, in the play, Meg merely shoves Petey his cornflakes from behind the hatch. But in the film, Pinter shows us an extreme close-up of Meg sloppily pouring the cornflakes into a bowl, spilling half of them onto a filthy newspaper, picking them up off the newspaper, putting them back into the bowl, and then handing them to Petey. Later we see her burn his fried bread, try to scrape off the burnt part, and then present it to him as if it were a gourmet dish, a sequence she repeats when Stanley finally comes down for breakfast.
While watching the film, the effect of menace was felt. The camera was speaking the language full of filthy and stinky stuff that Pinter had employed in the play.
Meg: Is Stanley up yet?
Petey: I don’t know. Is he?
Meg: I don’t know. I haven’t seen him down
Petey: Well then he can’t be up
Meg: Haven’t you seen him down?
(Conversation between Meg and Stanley)
Pinter says- “Everything is funny until the horror of the human situation rises to the surface! Life is funny because it is based on illusions and self-deceptions like Stanley’s dream of a world tour as a pianist because it is built out of pretence. In our present-day world, everything is uncertain there is no fixed point and we are surrounded by the unknown.”
3) Do you feel the effect of lurking danger while viewing the movie? Where you able to feel the same while reading the text
In the film, in some of the scenes, I can feel lurking danger. When Goldberg and McCann arrived and Stanley feels a horrific feeling that he hides in the kitchen. In this scene, one can feel extreme pity for him as if the strangers are going to harm the hero.
In another scene, in the blind man's buff, the danger seems constantly lurking and lastly, when Goldberg and McCann takes Stanley away from Meg and Petey's house is the most horrifying scene which shocks the audience where Petey says-
Stan, don't let them tell you what to do! (Petey Boles)
In the interrogation scene also, Stanley, as well as the readers, are overflowed with the torrent of questions but in this scene, the viewers are in the extremeness of threat but on the other hand, Stanley is free from that threat and he has a different kind of scaring feeling whether (as an artist) his freedom with being haunted and he had to follow the instructions of the power or as an individual is he be taken to the majoritarian gang of (Monty).
4) What do you read in 'newspaper' in the movie? Petey is reading the newspaper to Meg, it torn into pieces by McCain, pieces are hidden by Petey in the last scene.
Newspaper in literature is normally seen as a symbol of means of communication or imparting facts. The playwright Harold Pinter uses the symbol more ironically in the play 'The Birthday Party'. Newspaper is something which shows us the reality of the world. In the opening scene of the play, Petey seems to be reading the newspaper which is a sign of power as we believe-
Those who read have the knowledge,
and those who have knowledge have power,
So, the knowledge leads to power and these well-informed people makes a hierarchy in society through unconsciously a hidden language.
Petey is reading the newspaper to Meg, this superficial scene represents Petey in power position but Meg soon with her questions breaks this power dynamics of language created by a newspaper. Meg is a woman whose perceptions are so conditioned by the patriarchal society that it becomes hard for her to think out of the conditioned mind. She symbolizes the aristocratic bourgeois class for whom it doesn't matter whether other people are suffering or the power is exercising the control negatively or wrongly.
Moreover, in another scene, McCann seems to be tearing a newspaper which signifies his rebelling against the journalistic realities of the age. The staunch followers of power don't pay any heed to the rational voice and they create their own subjective rationality.
In the last scene, when Stanley is taken by Net Goldberg and Dermot McCann, Petey keeps the cash handed over to him by Goldberg and along with cash he keeps the strips of the newspaper also in his pocket.
Hence, Newspaper in the play is used to keep Meg in her world of illusion, to hide reality fro Goldberg and to rebel against the reality by Power and regenerate the new truth by the followers of Power.
5) Camera is positioned over the head of McCain when he is playing Blind Man's Buff and is positioned at the top with a view of the room as a cage (trap) when Stanley is playing it. What interpretations can you give to these positioning of the camera?
In the film, the director shows his vision of the play by the language of the Camera. In the blindman's buff scene the language of the camera works very effectively which provides the scene with profound insights. McCann and Goldberg were in the room to grab Stanley and they try to play blindman's buff in order to torture Stanley and try to overpower him by the means of power.
The camera language speaks as if Stanley is going to be the prey of the two men, the camera over the head symbolizes the constant hovering fear on him. It seems that he is in the trap or is going to be trapped under one or another situation. Furthermore, the room is like the web of the strangers from which like an insect, Stanley is trying to breathe in order to survive. But the spiders- Goldberg and McCann are not allowing him to free himself.
6) "Pinter restored theatre to its basic elements: an enclosed space and unpredictable dialogue, where people are at the mercy of one another and pretence crumbles." (Pinter, Art, Truth & Politics: Excerpts from the 2005 Nobel Lecture). Does this happen in the movie?
Pinter was successful in restoring the theatre to its basic elements an enclosed space and unpredictable dialogue. When the audience watches the play, from the audience's side the pretence crumbles. In the film, the character's actions and their behaviours, as well as the menacing effect, gives the audience a relatable situation.
The audience feels as if the play is displaying the day to day lives of them and therefore they are at mercy of one another. As because the situations and episodes which the play presents are totally the modern-day situations. It is a routine life mostly it reflects the daily struggles, foolishness of people which is actually a shameful thing for the audience but there is nothing more to agree upon and therefore they laugh at each other in deep mercy.
7) How does viewing movie help in better understanding of the play ‘The Birthday Party’ with its typical characteristics (like Pinteresque, pause, silence, menace, lurking danger)?
The reading of the play presents the deep insights of the menace and Pinteresque elements wherein the situations and hopelessness of the daily life is deeply incepted and the play and all these elements can be viewed in the film.
In the play, Pinter had written all these stuff which in the film is replaced by the language of camera. In the film, it is the camera which speaks the language of pinter- the dirty soaps the filthy kitchen the dirty basin and the burned bread- all these things which are written in the play are displayed by camera.
8) With which of the following observations you agree:
- “It probably wasn't possible to make a satisfactory film of "The Birthday Party."
- “It's impossible to imagine a better film of Pinter's play than this sensitive, disturbing version directed by William Friedkin”[3]. (Ebert)
The film is very much faithful to the play except for the omission of the two scenes. As the play provides deep insights into the modern trivial things, the film provides a vision of that triviality with audio-visual quality, therefore, I would like to go with the second observation, not to fully agree with it but still as I haven't watched or seen.
Thank you.
References-
Billington, Michael. Harold Pinter. Faber & Faber, 2009.
Deer, Harriet, and Irving Deer. “Pinter's ‘The Birthday Party’: The Film and the Play.” South Atlantic Bulletin, vol. 45, no. 2, 1980, pp. 26–30. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3199140. Accessed 27 Nov. 2020.
Gale, Steven H. Chicago Review, vol. 25, no. 1, 1973, pp. 177–180. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25294838. Accessed 27 Nov. 2020.
Gordon, Robert J. Harold Pinter: The theatre of power. University of Michigan Press, 2012.
Lesser, Simon O. “Reflections on Pinter's ‘The Birthday Party.’” Contemporary Literature, vol. 13, no. 1, 1972, pp. 34–43. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1207418. Accessed 27 Nov. 2020.
Pinter, Harold. “Art Truth & Politics: Excerpts from the 2005 Nobel Lecture.” World Literature Today, vol. 80, no. 3, 2006, pp. 21–27. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40159078. Accessed 27 Nov. 2020.
Pinter, Harold. The birthday party, and The room: two plays. Vol. 315. Grove Press, 1961.
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