The Birthday Party - Harold Pinter

“The Birthday Party’ is a play by Harold Pinter which consists of the category of Absurd Theater and Comedy of Menace. 

genre  : Theater of the Absurd, Comedy of Menace
time written  · 1957/58
tone  · tragic, menacing, fear of unknown.
setting (time) · Anonymous time, may be Modern Times after WW II.
setting (place)  · Uses a single setting, the living-dining room of a seaside boarding house somewhere on the coast of England.
protagonist  ·  Stanley Webber
major conflict  · Fear of two strangers – Nat Goldberg and Dermont McCann – in the heart of Stanley.
But why they have come? Where they take Stanley at the end? What is their relationship? … Remains unanswered?

Comedy of Menace:  It is a term used to describe the plays of David Campton and Harold Pinter by drama critic Irving Wardle, borrowed from the subtitle of Campton's play The Lunatic View: A Comedy of Menace, in reviewing their plays in Encore in 1958. "Comedy of menace" and "comedies of menace" caught on and have been used generally in advertisements and in critical accounts, notices, and reviews to describe Pinter's early plays and some of his later work as well.

1. Why are two scenes of Lulu omitted from the movie?

In this movie, Lulu is represented as an inspiration of an artist, McCann and Goldberg as the traditions in the society and Stanley as free thinker. To create the effect of losing of vision more intensely, these two scenes may have been omitted from the movie. At the end Stanley loses his vision and to create this effect more powerfully may be the two scenes of Lulu omitted from the movie.

2. Is movie successful in giving us the effect of menace? Where you able to feel it while reading the text?
We can see the effect of menace in the movie, because while reading the play felt that Stanley has a mysterious past which we are not informed about. I felt this while reading the long conversation between McCann, Stanley and Goldberg.

  3. Do you feel the effect of lurking danger while viewing the movie? Where you able to feel the same while reading the text

While watching the play sometimes I feels lurking danger while viewing movie like who are two strangers? From where are they coming? Why they come? Why Stanley is afraid of these two strangers? During the birthday party why and what will happen with Stanley?

4. What do you read in 'newspaper' in the movie? Petey is reading newspaper to Meg, it torn into pieces by McCain, pieces are hidden by Petey in last scene.

Here we can take newspaper as negative and positive both, because if we will take it from positive side then we can say that it keep us update from the surroundings and gives us information and tells us the reality and if we will see the negative side, we can hide yourself behind it. Petey is reading the newspaper which means he is facing the reality but in front of Meg, he is hiding himself. The torning of newspaper by McCann symbolizes that he too is broken from inside.

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 room like a cage (trap) when Stanley is playing it. What interpretations can you give to these positioning of camera?
Camera is like a “breath for human being” to make a movie. The person who is in power position is always in center, we can see this in movie that the camera is focusing over the head of McCann. A view of room like a trap when Stanley is playing it which means Stanley is caged by this two unknown strangers.

6. "Pinter restored theater to its basic elements: an enclosed space and unpredictable dialogue, where people are at the mercy of one another and pretense crumbles." (Pinter, Art, Truth & Politics: Excerpts from the 2005 Nobel Lecture). Does this happen in the movie?

Yes, it does happened in the movie, we can see blurred dialogues, and with this space, etc. We can't understand it without a doubt.

 7. How does viewing movie help in better understanding of the play ‘The Birthday Party’ with its typical characteristics (like painteresque, pause, silence, menace, lurking danger)?

While reading the play we found Stanley as a person with mysterious past of his life but while watching the play we can find some effects of pauses and silence. So here we can say that both movie and play helpful to better perceptive of. We can also say that camera keeps us in control and it also passing on such thoughts from beginning to end.

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)

I am agree with this statement that “It's impossible to imagine a better film of Pinter's play than this sensitive, disturbing version directed by William Friedkin” because in this movie we can see the focus of the camera but we cannot see the focus while reading the play.

9. If you were director or screenplay writer, what sort of difference would you make it the making of movie?

According to me the movie is very much accurate to the original play there is no need to change or add the things in the movie because setting, character, camera work, dialogue everything is perfect. But yes I would like to change only the background sound of this movie.



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