TODAY'S NUGGET: The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981) - One Way to Adapt the Unadaptable

[Quick Summary: An actor and actress pretend affair for a film shoot parallels their affair in real life.]

Last week's read was disappointing.

The next three Pinter scripts in the queue* only got a brief skim.

(I didn't get them. Anyone care to chime in?)

This brings me to the only script I wanted to read: the Oscar nominated The French Lieutenant's Woman.

The story is about Charles, an engaged English gent.  He gets involved with Sarah, a shunned woman who walks the undercliffs.

Here are a few challenges that Pinter faced:**

- It is a 445 pg. unfilmable novel.
- It has three alternate endings and a narrator.
- It switches between Victorian and modern periods.
- It had been unsuccessfully developed for 8-9 years.

So what did Pinter do? He inserted a construction that is NOT in the book.

How did he do it?  The story of Charles and Sarah would now be a movie being filmed.   "Mike" is an actor who would play Charles. "Anna" would play Sarah.

Mike and Anna are having an affair, just like the roles they are playing.

This construction enables the audience to see the Victorian story, but also the modern comment on it. (Easy in a novel. Not so easy in a film.)

When Charles and Sarah have problems, it emphasizes the same ones between Mike and Anna.

WHAT I'VE LEARNED:  I agree with Fowles about Pinter:

"[H]is genius ...seems to me to be his truly remarkable gift for reducing the long and complex without distortion." ***

*The Quiller Memorandum (1966) - cold war spy
Accident (1967) - tragedy in flashback
The Go-Between (1970) - forbidden love affair
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** For more, read author John Fowles' foreword to the script.

***Also, Fowles praised Pinter's approach to this adaption as "the only way."

TODAY'S NUGGET: The Pumpkin Eater (1964) - Not for Me

[Quick Summary: A thrice married mother breaks down in public, and the story explores of her difficult attitudes and marriage.]

I did not like this script.

In a series of flashbacks, we learn that:

- This is a story of Jo, who melts down in Harrods department store.
- She has a passel of kids from previous marriages, and wants more.  
- Jake, her third husband, is fed up and is at a loss.
- Jo is recovering from the breakdown.   

I did not like these characters, but I could deal with it.

I did not like the plot, but I could deal with it too.

However, the story was going nowhere, and that I could not stomach. 

Jo fits so well in this nursery rhyme:

"Peter, Peter pumpkin eater,
Had a wife but couldn't keep her;
He put her in a pumpkin shell
And there he kept her very well."

But in a film? Not for me.

WHAT I'VE LEARNED: The more I read, the more that I sense my limits.

If someone asked me to pitch a take on this novel, I'd have to pass.

The Pumpkin Eater (1964)
by Harold Pinter
Adapted from the novel by Penelope Mortimer

TODAY'S NUGGET: The Servant (1963) - Creepy Invasion of Personal Space

[Quick Summary: A new servant takes over his employer's life, and becomes a menace.]

I'm very keen on writer's "must read" recommendations.

However, when the playwright Harold Pinter (1930-2008) was suggested, I procrastinated.

I knew very little about him, and his obituary was intimidating:
- "provocative"
- "vigorous political polemicist,"
- "[H]e spawned the adjective "Pinteresque" suggesting a cryptically mysterious situation imbued with hidden menace."

I finally ran out of excuses.

The Servant starts off innocently, and then it really spooked me.

Barrett, a manservant, comes to work for his employer Tony.  Barrett is ideal, until he stealthily isolates Tony.

It's little things at first.

ex. Barrett interrupts Tony and girlfriend Susan during an intimate moment.

Then it becomes more devious.

ex. Barrett brings his girlfriend Vera into the house as a maid. Vera seduces Tony.  Did Barrett orchestrated it or not?

Then it becomes horrible.

ex. Barrett keeps Tony drugged and dependent. Tony has no idea how much he has lost.

Barrett is a psychological menace.  He moves into Tony's personal space one step at a time, until there is none.

Tony is oblivious to how Barrett is destroying him...and that makes it ten times more creepy.

WHAT I'VE LEARNED: A psychological drama/thriller can be as simple as playing with personal space. 

The Servant (1963)
Adapted by Harold Pinter
Based on the novel by Robin Maugham