- 5 weeks ago
Very insightful interview with Royal Shakespeare Company director Peter Hall sharing his views on the disturbing play The Homecoming by Harold Pinter. He adapted it for the screen, with an amazing cast (Royal Shakespeare Company). Starring Paul Rogers, Michael Jayston, Vivien Merchant, Ian Holm, Cyril Cusack, Terence Rigby. Directed by Peter Hall. Play and screenplay by Harold Pinter. BAFTA nomination.
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.
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.
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00:00Music
00:30where's my cheese roll someone's taken my cheese roll I left it there you've been
00:44thieving I took your cheese roll Lenny you took my cheese roll yes
00:57I made that roll myself I cut it put the butter on sliced a piece of cheese put it in between I put
01:10it on a plate and I put it in the sideboard I did all that before I went out now I come back and
01:13you've eaten it well what are you going to do about it I'm waiting for you to apologize but
01:18I took it deliberately Lenny you mean you didn't stumble on it by mistake no I saw you put it
01:23there and I was hungry so I ate it they have faced audacity what led you to be so vindictive against
01:36your own brother I'm bowled over the homecoming came through my letterbox in 1965 I had a relationship
01:47with Harold Pinter because he'd given me the birthday party when he was an unknown dramatist
01:52and I couldn't do it but by 65 I was running the Royal Shakespeare Company and very much looking
02:01for a modern play which had the kind of verbal precision and the formal qualities that being a
02:09classical actor does so from that point of view technically it was a it was terrific I was very
02:16very struck by the play on the first reading I think it's a big epic play about the family and
02:24the metaphor of the family I think is something that we all can easily relate to its tensions and
02:30its secrets and its blackmails and what is unsaid and and the homecoming is full of what is unsaid I
02:37think the coming of Pinter in the wake of Samuel Beckett and the particular kind of theater of
02:45understatement which he developed through his uses of silence and pauses and where silence can be as
02:53eloquent as a line made the audience use their imagination so that they try to read the interior
03:00life of the characters I think this is a step in drama and of course Pinter is very funny it's often
03:08black humor and it's often shocking humor but he's very funny now I didn't find the I didn't find the
03:14play odd I found it powerful persuasive and very disturbing and of course it doesn't have a trace of
03:23sentiment in it it's very unblinking in its analysis of the cruelties we inflict on each other even in a
03:31family the play doesn't seem so controversial now I think the unblinking cruelty and pain of the play
03:39still gets to people it disturbs people I think if people don't know what's going to happen they're
03:44fairly amazed you go in Teddy already well when you coming over again I look next time you come
03:55over don't forget to let us know beforehand whether you're married or not I'll always be glad to meet
04:00the wife honest I'm telling you she's a lovely girl a beautiful woman and a mother to a mother of three
04:12you've made a happy woman out of her it's something to be proud of I mean we're talking about a woman
04:20of quality we're talking about a woman of field we did the play in London in 65 66 we did it in on
04:34Broadway I think 67 it was about 72 73 some years later that we made the film and I was approached
04:46by the the Landau organization and this American film theater the idea of filming plays I'm not for
04:55filming plays I think plays exist because they're projected and spoken and given to a live audience
05:01and there's an interplay between the the actor and the audience which is once and once only and very
05:08precious because it changes from night to night that's not to say that I think theater is better
05:13than film or film is better than theater I think they're two absolutely different things in the
05:19theater you use your imagination you know that it's not a real room in in North London and in the
05:27homecoming in when you go to the cinema you believe that what the camera saw actually existed actually
05:33happened so you want there to be you're not going to imagine a bare stage is a room in Hackney you want
05:40a room in Hackney so their film although wonderfully illusionist in the sense that we can cut and move
05:46from one image to another is absolutely based on reality and you frighten the camera if you ask if you ask
05:55it to imagine something which it's not seeing audiences don't do that so I would regard this homecoming
06:03neither as a play nor a film I believe and think and I tried to make it a play which uses certain
06:14techniques of the film in order to express a play now if we brought four cameras into the theater and
06:21hoisted them up and done a record of the play it would have looked stagey and unconvincing and you
06:30wouldn't have believed anything I hope that what we've done is create a surrealistic style which enables
06:37one to believe that it is and it is more than it is I mean it's got the longest staircase of any house
06:45in London for instance it's a very bare an extraordinary room it's the way it's shot is in that sense slightly
06:55stylized but not very much and not as much as the theater was I felt very secure about it as a project
07:03because Harold Pinter's not only a great dramatist he's one of the best screenwriters in the business and I
07:10knew from you know just a very brief conversation with him that neither of us wanted to open it out
07:16in the conventional movie sense and that we wouldn't I mean the only thing that we do in the film is we go
07:24outside the house twice in order to see the taxi arrive in order to see them arrive and to see Ruth
07:29walking in the middle of the night down this deserted street and we go once to Lenny's bedroom where he's
07:38listening to what's going on which is a surprise shock because he's living in in modern splendor in the middle of
07:46this tumble down Victorian Hackney house so I wouldn't I know but in any conventional sense it wasn't opened up and
07:55of course not a line of dialogue was was changed or altered or anything but I was when I was approached about it I was
08:03naturally anxious first of all I didn't believe it could make a film and still don't in the in the sense
08:10of opening it up you know you'd have to go to Heathrow and see them arriving and get the taxi there and so on
08:15I mean and why would you go with Joey I suppose to the to the boxing establishment where he trains I mean
08:21these things would all dilute the claustrophobia of the film and it is that sense that the all these
08:28passionate warring people are shut in this house shut in this room is is really what gives it its edge
08:36and I was also obviously worried about the actors bringing down the performance to the right level
08:45for camera and by doing that not losing the verbal and cruel intensity of what they're saying it's very
08:54there's very clear distinction here as far as I'm concerned an actor on the stage has to play to the audience and
09:01tell the audience he obviously has to project his voice a little bit in order to be heard in a thousand seat theater
09:08which is quite a different level of volume to what you would use in a room and in a sense he's aware of the audience
09:17he's manipulating the audience he's telling the audience what he wants them to imagine now if you do that
09:24to the camera the camera takes fright and you're revealed as someone who is bullying the camera
09:30and insisting on something and you look over the top the art of great screen acting is to hide and to
09:37make the camera beg to see what's going on the camera comes closer and closer to your heart try and
09:43understand now the problem of filming the homecoming one of the great problems I thought was how we could
09:50get the verbal intensity without being over the top and I think we succeeded
09:56what kind of a son were you you wet wick you spent half your time doing crossword puzzles we took into
10:04the butcher's shop you couldn't even sweep the dust off the floor we took McGregor into the shop he could
10:09run the place by the end of the week well I'll tell you one thing I respected my father not only as a
10:13man but as a number one butter and to prove it I followed him into the shop I learned to carve a carcass
10:19at his knee I commemorated his name in blood I gave birth to three grown men all on my own bat what are
10:26you done what are you done you tit you want to finish the washing up look at the clothes so try to get
10:34rid of these feelings of resentment Sam after all we are brothers I think the play of the homecoming is
10:42dominated by max the character max max the butcher this violent retired butcher living in a house
10:52which is expunged all softness all trace of femininity because his wife had betrayed him he is he is male
11:01sarcastic and belligerent in many respects a dreadful man nearing the end of his life and still fighting
11:10like a great resentful bull we were very fortunate in having Paul Rogers play it on the stage and in
11:17the movie and I think his performance fulfills Harold's desires but also I think it dominates the film and so
11:27it should I had a very strange experience over that actually because when we were going to shoot it
11:34Harold Pinter said to me you must come to Hackney and and see the sort of house and the
11:40I was thinking of and we went for a walk down the street and it was the street where we subsequently
11:45filmed the arrival of Ruth and Teddy and as we walked past a house an old man came out with a
11:53walking stick and a cloth cap and a cardigan wearing sneakers trainers and said Harold my boy how are you
12:03come in and have a drink and we went in and had a drink and I was introduced and Harold said and how
12:09is Moishe and we heard how Moishe was and he was a professor of literature at a Canadian university and my
12:19head was buzzing because I thought is this how the homecoming happened is this the story I said to
12:26Harold afterwards is this how it all started and he said well it all started but it's some of the triggers
12:32certainly and I said well is it the same story he said no certainly not but what really shook me was
12:39that I don't remember a moment when we said to Paul Rogers why don't you wear tennis shoes and a hat
12:46and and carry a stick and wear a cardigan night and day how did that evolve I don't remember the
12:53designer saying that or me or Harold Pinter but there he was the same max as we met in Hackney
13:02one of the things that we had to face was that I asked David Watkin brilliant lighting cameraman who
13:11worked with us if I could have real depth of focus so that I could hold two shots so that
13:17the everybody was sharp and we didn't have to decide who was in focus and he got that by
13:25lighting at a huge intensity and the key light was a light through the window of the house
13:32which was provided by a world war ii searchlight which he found from somewhere and the heat
13:38and it was just awful and the actors used to run into the set do the take and run out again i mean
13:45you couldn't stay on the set um but it it's what gives it it's peculiar and extraordinary look
13:52he was very fond of your mother mac was very fond he always had a good word for her
14:00mind you she wasn't such a bad woman even though it made me sick just to look at her rotten stinking
14:08face she wasn't such a bad bitch i gave her the best bleeding years of my life anyway plug it will
14:13you you stupid sod i'm trying to read the paper yes and i'll chop your spine off you talk to me like
14:18that you understand talking to your lousy filthy father like that you know what you're getting demented
14:23the interesting thing of course about pinter's dramaturgy the way he writes is from the first
14:33he was using three dots which are a hesitation pause which is an emotional stoppage a transition and
14:40silences which are complete crises and they're differentiated very very clearly and the actors
14:47have to learn them and they have to learn they're there before they decide why they're there now
14:53when i started directing pinter the actors were slightly indignant about these pauses set down they
15:01said i mean shouldn't we decide where the pauses are when we know how the scene goes and i would say
15:07absolutely not you have to understand that the pause is there because it actually is a line and you
15:14have to you may not say anything but you have to express something and our task is to find out what
15:19that expression is so i sometimes in the very early stages of printer rehearsals once they've once
15:26they've learned the shape of the the text and where the pauses are i say to them now don't use the dialogue
15:32to hide your emotion use it to express it so play it now melodramatically with the feelings out outside
15:40outside and that of course is terrifying and then you have they have to bottle all those feelings so that
15:47the text contains them and the pauses are the transitions um i remember i mean harold never rewrites
15:56he he considers his plays down to the last comma they're immaculate he wouldn't give you a play that
16:03in his view wasn't finished but i do remember when i was doing old times i had a phone call from him
16:10after rehearsal one night and he said i've got a rewrite and i said good god what what do you mean he said yes
16:15page 37 so i looked at page 37 he said second speech just after it cut the pause now he said that
16:24with a genial smile in his voice but extraordinary thing was he was right with the pause removed the
16:30scene took off now i think you'll find if if you watch the film with the text in your hands that the text is
16:39not only accurate but that the pauses and silences are absolutely well placed and are correct um
16:48and of course film helped us do that in a rather interesting way which i think perhaps many people
16:53don't quite pick up normally speaking you edit a film the juxtaposition of shots according to visual
17:00needs and the dialogue shape is often in counterpoint to that um i edited the homecoming on the rhythm of
17:09the text on the pauses on the silences on the actual shape of the words and that isn't very often done
17:19and i wouldn't dare do it unless i had an immaculate formed text like pinter's but that did pay off and
17:26that gives the film i think a very hard edge how are you look i'd like you to meet how long you've
17:35been in this house all night all night i'm a laughing stock how'd you get in i had my key
17:42who's this i was just going to introduce you who asked you to bring tarts in here tarts who asked
17:52you to bring dirty tarts into this house listen don't be silly you've been here all night yes we
17:58arrived from venice we've had a smelly scrubber in my house all night we've had a stinking pot-fritten
18:02slut in my house all night stop it what are you talking about i haven't seen the bitch for nine years
18:08he comes home without a word he brings a filthy scrubber off the street he shacks up in my house
18:11she's my wife we're married i've never had a horn under this roof before ever since your mother
18:16died my word of honor there is a certain presentational quality about pinter's language
18:21all his characters use words love words and know they're speaking they're not sloppy with language
18:28they're precise it doesn't matter whether they're low class or upper class they have that same quality of
18:33precision and precision is an instrument of uh of conflict almost i think that you have to be an
18:42articulate and clearly spoken actor to to make pinter happen but more than that you have to have the
18:48courage to allow the inner life to go on inside you so that the pauses and the silences are filled with
18:56something um i mean i've seen many productions of pinter where the actors just stop because he's written
19:03pause but they don't know what's going on in the pause the pause is a transitional moment emotionally
19:09and it's something that the audience feel in a live theater instinctively if if the actor is really
19:16living it through now of course you can do the same thing on the screen and we did i mean the camera
19:22loves silence the camera i would almost say prefers silence because then it can tell us what the what the
19:28face is thinking and we don't need words but the interesting thing to me um about doing the
19:35homecoming as a film was that the camera enabled us to get closer to the heart of the character
19:42so in a sense the the pauses and silences were perhaps slightly more eloquent than they were even in
19:49the theater but it's a it's a a very very great discipline to understand that unless you trust
19:57harold's form and try and understand why he wants a pause why he wants a silence make an emotional decision
20:05then it becomes can become very empty and pretentious and and looks rather absurd his characters are never
20:13and they are not absurd the idea that he belongs to something called the theater of the absurd
20:18is preposterous um it's all his characters have the most accurate behavior pattern but you have to fill
20:26the pauses the action is simple it's a leg moving my lips move why don't you restrict your observations to
20:41that perhaps the fact that they move is more significant
20:45than the words which come through them you must bear that possibility in mind
20:55well ruth is a gift part the only woman in the play and the only bringer of femininity into a violently
21:03repulsively male world you can't really ask for much more of an actress and it's beautifully constructed
21:10and beautifully written one also has to say of course that in those early years of harold's work
21:16vivian was his wife and in a very real sense was his muse and certainly i did three or four productions
21:23with her of old times and uh homecoming obviously um she understood his rhythms she understood his evasiveness
21:35she understood above all i think his irony and his humor she's quite um a piss taker ruth
21:43and uh she could play the game quite as well as the rest of those cockneys
21:47that's what it is piss taking is of course the basis of all harold's dramaturgy anybody who visits
21:54london and engages in conversation with a taxi driver should know what piss taking is it's mocking you
22:01so elusively and charmingly and delicately that you're not even sure you're being mocked that's
22:07what piss taking is and harold's characters do that to each other all the time how about me taking a glass
22:15without you taking me why don't i just take you you're joking you're in love anyway with another man
22:26you've had a secret liaison with another man his family didn't even know then you come here without
22:31a word of warning and start to make trouble have a sip go on have a sip from my glass sit on my lap
22:40take a long cool sip put your head back and open your mouth take that glass away from me lie on the
22:51floor go on i'll pour it down your throat what are you doing making me some kind of proposal
23:00of the people who can really speak shakespeare's verse as something witty cool
23:07and trippingly on the tongue fast which is shakespeare's own recipe trippingly on the tongue
23:14ian home was way up there with judy dench michael bryant diana rig that whole generation ian richardson
23:22i could go on they all spoke shakespeare twice as fast as it had been spoken and very wittily he's
23:28immaculate ian home and the reason he's immaculate at pinta is because he's immaculate at shakespeare
23:34i think ian home is the definitive lenny and he was one of the products of my 10 years at the royal
23:42shakespeare company he was there i think for seven years of that time and it's extraordinary to think
23:48that when he created lenny he was always play also playing richard the third um the dreadful crook
23:54back villain in the henry six plays and in richard the third itself and he then went on to play prince
23:59howell and henry v in the henry fours and henry five so he was the most potent classical actor
24:07of his generation at that particular moment and there he was in pinta playing a cockney spiv
24:13with such malice such sexuality and such wit i think he's one of the wittiest actors around
24:21i have great admiration for him and here she was up against this wall well just sliding down the wall
24:28following the blow i'd given her well to sum up everything was in my favor for a killing
24:34don't worry about the chauffeur the chauffeur would never have spoken he was an old friend of the
24:38family but in the end i thought yeah why go to all the bother you know getting rid of the corpse and
24:50all that getting yourself into a state of tension so i just gave her another belt in the nose and a
24:55couple of turns of the boot and sort of left it at that how did you know she was diseased how did i know
25:03i decided she was i'm rather neurotic about preservation i've i've not made many movies in
25:12my life um and i don't think i'm a natural movie maker i love making film and of course people always
25:18say but don't you want to make film so that you can leave something behind i'm not terribly interested
25:23in leaving anything behind really um and i have nothing i've been a theater director for 50 years
25:30and i think done now about 350 productions of plays and operas and i have no record of them at all
25:38and they've gone like soap bubbles so i wasn't particularly sad to see the homecoming go but you
25:44know when when the film is got out and reappraised and praised again and the actors are given adulation
25:53for the job they do of course i feel good about that and that's very pleasant but of course
25:59if the homecoming film exists in 50 or 100 years time it will look very old-fashioned and very
26:06peculiar because everything does the signals that you give out in performing art have to be contemporary
26:13and those signals change and as they change we lose touch
26:28so
26:36you
26:38you
26:40You
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