The Birthday party by Harold pinter

  

This blog is a part of post  viewing task of the play, “ Birthday Party” written by  ‘Harold Pinter’ in 1957 . It is one of his best-known and most frequently performed plays.

#About Author

Harold Pinter, (born Oct. 10, 1930, London, Eng.—died Dec. 24, 2008, London), English playwright, who achieved international renown as one of the most complex and challenging post-World War II dramatists. His plays are noted for their use of understatement, small talk, reticence—and even silence—to convey the substance of a character’s thought, which often lies several layers beneath, and contradicts, his speech. In 2005 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The son of a Jewish tailor, Pinter grew up in London’s East End in a working-class area. He studied acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1948 but left after two terms to join a repertory company as a professional actor. Pinter toured Ireland and England with various acting companies, appearing under the name David Baron in provincial repertory theatres until 1959. After 1956 he began to write for the stage. The Room (first produced 1957) and The Dumb Waiter (first produced 1959), his first two plays, are one-act dramas that established the mood of comic menace that was to figure largely in his later works. His first full-length play, The Birthday Party (first produced 1958; filmed 1968), puzzled the London audiences and lasted only a week, but later it was televised and revived successfully on the stage

1.     Why are two scene of Lulu omitted from the movie?

Lulu’s two scene omitted from the movie because probably director doesn’t want to show brutality into his film. The birthday party is comedy of means and theatre of absured.

2.     Is movie successful in giving us the effect of menace? Where you able to feel it while reading the text?

 Yes, the movie successful in giving us the effect of menace. While reading the text at some effect but not much like the movie. The visual effect is essay to remember and understand. Visual thing is more understand batter than reading text. Visual effect is feel and affect batter than the reading text.  

3.     Do you feel the effect of lurking danger while viewing the movie? Where you able to feel the same while reading the text.

Yes, throughout the movie we feel the effect of lurking danger. While watching movie when door knocking  and when sound of tear newspaper in pieces that time feel danger and lurking.  While reading the text the when door knocking  that time feel same.

4.     What do you read in ‘Newspaper’ in the movie? Petey is reading the newspaper to Meg, it torn into pieces by McCain, pieces are hidden by petey in the last scene.

Newspaper is symbol of ‘authority’. We see in the movie petey is reading a newspaper. Newspaper also helps to hidden the face. When meg ask abour the news petey replied rudely. It shows the power position of the relationship.

5.     Camera is positioned over the head of McCain when he is playing Blind Man’s Buff and is positioned at the top with a view of a room like a cage(trap) when Stanley is playing it. What interpretations can you give to these positioning of camera?

Camera is positioned over the head of McCain when he is playing Blind man’s buff. Camera’s position is the top of the room and camera only focused on the Stanley and camera moves like Stanley in the cage(trap).

6.     “Pinter restored theater to its basic elements: an enclosed space and unpredictable dialogue, where people are at the mercy of one another and pretense crumbles.” (Pinter, Art, Truth & Politics: excerpts from the 2005 Noble Lecture).  Does this happen in the movie?

7.     How does viewing movie help in better understanding of the play ‘The Birthday Party’ with its typical characteristics (like Pintersque, pause, silence, menace, lurking danger)?

Yes viewing movie help in better understanding of the play. Some points we better understand then the reading. Like knocking the door when we read this point we just read can’t feel but when see that thing we feel that sound and feel to be afraid. And the sound of tearing newspaper. Its