|
Blurry abstractions turn out to be Worthing reflected on a moving car's mirror, the disembodied scraping heard on the soundtrack might belong to the deck chairs arranged at the beach in the previous shot. A little cottage, the owner (Moultrie Kelsall) is resigned to the breakfast of cornflakes and sour milk served by the missus (Dandy Nichols), who takes offense to the word "succulent." Their boarder (Robert Shaw) is a former pianist, "a bit of a washout" alarmed by news of "visitors." Thus the Jew (Sydney Tafler) and the Irishman (Patrick Magee) like a vaudeville duo of unctuous courtliness and baleful melancholia, in from "the organization" to host a shindig for the prey who insists it's not his birthday. "Do you recognize an external force?" Harold Pinter filmed by William Friedkin is quite the modernist Grand Guignol, virtually a demonic filter on Mackendrick's The Ladykillers. Gift of the toy drum, the disheveled paranoid wields it in a frenzied crescendo, the abrupt gloom he summons gives way to the henchman's ceremonial tearing of newspapers. Geniality into terror, a toast in the dark. "A straight show" is the husband's description of the revue, "no dancing or singing... they just talk," and there's dancing and singing. The slick invader is a morning person, he anchors the celebration with the coquette next door (Helen Fraser) on his lap and can only be rattled by a childhood nickname. "Oh the Garden of Eden has vanished, they say..." The camera takes an overhead view of the chamber, is mounted on Magee's dome during a bout of blind man's bluff, disintegrates in tandem with the protagonist's psyche in the climax. "Breakdown. Pure and simple." A splendidly disagreeable form resurrected by the director decades later for Bug and Killer Joe.
--- Fernando F. Croce |