Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter's play, "The New World Order" was first performed on July 19th 1991 at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, London. The following is Richard Corso's film adaptation starring Cody Dermon (as Des), Haydn Winston (as Lionel) and Tyler Compton (as Blindfolded Man).
A short super-8 film walking several of Harold Pinter's poems about East London.
One summer's evening, two ageing writers, Hirst and Spooner, meet in a Hampstead pub and continue their drinking into the night at Hirst's stately house nearby. As the pair become increasingly inebriated, and their stories increasingly unbelievable, the lively conversation soon turns into a revealing power game, further complicated by the return home of two sinister younger men.
In June 2009, a group Britain's leading actors gathered for one night only to perform a celebration of the work of Harold Pinter at the National Theatre, directed by Ian Rickson. The team who made the acclaimed Harold Pinter documentaries for BBC's Arena was there to record this unique performance.
All the action takes place in a swish London restaurant where two coarse-grained strategy consultants are dining with their respective wives. At an adjacent table a banker and his wife banter over his recently discovered affair. But while Pinter gets a lot of laughs out of these gold-plated philistines, he also suggests they are displaced people. Shorn of any inherited values, they live in an eternal present of sex, food and conspicuous consumption. - Michael Billington, Guardian
A 69 year old man sits alone on his last birthday and listens to the past. KRAPPS LAST TAPE is an extraordinary study of mortality, creativity and memory.
Nobel Lecture delivered on video by the 2005 Nobel Laureate in Literature Harold Pinter (1930–2008), who was at the time hospitalised and unable to travel to Stockholm to deliver it in person.
Mick and his brother Aston live alone together in a West London house until one night Aston brings home Davies, who just left his job as a kitchen helper at a restaurant. The old man proves to be a violent, selfish bigot, uncharitable himself but quick to exploit the kindness of others.
A young actor and an angst-ridden city worker fight over a girl watched over by a disturbed chum. The play is concerned with three young men, Len, Pete and Mark, and the scene of action shifts back and forth between Len's house and Mark's. Sometimes all three come together, sometimes only two, and often Len is on stage alone. There are conversations and soliloquies filled with the brilliant convolutions of thought, the sudden flashes of truth which distinguish Pinter's unique style, with the mood ranging from calm introspection to explosive outpouring. Much of what is said hints at deeper thoughts left unspoken, and the sense of horror and alienation which often emerges is a searing indictment of our life and times. We meet, we talk, we tear at each other, but our insularity is seldom penetrated. We are together but alone, as though life were a mirror which reflects only our own image.
2001 theatre production of Harold Pinter's one-act play considered his "statement about the human rights abuses of totalitarian governments."
A British spy is banished to Panama after having an affair with an ambassador's mistress. Once there he makes connection with a local tailor with a nefarious past and connections to all of the top political and gangster figures in Panama. The tailor also has a wife, who works for the Panamanian president and a huge debt. The mission is to learn what the President intends to do with the Canal.
A stage director and his female assistant find the blackest protagonist possible, then make him up as white as possible, to create the titular character.
This fun and sexy comedy tells a timelessly entertaining story where wealthy, secret passions and mischievous women put love to the test.. When a spirited young woman, Fanny Price, is sent away to live on the great country estate of her rich cousins, she's meant to learn the ways of proper society. But while Fanny learns "their" ways, she also enlightens them with a wit and sparkle all her own!
A biography of the English mathematician Alan Turing, who was one of the inventors of the digital computer and one of the key figures in the breaking of the Enigma code, used by the Germans to send secret orders to their U-boats in World War II. Turing was also a homosexual in Britain at a time when this was illegal, besides being a security risk.
Joseph K. awakes one morning, to find two strange men in his room, telling him he has been arrested. Joseph is not told what he is charged with, and despite being "arrested," is allowed to remain free and go to work. But despite the strange nature of his arrest, Joseph soon learns that his trial, however odd, is very real, and tries desperately to spare himself from the court's judgement.
At a posh cocktail party, various plans are made, and a missing guest turns up late.
The scene is a fashionably remodeled farmhouse in the countryside somewhere beyond London, where a prosperous and urbane couple are entertaining the wife's former roommate and friend whom they have not seen for twenty years. At first the husband and wife banter, then the friend joins them and a flood of intertwining memories ensues. The action shifts back and forth in time, as recollection of what did-or, perhaps, did not-happen are pondered and, as the tension builds, we are aware that the husband and the friend have become locked in a duel for the wife's very soul. Reveries and ambiguities abound, hinting at much more than is said, and forming together into a surprising entity which challenges the heart and mind and will linger on enticingly in the memory. Doollee.com
In a dystopicly polluted rightwing religious tyranny, a young woman is put in sexual slavery on account of her now rare fertility.
An Italian diplomat's son follows and seduces English lovers in Venice.
Two young boys from very different backgrounds become friends in 1933 Stuttgart. However, they don't realize how different they are until much later as one is the son of a well-to-do Jewish doctor and the other the son of a German aristocrat. After that summer and the election of Hitler, things change as antisemitism gains fervor. After the core of the film deals with that era, the film flashes to the present and the Jewish man now returns to his boyhood home and seeks his old friend with some surprises.
In World War II England, a woman is approached by a man claiming to work as an intelligence agent who has found out her lover is a spy. He promises to not arrest him if she'll have a relationship with him.
Harold Pinter play starring Michael Gambon. 'Your language is forbidden. It is dead. No one is allowed to speak your language. Your language no longer exists. Any questions?'
It is Stanley's birthday, but the party he is given is not quite what he expects.
In the kitchen, two assassins await the arrival of their victim. But someone keeps sending them messages via the dumb waiter.
Two separate people, a man and a woman, find something very stirring about the sea turtles in their tank at the London Zoo. They meet and form an odd, but sympathetic camaraderie as they plan to steal two of the turtles and free them into the ocean.
Powerful statement about the abuse of human rights by totalitarian governments, finds an unctuous and "civilized" interrogator humiliating the doomed members of a family who have become enemies of the state. Doollee.com
A masterly study of a middle-aged woman waking up after 30 years passed in a coma induced by sleeping sickness. In her mind she is still 16, and her attempts to fathom the changed world into which she re-emerges is not only poignant and emotionally charged but, in the end, devastatingly brilliant theatre as well.
Pinter's semi-autobiographical play examining the surprise attraction, shy first steps, gradual flowering, and treasonous deception of a woman's extramarital affair with her husband's best friend; the entire story is told from the husband's point of view, with the scenes in precise reverse chronological order. Written by Dan Hartung
Mystery surrounds the death of a patient; another has given birth to a child, father unknown. 'Irregular' occurrences in a government psychiatric hospital build to a terrifying climax.
1981 episode of London Weekend Television's The South Bank Show examines the film and features interviews with novelist John Fowles, screenwriter Harold Pinter, and director Karel Reisz
An event organised by CND pits the bomb against poetry. Hear artists who hoped that words and rhymes could put an end to destructive times.
The story of two brothers and a tramp. Harold Pinter's first major success as a dramatist.
In this story-within-a-story, Anna is an actress starring opposite Mike in a period piece about the forbidden love between their respective characters, Sarah and Charles. Both actors are involved in serious relationships, but the passionate nature of the script leads to an off-camera love affair as well. While attempting to maintain their composure and professionalism, Anna and Mike struggle to come to terms with their infidelity.
In the late 1930s, three reclusive middle-aged spinster sisters live on their run down family estate in Ireland. Otto Beck, a perpetual graduate student from Bavaria with a habit of making pompous declamations, rents the back lodge to work on his esoteric thesis. Imogen Langrishe, the least repressed of the sisters, begins an affair with Otto. Imogen takes the love affair seriously, but Otto just enjoys the cheap lodging and the comfort of Imogen.
'No Man's Land' is a play by Harold Pinter written in 1974 and first performed in 1975. In this 1978, TV adaptation, a seedy poet shows up at the home of a rich writer and they start reminiscing about the 'past,' in a menacing, Pinteresque fashion.
Set in the rarefied world of West End boutique owners and fashion designers, The Collection takes as its departure point the moment when four elegant lives are suddenly shaken by the suggestion of infidelity. The sinister anonymous phone call that disturbs Harry Kane at four o'clock in the morning becomes increasingly hard to establish...
F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel is brought to life in this story of a movie producer slowly working himself to death.
Early in 1939 Sir Robert Thorndyke takes aim at Adolf Hitler with a high powered rifle, but the shot misses its mark. Captured and tortured by the Gestapo and left for dead, Sir Robert makes his way back to England where he discovers the Gestapo has followed him. Knowing that his government would turn him over to German authorities, Sir Robert goes underground in his battle with his pursuers.
Laurence Olivier Presents is a British television series made by Granada Television which ran from 1976 to 1978. The plays, with the exception of Hindle Wakes, all starred Laurence Olivier. Some of the plays were based on productions staged at the National Theatre during the period when Olivier was Artistic Director. In addition to distinguished English actors, the casts assembled for these productions included several Hollywood stars, such as Natalie Wood, Robert Wagner, Joanne Woodward and Maureen Stapleton.
Butley is set in Queen Mary’s College, London and focuses on two English instructors, Ben Butley, a middle-aged former T. S. Eliot expert whose life is now in a shambles, and his protégé, Joey, a homosexual. With both Joey and his wife leaving, Butley faces a life alone, fighting back with wit, obscenity and booze.
In a dreary North London flat, the site of perpetual psychological warfare, a philosophy professor visits his family after a nine-year absence and introduces the four men - father, uncle and two brothers - to his wife.
British teenager Leo Colston (Dominic Guard) spends a summer in the countryside, where he develops a crush on the beautiful young aristocrat Marian (Julie Christie). Eager to impress her, Leo becomes the "go-between" for Marian, delivering secret romantic letters to Ted Burgess (Alan Bates), a handsome neighboring farmer.
Fresh-faced young Michael Rimmer worms his way into an opinion poll company and is soon running the place. He uses this as a springboard to get into politics and in the mini-skirted flared-trousered world of 1970 Britain starts to rise through the Tory ranks.
Based on Harold Pinter's enigmatic play about a boarder in a British seaside dwelling who is visited by two strangers. They torment him verbally, ask him idiotic unanswerable questions, force him to sit down and stand up, and give him a "party". Then, eventually, they take him away, a tongue-tied idiot. The trivial becomes the terrible, and with it a certain wonder, a certain pity.
Albert, a shy and repressed young man who lives with his mother, is persuaded to go for "a night out" with his workmates; it turns nightmarish.
Stephen is a professor at Oxford University who is caught in a rut and feels trapped by his life in both academia and marriage. One of his students, William, is engaged to the beautiful Anna, and Stephen becomes enamored of the younger woman. These three people become linked together by a horrible car crash, with flashbacks providing details into the lives of each person and their connection to the others in this brooding English drama.
An uneasy friendship between an introspective loner and a more gregarious man is renewed when the latter turns up at the former's basement flat one rainy night accompanied by an enigmatic, beautiful, mostly silent, girlfriend.
Modesty Blaise, a secret agent whose hair color, hair style, and mod clothing change at a snap of her fingers is being used by the British government as a decoy in an effort to thwart a diamond heist. She is being set up by the feds but is wise to the plot and calls in sidekick Willie Garvin and a few other friends to outsmart them. Meanwhile, at his island hideaway, Gabriel, the diamond thief has his own plans for Blaise and Garvin.
After two British Secret Intelligence Service agents are murdered at the hands of a cryptic neo-Nazi group known as Phoenix, the suave agent Quiller is sent to Berlin to investigate.
Mysteries abound. What is going on between the wife and her brother? Are they indeed brother and sister? Sisson has his doubts about that … . Why does Sisson feel that there must be something wrong with his eyes, although he knows that he can see clearly and his eye doctor has assured him that his vision is perfect? He forces his secretary to tie a chiffon scarf over his eyes, and then he is able to make a pass at her, in response to one of her many come-ons. Ordinary events assume a sinister tinge. Sisson's two sons, giving him the deadpan treatment that little boys have been inflicting on their elders from time immemorial, seem as eerie as characters out of a ghost story. Always the questions remain. Is there a conspiracy against Sisson. Wikipedia
Aston (Robert Shaw), a quiet, reserved man, lives alone in a top-floor cluttered room of a small abandoned house in a poor London district. He befriends and takes in Mac Davies (Donald Pleasence), an old derelict who has been fired from a menial job in a café. In time Aston offers him a job as caretaker of the house. Aston's brother, Mick (Alan Bates) - a taunting, quasi-sadist - harasses the derelict when his brother is away, countermanding his orders. Eventually Aston, himself irritated by the cantankerous old man, puts him out.
The study of a marriage. Jo has five children and husband number two when she meets writer Jake Armitage. She leaves this husband to marry Jake, and his career takes off. A few years and at least one child later, Jo is deeply depressed, breaking down in the middle of Harrods. After psychiatric care and the prospect of a new house in the country, she gets better; then, she is pregnant again, and this time Jake objects. Jo consents to an abortion and sterilization in the belief it will make her marriage happy again, but afterwards she learns ugly truths about Jake.
A decadent London aristocrat hires a man-servant to attend to his needs. However, the balance of power starts to shift...
Mother's boy Albert finally rebels, and goes to a works party. But things start to go wrong when he is accused of molesting a female colleague.
The plot focuses on a man returning home from prison to find his room being rented out to a tenant.
An elderly homosexual and a married woman are both intrigued by the same man.
