MisterWhiplash I think that Roger Ebert pinned this work down when he said that adapting the Pinter play would inherently cause some problems - what one can buy as a little more fantastical and hermetically sealed on a stage, where one can be just stuck with these two people on the 'job' with their assignment as Mr. Stanley Webber (Robert Shaw) is a little harder to buy in a film because the reality is different (at least in this case. While I would recommend the film to people, especially for those who want to seek out Friedkin's oeuvre, and it has some terrific performances, it is an exceedingly strange and odd sit.The film is about... well, what is it really? I suppose it's about what happens to a man when he cracks under the weight of pressure and has a nervous breakdown, but that's the sort of main-ultimate point, if there is one. I felt like Pinter was challenging me and the audience, though to what end I am sure I don't know. Of course there is a great deal of suspense - what Shaw knows that the owners of the house don't about these two stranger-boarders (Patrick Magee, who you may recall as the Writer from Clockwork Orange, and Sydney Taffler who is really razor-sharp and wonderfully sadistic as Nat Goldberg) - amid this 'birthday party' which is now really on his birthday.Of course this is what is called 'theater of the absurd'. And to this point there are a few funny moments, but I wouldn't necessarily call it a comedy, at least in Friedkin's hands. Perhaps it's because of the edge of Robert Shaw, who is probably the main reason to watch the film is for his startling performance that keeps an emotional through-line. When he first starts off in the movie he's mad at Dandy Nichols for... something or other (the tea, the corn flakes, the milk, for not, uh, talking to him in a particular way). One almost wonders if he's about to strike her, it's that sort of intense screen persona. But there's a lot more to his character and Shaw conveys this in this big early scene (he's also, I think, an ex-concert pianist or something).You have to be set in the right frame of mind for this movie, and it definitely won't spoon-feed you easy dramatic answers to questions that are posed. By the end I was still not sure who Goldberg and McCann represented (my first thought was they were in some criminal organization - the "job" aspect made me think of a heist, and perhaps that's not that far from the truth by the very end, in a sense). Maybe it's a metaphor for how easily people can crack up, how manipulation and torture are so insidious, especially when pressed hard enough, and meanwhile the mostly happy old Mrs Bowles has her own dimensions too and works as a counterpoint for everyone else (she, along with her husband, has nothing to hide).There's also some dazzling and bizarre camera and lighting choices, though these mostly come in the last couple of reels as the birthday party 'amps up' so to speak, with a camera at one point latched on to a character's head for dizzying perspective and when the lights go out at one point it's... I can't even. The point is, The Birthday Party is a good little find that is Friedkin in love with a piece of material that is bold, difficult and gives himself some chance to take what he learned directing television (I'm not sure if he did live theater but it wouldn't surprise me) into cinema and make it alive and thrashing. Whether it all makes sense is another story.

CitizenCaine Harold Pinter adapted his own play for The Birthday Party, a bizarre and enigmatic film set in a seaside boardinghouse. Robert Shaw stars as Stanley Weber, an unemployed, failed pianist holes up in a dingy rented room only to have two strangers arrive who insidiously badger, pester, and eventually terrorize him to the point of speechlessness. With the play being written near the height of the Cold War movement in 1958, some critics have suggested Pinter is making a statement about living under a brutal Communist regime where every state action and thought is predicated on controlling and undermining the actions and thoughts of others. Meanwhile, the simple and deluded types, such as the owners of the boardinghouse, are lulled into a quasi-free existence in which they are obedient, easily influenced, or believe what they are told.The claustrophobic setting highlights the irrelevance of surroundings when one's thoughts are easily controlled or influenced. The symbolism of the game of blind man's bluff and the eyeglasses incident are not lost on the viewer considering this perception of Pinter's play. As in most of Pinter's plays, the dialog is a standout as well as the acting of the four leads. The play could just as easily be seen as an experience that confounds the viewer with its conundrums and its lack of empathy for the characters. It's reminiscent of Beckett's "Waiting For Godot" and Kafka's "The Trial", both of which are open to multiple interpretations requiring multiple viewings in order to gain additional perspectives. William Friedkin directed this, his second feature, because Pinter probably couldn't get anyone else to do it. It's definitely not a film for all tastes. *** of 4 stars.

shepardjessica-1 A wonderful play (which I've directed in the 80's) that cuts a scene from the play with Lulu..but is still PINTER! What can you say about this '58 play (film '68) except to say it's INTENSE. Robert Shaw as Stanley (post-James Bond and pre-Jaws and pre-The Sting)..most Americans (no offence)..don't even know who this guy is. Anyway, it's a brilliant parody of English (and everybody in the 50's) take on the one artist. Sidney Taffler as Goldberg is comical, frightening, bossy, and just plain "too much there". Patrick MaGee as McCann (A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, BARRY LYNDON, Kubrick.etc.) is lone newspaper-ripping non-horror (or so you think) DUDE, who hung out with the The Beatles.Decent version of a great early play of a genius..which bombed..duh? Stick with Meg and Petey and you can't go wrong or right. 20 years ahead of it's time as a play and 10 years...right.

didi-5 Harold Pinter's work is infuriating at best, but this film version comes close to making some sense of 'The Birthday Party'. Dandy Nichols runs a boarding house in which oddball lodger Stanley lives (very well played by Robert Shaw) and when two unusual menacing visitors arrive (Patrick Magee and Sidney Tafler) events start to get progressively weirder. The play is dark, claustrophobic, and extremely clever, and the film plays on this - I particularly liked the sequence with the torchlight which had heaps of atmosphere. Not seen much, this version is now commercially available again and hopefully will be eventually viewed in the same light as other Pinter movies such as 'Accident'. It deserves better than it has had so far.