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Film is a 1965 short film written by Samuel Beckett, his only screenplay. It was commissioned by Barney Rosset of Grove Press. Writing began on 5 April 1963 with a first draft completed within four days. A second draft was produced by 22 May and a 40-leaf shooting script followed thereafter. It was filmed in New York City in July 1964. Beckett and Alan Schneider originally wanted Charlie Chaplin, Zero Mostel and Jack MacGowran; however, they eventually did not get involved.[1] Beckett then suggested Buster Keaton.[2]James Karen, who was to have a small part in the film, also supported having Keaton.[3] The filmed version differs from Beckett's original script but with his approval since he was on set all the time, this being his only visit to the United States, as stated in the script printed in Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (Faber and Faber, 1984).[4]
It was remade by the British Film Institute (1979, 16mm, 26 minutes) without Beckett's supervision, as Film: a screenplay by Samuel Beckett. David Rayner Clark directed Max Wall.[5]
It first appeared in print in Eh Joe and Other Writings (Faber and Faber, 1967).
Synopsis
Throughout the first two parts, almost everything is seen through the eye of the camera (designated in the script as E), although there are occasional moments when O's perception is seen. In the third part, much more of O's perception of the room and its contents is given. In order to distinguish between the two perceptions, objects seen by O were shot through a lens-gauze, blurring his perception while E's perception was shot without gauze or filters, keeping the images sharp.
The street
The film opens onto a rippled image that fills the entire screen. Without colour, it is difficult to discern what is being shown, but it is alive. As it moves, it is shown to be an extreme close-up of an eyelid; it fills the entire screen. The eye opens, slowly, closes, opens again, blinks and then fades into a different rippled image, still somewhat organic but changed, still.[6] As the camera begins to pan right and up, it is discernable as a wall; we are outside a building (an old factory situated in Lower Manhattan). It is summer, though it is hard to tell. The camera's movement is not smooth. It is as if it is looking for something. Eventually, it loses interest and pans left and down back to the wall.
Suddenly, the camera (E) shifts violently to the left. A man (O) is hurrying along the wall from left to right. He pauses, hugging the wall, and E gets a chance to focus on him. He has on a long dark overcoat, the collar of which is turned up and his hat is pulled down over his face. (Keaton had asked Beckett what O was wearing underneath. "I hadn't thought of that," the author admitted and then proposed, "the same coat", which appealed to both men.)[3] He is hanging onto a briefcase with his left hand whilst trying to shield the exposed side of his face with the other. He realises he's been seen and cowers against the wall; E quickly shifts behind him.
No longer conscious of being observed, O starts off again, knocking over a trestle and stumbling over a railway sleeper—anything to stay as close as possible to the wall. He charges into a man and woman, knocking the man's hat off. E looks from the man's face to the woman's and back again. The man has a moustache and is wearing a pince-nez. They have been consulting a newspaper, which the woman keeps hold of. They both look appalled at what has happened.
E moves back to a long shot and watches O barge through and on his way. The man replaces his hat, takes off his pince-nez. and looks after the fleeing figure. The couple look at each other and the man "opens his mouth to vituperate"[7] but the woman shushes him, uttering the only sound in the whole play. Together they turn to stare directly at E as an open-mouthed expression takes over their faces; they can not bear to look at what they have seen and turn their faces away.
The action shifts back to O just as he reaches and turns a corner. He heads off down the street until he realises he is at the right doorway. He enters.
Stairs
The camera cuts to the vestibule. The viewer is directly behind O. Stairs lead up on the left, but O veers right and pauses, pulling himself together. He takes his pulse and E moves in. As soon as he becomes aware of E's presence he rushes down a couple of steps and cowers beside the wall until the camera retreats a little. When it does he reverses back up to street-level and then begins up the stairs.
A frail old woman is coming down. The camera gives us a brief close-up. "She carries a tray of flowers slung from her neck by a strap. She descends slowly and with fumbling feet."[8] O backs up and hurries down the steps to the right again where he sits down on a step and presses his face against the balusters. He glances up briefly to see where she is, then hides his head from view.
As the woman reaches the bottom of the stairs, she looks straight into the lens. The expression on her face changes to the one of wide-eyed horror that was displayed on the faces of the man and woman outside. She closes her eyes and collapses. E checks on where the man had been, but O has made his escape. His coat tails are seen flying up the stairs.
E chases after him and finds him at the top of the first flight. He looks around to see if there is anyone about. Satisfied, he turns left and, not without some difficulty, opens the door to a room and enters. E slips in unnoticed as O locks the door behind him and then takes his pulse once more.
The room
We find ourselves in a "small barely furnished room.[9] The man—and the camera following him from behind—survey its contents: a dog and a cat share a basket, a caged parrot and a goldfish in its bowl sit atop a small table. The walls are bare, apart from a mirror and an unframed picture pinned to the wall: a SumerianTell Asmar figurine[10] with big eyes (described in the screenplay as "the face of God the Father"[11]). There is also a couch with a pillow, some blankets and a rug on it, a rocking chair[12] with a "curiously carved headrest"[13] and there is a window with a tattered roller blind with full-length net curtains to either side.
Preparation of room
Systematically, O takes each object or creature in the room and disables its ability to 'see' him: he closes the blind and pulls the net curtains across, he covers the mirror with the rug, the cat and dog (“a shy and uncooperative, little Chihuahua”[14]) are – with some difficulty – ejected from the room and the picture is torn up. Although stated simply, the mechanics needed to execute these tasks are laborious (e.g., as he passes the window, he hides behind the blanket which he holds in front of himself to cover the mirror and he carries the cat and dog facing away from him as he tries to put them out the door).
After all the above, he goes to sit in the chair. There are two holes in the headrest that suggest eyes.[15] He ignores them and sits. O takes the folder from his case and goes to open it, but there are "two eyelets, well proportioned";[16] he turns the folder through 90° but he's disturbed by the parrot's eye and has to get up and cover the cage with his coat. He sits again, repeats the same process with his folder and then has to get up and cover the goldfish bowl, too.
"Beckett initially contemplated setting Film in the evening, but had to decide against it for a practical reason: 'to remove all possibility of his putting off light in room.'"[17]
Period in rocking chair
Finally O sits down opposite the denuded wall, opens the folder, and takes out seven photographs of himself, which he examines in sequence:
6 months old – in his mother's arms
4 years old – kneeling in an attitude of prayer[18]
15 years old – in his school blazer, teaching a dog to beg
25 years old – a newly enlisted man, with a little girl in his arms
30 years old – looking over forty, wearing a patch over one eye and looking grim
He spends twice as long on pictures 5 and 6. After he looks at the seventh photograph for a few seconds, he rips it up and drops it on the floor. He then works his way through the rest of the photos in reverse order, looking at each one briefly again and then tearing it up. The photograph of him as an infant must be on a tougher mount and he has some difficulty with that one. “[I]n Beckett the distant past is always more tenacious than recent events.”[19] Afterwards he rocks slightly, hands holding the armrests and then checks his pulse once more.
O is now in a similar situation to the man in A Piece of Monologue, who has also destroyed all his old photographs and now stands facing a similarly blank wall.
As O begins to doze off, E begins to move round to his left. Suddenly, O realises he is being watched and turns his head violently to the right. E moves behind him again. He resumes rocking and dozes off. This time E whirls round to the right, passing the window, the mirror, the birdcage and fishbowl and finally stops in front of the space on the wall where the picture was.
E turns around and, for the first time, we are face-to-face with O, asleep in his rocking chair. All of a sudden he wakes and stares straight into the camera lens. He looks very much like the man in the seventh photograph only much older. He still has the eye patch.
He half starts from the chair, then stiffens. Gradually, the horrified look we have seen before on the couple and the old woman's faces appears on his. He is looking at himself, but not the scruffy, wearish man we have been watching. The man before him, standing with a big nail beside his head, has a look of "acute intentness"[20] on his face. O slumps back into the chair and starts rocking. He closes his eye and the expression fades. He covers his face with his hands briefly and then looks again. This time we see the face of E in close-up, just the eyes.
O covers his eyes again, bows his head. The rocking dies down and then stops. The screen goes black. We then see the opening image of the eye, which is frozen, and the credits are presented over it. Once finished, the eye closes and the film is over.
A "load of old bosh." – Dilys Powell (The Sunday Times)
The work is studied by and has been the subject of criticism from both film and theatre scholars, with the former tending to study the film as shot, the latter tending to study the script as written. Critical opinion is mixed, but it is generally held in higher regard by film scholars than it is by theatre or Beckett scholars. The views above represent extremes. A 'middle-ground' review would probably be "a poor attempt by a genuine writer to move into a medium that he simply hadn't the flair or understanding of to make a success".[22] Beckett's own opinion was that it was an “interesting failure.”[23]
The film opens and closes with close-ups of a sightless eye. This inevitably evokes the notorious opening sequence of Un Chien Andalou[24] in which a human eye is sliced open with a razor blade. In fact, The Eye[25] was an early title for Film, though admittedly, at that time, he had not thought of the need for the opening close-up. As a student of French literature, Beckett would have been familiar with Victor Hugo’s poem La Conscience. ‘Conscience’ in French can mean either ‘conscience’ in the English sense or ‘consciousness’ and the double meaning is important. Hugo's poem concerns a man haunted by an eye that stares at him unceasingly from the sky. He runs away from it, ever further, even to the grave, where, in the tomb, the eye awaits him. The man is Cain. He has been trying to escape consciousness of himself, the self that killed his brother, but his conscience will not let him rest. The eye/I is always present and, when he can run no further, must be faced in the tomb.[26]
Film takes its inspiration from the 18th-century Idealist Irish philosopher Berkeley. At the beginning of the work, Beckett uses the famous quotation: "esse est percipi" (to be is to be perceived). Notably, Beckett leaves off a portion of Berkeley's edict, which reads in full: “esse est percipi aut percipere” (to be is to be perceived or to perceive). Alan Schneider, the director of Film, was once asked if he could provide an explanation that ‘the man in the street’ could understand:
"It's a movie about the perceiving eye, about the perceived and the perceiver – two aspects of the same man. The perceiver desires like mad to perceive and the perceived tries desperately to hide. Then, in the end, one wins."[27]
In between takes on the set near the Brooklyn Bridge, Keaton told a reporter something similar, summarizing the theme as "a man may keep away from everybody but he can't get away from himself."
In Beckett's original script, the two main characters, the camera and the man it is pursuing are referred to as E (the Eye) and O (the Object). This simplistic division might lead one to assume that the Eye is only interested in the man it is pursuing. This may be true, but it does not mean it will not have the same effect on anyone who comes in contact with it. “E is both part of O and not part of O; E is also the camera and, through the camera, the eye of the spectator as well. But E is also self, not merely O's self but the self of any person or people, specifically that of the other characters — the elderly couple and the flower-lady — who respond to its stare with that look of horror.”[28] E is, so to speak, O's blind eye. "He has the function of making all with whom he comes into contact self-aware.”[29]
O does everything physically possible to avoid being seen by others, but the only thing he can do to avoid perception by an “all seeing god” is to tear up his picture, a symbolic act, as if saying, “If I don't believe you exist you can't see me.” There is no one there to see him for what he really is other than himself and so, in this godless world, it is only fitting that E, representing O's self-perception, would appear standing where the picture has been torn from the wall. O also destroys the photographs of his past, his 'memories' of who he was. Now all that remains for O is to escape from himself - which he achieves by falling asleep until woken by E's intense gaze. The room is more figurative than literal, like many of Beckett's rooms, “as much psychological as physical, 'rooms of the mind', as one ... actor called them.”[30]
If Beckett were Shakespeare he might well have written: "To be seen or not to be seen, that is the question."[31] It is an issue that concerns many of Beckett's characters. At the end of the first act of Waiting for Godot, when the boy wants to know what to tell Mr Godot, Vladimir tells him: “Tell him … (he hesitates) … tell him you saw us. (Pause.) You did see us, didn’t you?”[32] But what happens when you are alone? The narrator of The Unnamable answers: “They depart, one by one, and the voices go on, it’s not theirs, they were never there, there was never anyone but you, talking to you about you…”[33] The old woman in Rockaby appears to be the exact opposite of O but although she actively seeks to be seen by someone while O does everything to avoid perceivedness, the irony is that both characters are alone with only themselves for company.
Beckett's script has been interpreted in various ways. R. C. Lamont writes that "Film deals with the apprenticeship to death, the process of detaching oneself from life. Like the TibetanBook of the Dead, it teaches the gradual dissolution of self. The veiling of the windows and mirrors, the covering of the birdcage – the extinction of light, reflection and light – are so many ritualistic steps to be taken before final immobility, the resignation of the end.”[34] At the end of Film, O is seated in his rocker with his face buried in his hands; at the end of Rockaby, the old woman's head inclines forward as if, finally, she had died.[35] The final scene in Film is also comparable to the moment in the library when the old man in That Time sees his own reflection in the glass covering a painting.
It could be tempting to think of O and E as a Beckettian Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – indeed in notes for the first draft Beckett did toy “with the idea of making ‘E tall’ and ‘O short (and) fat’ which corresponds with the dual physique of Jekyll and Hyde” – but Film is not concerned with representations of good and evil, only with the concept of the second self, of pursuer and pursued.”[26] The special relationship existing between O and E - an atypical case of Doppelgänger - constitutes what has been called "palindromic identity."[36]
For Linda Ben-Zvi, “Beckett does not merely reproduce the modernist critique of and anxiety over technology and the reproduction of art; he attaches 'no truth value'[37] to his critique of technology and the reproduction of the gaze. Instead, he creates a dialogue that awakens and revitalises the uncritical perception of his audience... The work not only is predicated on the form but invariably becomes a critique of its form."[38] Having written a play titled Play and a song called Song,[39] it comes as no surprise that Beckett would entitle his first foray into cinema as Film. The title supports Ben-Zvi's interpretation in that it is a film about cinematic technology: how the movie camera and photographic images are used in Film are essential to understanding it. When he writes, “No truth value attaches to above, regarded as of merely structural and dramatic convenience”,[40] Beckett takes the emphasis away from Berkeley's maxim thus stressing the dramatic structure of the work. The viewers are being asked to consider the work structurally and dramatically rather than emotionally or philosophically.
Film critic and film historianAndrew Sarris briefly mentions Film in his book, The American cinema: directors and directions, 1929-1968. Sarris discusses Film in the context of his section on the film career of Buster Keaton, writing that: "Even Samuel Beckett contributed to the desecration of the Keaton mask by involving the actor of absurdity before its time in a dreary exercise called Film, the most pretentious title in all cinema."[41]
Beckett and Keaton
Beckett had never seen Schneider direct any of his plays and yet continued to entrust him with the work. However, for this particular project, Beckett became personally involved. Schneider has speculated that it may simply have been the opportunity to work directly with Keaton. It has even been suggested that one inspiration for Waiting for Godot might have come from a 1949 film called The Lovable Cheat in which Keaton has a small part as a man who is convinced by the main character, who owes him money, to wait endlessly for a man named Godeau, who will pay the debt.[42]
When Schneider managed to hunt up Keaton, he found that genius of the silent screen — old, broke, ill, and alone — some $2 million ahead in a four-handed poker game with an imaginary Louis B. Mayer of MGM and two other invisible Hollywood moguls.[43]
“Yes, I accept the offer," were silent Keaton's unexpected first words to Schneider. Keaton was dying even as they made the film. "We didn’t know that," Rosset told interviewer Patsy Southgate in 1990, "but looking back at it, the signs were there. Couldn’t speak — he was not so much difficult, he just wasn’t there." Keaton would in fact die eighteen months after the shooting of Film.[44]
From this one might think that Keaton jumped at the chance, but this was not the case. James Karen remembers:
“He had to be talked into it by Eleanor [his wife] and I remember calling and saying, ‘You know, it could be your Les Enfants du paradis. It could be that wonderful, wonderful thing.’”[45]
Beckett had wanted to work with Keaton several years earlier, when he offered him the role of Lucky in the American stage premiere of Waiting for Godot, but Buster turned it down. It's said that Buster didn't understand Godot and had misgivings about this script as well. Presumably this went a long way to make him think twice about this new project.
During a meeting with documentary filmmaker Kevin Brownlow, Beckett was quite forthcoming:
“Buster Keaton was inaccessible. He had a poker mind as well as a poker face. I doubt if he ever read the text[46] - I don't think he approved of it or liked it. But he agreed to do it and he was very competent … Of course, I had seen his silent films and enjoyed them – don't suppose I could remember them now. He had a young woman with him – his wife, who had picked him up from his alcoholism. We met him at a hotel. I tried to engage him in conversation, but it was no good. He was absent. He didn't even offer us a drink. Not because he was being unfriendly, but because it never occurred to him.”[3]
Schneider's recollection of that awkward first meeting confirms all of this and more: “They simply had nothing to say to each other, no worlds of any kind to share. And all of Sam's good will and my own failing efforts to get something started failed to bring them together on any level. It was a disaster.”[2]
But not entirely. Although the role called for Beckett's seemingly ubiquitous bowler hat, Keaton had brought along some of his trademark flattened-down Stetsons and it was quickly agreed that he should wear one of those. On the Monday morning they “traipsed down in Joe Coffey's ancient Morgan to just beneath the shadow of Brooklyn Bridge and began the shooting.”[2] Beckett continues:
“The heat was terrible - while I was staggering in the humidity, Keaton was galloping up and down and doing whatever we asked of him. He had great endurance, he was very tough and, yes, reliable. And when you saw that face at the end - oh!’ He smiled, ‘At last’”[47]
Both Beckett and Schneider were novices; Keaton a seasoned veteran. That said, “Keaton's behaviour on the set was … steady and cooperative … He was indefatigable if not exactly loquacious. To all intents and purposes, we were shooting a silent film, and he was in his best form. He encouraged [Schneider] to give him vocal directions during the shot, sometimes starting over again without stopping the camera if he felt he hadn't done something well the first time. (Nor did he believe much in rehearsal, preferring the spontaneity of performance.) Often when [the crew was] stumped over a technical problem with the camera, he came through with suggestions, inevitably prefacing his comments by explaining that he had solved such problems many times at the Keaton Studios back in 1927.”[2]
Both Beckett and Schneider pronounced themselves more than pleased with Keaton's performance; the latter called him "magnificent."
Keaton's negative comments about the film are often reported but this final recollection by Schneider may redress the balance: “[W]hatever he may have subsequently said to interviewers or reporters about not understanding a moment of what he was doing or what the film was about, what I remember best of our final farewell on the set was that he smiled and half-admitted those six pages were worth doing after all.”[2]
In February 1965, when on a trip to West Berlin, “in deference to his recent work with Buster Keaton, he went to see Keaton again in his 1927 film The General, finding it, however, disappointing.”[48]
Canadian playwright Sherry MacDonald wrote a play, The Stone Face, based on the encounter between Beckett, Keaton and Schneider.
Waiting for Godot is a play by Irish playwright Samuel Beckett in which two characters, Vladimir (Didi) and Estragon (Gogo), engage in a variety of discussions and encounters while awaiting the titular Godot, who never arrives. Waiting for Godot is Beckett's reworking of his own original French-language play, En attendant Godot, and is subtitled "a tragicomedy in two acts".
Act Without Words I is a short play by Samuel Beckett. It is a mime, Beckett's first. Like many of Beckett's works, the play was originally written in French, being translated into English by Beckett himself. It was written in 1956 following a request from the dancer Deryk Mendel and first performed on 3 April 1957 at the Royal Court Theatre in London. On that occasion it followed a performance of Endgame. The original music to accompany the performance was written by composer John S. Beckett, Samuel's cousin, who would later collaborate with him on the radio play Words and Music.
Play is a one-act play by Samuel Beckett. It was written between 1962 and 1963 and first produced in German as Spiel on 14 June 1963 at the Ulmer Theatre in Ulm-Donau, Germany, directed by Deryk Mendel, with Nancy Illig (W1), Sigfrid Pfeiffer (W2) and Gerhard Winter (M). The first performance in English was on 7 April 1964 at the Old Vic in London. It was not well-received upon its British premiere.
Come and Go is a short play by Samuel Beckett. It was written in English in January 1965 and first performed at the Schillertheater, Berlin on 14 January 1966. Its English language premiere was at the Peacock Theatre, Dublin on 28 February 1968, and its British premiere was at the Royal Festival Hall in London on 9 December 1968. It was written for and dedicated to the publisher John Calder.
Ohio Impromptu is a "playlet" by Samuel Beckett.
Krapp's Last Tape is a 1958 one-act play, in English, by Samuel Beckett. With a cast of one man, it was written for Northern Irish actor Patrick Magee and first titled "Magee monologue". It was inspired by Beckett's experience of listening to Magee reading extracts from Molloy and From an Abandoned Work on the BBC Third Programme in December 1957.
Catastrophe is a short play by Samuel Beckett, written in French in 1982 at the invitation of A.I.D.A. and “[f]irst produced in the Avignon Festival … Beckett considered it ‘massacred.’” It is one of his few plays to deal with a political theme and, arguably, holds the title of Beckett's most optimistic work. Beckett "wrote the short play Catastrophe about control and censorship" and dedicated it to the Czech dramatist Václav Havel, who was in prison at the time. Havel wrote a play called Mistake "as a response to the one Beckett had written in solidarity." "In February 1984, in one of the most significant milestones in the history of Index on Censorship, both plays were published for the first time." In January 2022, after almost 38 years, in 50th birthday celebration of Index, they asked "Iranian playwright Reza Shirmarz to write his own response to Beckett's Catastrophe." Shirmarz wrote his play Muzzled which was published by Index as a dramatic response to Beckett's Catastrophe. Giving his viewpoints on Beckett's play in an interview with Index, Shirmarz said that "Catastrophe is about censored communication, the ritualistic representation and the symbolic image of human relationship constrained by external forces, a deterministic, political and post-dramatic text which demonstrates how humans are coerced to be and live in a torturous limbo. [In Catastrophe], Beckett's Protagonist is deprived of free will by the systems surrounding him and the systematic control imposed by others, except at the moment he moves his head up and looks at the spectators. Despite his psychosomatic pain, he talks through his silence and protests through his immobility. As so-called social factors and audiences, we are reminded by the playwright that we are not able to get out of the cage the sociopolitical conventions have imprisoned us in and we must abide by the unbreachable laws brought in by the global structures and conglomerates in order to survive."
What Where is Samuel Beckett's last play produced following a request for a new work for the 1983 Autumn Festival in Graz, Austria. It was written between February and March 1983 initially in French as Quoi où and translated by Beckett himself.
Not I is a short dramatic monologue written in 1972 by Samuel Beckett which was premiered at the "Samuel Beckett Festival" by the Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center, New York.
A Piece of Monologue is a fifteen-minute play by Samuel Beckett. Written between 2 October 1977 and 28 April 1979 it followed a request for a “play about death” by the actor David Warrilow who starred in the premiere in the Annex at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, New York on 14 December 1979.
Quad is a television play by Samuel Beckett, written and first produced and broadcast in 1981. It first appeared in print in 1984 where the work is described as "[a] piece for four players, light and percussion" and has also been called a "ballet for four people."
Rockaby is a short one-woman play by Samuel Beckett. It was written in English in 1980, at the request of Daniel Labeille, who produced it on behalf of Programs in the Arts, State University of New York, for a festival and symposium in commemoration of Beckett's 75th birthday. The play premiered on April 8, 1981, at the State University of New York at Buffalo, starring Billie Whitelaw and directed by Alan Schneider. A documentary film, Rockaby, by D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus records the rehearsal process and the first performance. This production went on to be performed at the Annex at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, and, in December 1982, at the Cottesloe, Royal National Theatre, London.
Footfalls is a play by Samuel Beckett. It was written in English, between 2 March and December 1975 and was first performed at the Royal Court Theatre as part of the Samuel Beckett Festival, on May 20, 1976 directed by Beckett himself. Billie Whitelaw, for whom the piece had been written, played May whilst Rose Hill voiced the mother.
That Time is a one-act play by Samuel Beckett, written in English between 8 June 1974 and August 1975. The play was specially written for actor Patrick Magee, who delivered its first performance on the occasion of Beckett's seventieth birthday celebration, at London's Royal Court Theatre on 20 May 1976.
Eh Joe is a piece for television, written in English by Samuel Beckett, his first work for the medium. It was begun on the author's fifty-ninth birthday, 13 April 1965, and completed by 1 May. "It [was] followed by six undated typescripts .”
From An Abandoned Work, a "meditation for radio" by Samuel Beckett, was first broadcast on BBC Radio 3’s Third Programme on Saturday, 14 December 1957 together with a selection from the novel Molloy. Donald McWhinnie, who already had a great success with All That Fall, directed the Irish actor Patrick Magee.
All That Fall is a one-act radio play by Samuel Beckett produced following a request from the BBC. It was written in English and completed in September 1956. The autograph copy is titled Lovely Day for the Races. It was published in French, in a translation by Robert Pinget revised by Beckett himself, as Tous ceux qui tombent.
Ghost Trio is a television play, written in English by Samuel Beckett. It was written in 1975, taped in October 1976 and the first broadcast was on BBC2 on 17 April 1977 as part of The Lively Arts programme Beckett himself entitled Shades. Donald McWhinnie directed with Ronald Pickup and Billie Whitelaw. The play's original title was to be Tryst. "On Beckett’s notebook, the word was crossed out vigorously and the new title Ghost Trio written next to it. On the title page of the BBC script the same handwritten title change can be found, indicating that it must have been corrected at the very last minute."
Nacht und Träume is the last television play written and directed by Samuel Beckett. It was written in English (mid-1982) for the German channel Süddeutscher Rundfunk, recorded in October 1982 and broadcast on 19 May 1983 where it attracted "an audience of two million viewers." The mime artist Helfrid Foron played both parts.
David Warrilow was an English actor best known as one of the "finest interpreters of Samuel Beckett’s work".
References
↑ Cited in Alan Schneider's essay, "On Directing Film" in Film by Samuel Beckett (New York: Grove Press, 1969), 66.
1 2 3 4 5 Schneider, A., On Directing Samuel Beckett's Film Explains Schneider: "During a transatlantic call one day (as I remember) he shattered our desperation over the sudden casting crisis by calmly suggesting Buster Keaton." In print: Schneider, "On Directing Film" (Grove, 1969), 67.
1 2 3 According to Karen, he had urged Schneider to consider the 68-year-old Keaton when MacGowran's schedule changed, making him unavailable. Brownlow, K., 'Brownlow on Beckett (on Keaton)' in FilmWest 22Archived 2008-03-07 at the Wayback Machine
↑ Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 162
↑ Beckett did not approve of the finished product: "It was awful. I was there when they were setting it all up and then I had to go with the director – what was his name? – and I was very embarrassed. It was supposed to be silent with just the sound of feet and the one word "ssh" and he had every kind of noise going on." – Brownlow, K., 'Brownlow on Beckett (on Keaton)' in FilmWest 22Archived 2008-03-07 at the Wayback Machine. A full review can be read at Journal of Beckett Studies Vol. 7Archived 2007-07-26 at the Wayback Machine
↑ "When the rushes of the first frenetic day's outdoor filming were viewed, it was clear that it had been an almost total disaster … Yet the budget did not allow for the scene to be reshot … Hours were spent getting the exact close-up that they required of Buster Keaton's 'creased, reptilian' eye to replace the abandoned outdoor scene with the extras." – Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), pp 523,524
↑ Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 165
↑ Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 166
↑ Beckett's notes identify this as the man's mother's room. This recalls Molloy's return to his mother's room/womb/tomb to die. – Ackerley, C. J. and Gontarski, S. E., (Eds.) The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett, (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), pp 195,383
↑ Dukes, Hunter (2017-09-07). "The Eyes of Statues". The Brooklyn Rail. Retrieved 2021-07-25.
↑ Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 167. The actual photograph was "suggested to him by Avigdor Arikha [and] was a reproduction of a Sumerian head of God Abu in the Museum in Baghdad". – Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p 523
↑ The rocking-chair is a common Beckettian prop, appearing in the opening chapter of Murphy, Rockaby, Molloy (Trilogy p 108) and the abandoned Mime de rêveur, A.
↑ Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 167
↑ Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p 523
↑ In his manuscript notes Beckett had not envisioned these 'eye' holes but had written "Make chair back memorable" and foresaw an “upright back, intersecting wooden bars or lozenges”. – Notes for Film (Reading University Library MS 1227/7/6/1 p 15), quoted in Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p 802 n 54
↑ Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p 524
↑ Pountney, R., Theatre of Shadows: Samuel Beckett's Drama 1956-1976 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1988), p 127
↑ The photograph in question is also referenced in How It Is (London: Calder, 1964), pp 16,17 and refers to a posed photograph of Beckett when he was four kneeling at his mother's knee. It was taken so that Beatrice Evelyn's sister, Dorothy could paint a subject called 'Bedtime' since it was impractical to have the young child pose for any length of time. – Cronin, A., Samuel Beckett The Last Modernist (London: Flamingo, 1997), p 20
↑ Robinson, M., The Long Sonata of the Dead: A Study of Samuel Beckett (New York: Grove Press, 1969), p 35
↑ Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 169
↑ Deleuze, G., Gilles Deleuze: Essays Critical and Clinical, University of Minnesota Press, 1997
↑ Sludds, T., 'Film, Beckett and Failure' in FilmWest 21, 1995
↑ Ackerley, C. J. and Gontarski, S. E., (Eds.) The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett, (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), p 195
↑ Beckett sets his film in the year 1929, the year Un Chien Andalou was made (and of course the first year of the sound film).
↑ Pountney, R., Theatre of Shadows: Samuel Beckett’s Drama 1956-1976 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1988), p 128
↑ Homan, S., Filming Beckett’s Television Plays: A Director’s Experience (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1992), p 53
↑ Lamont, R. C., ‘To Speak the Words of "The Tribe" – The Wordlessness of Samuel Beckett’s Metaphysical Clowns’ in Burkman, K. H., (Ed.) Myth and Ritual in the Plays of Samuel Beckett (London and Toronto: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1987)', p 58
↑ Beckett, S., Waiting for Godot (London: Faber and Faber, [1956] 1988), p 52
↑ Beckett, S., The Unnamable (New York: Grove Press, 1954), p 34
↑ Lamont, R. C., ‘To Speak the Words of “The Tribe” – The Wordlessness of Samuel Beckett’s Metaphysical Clowns’ in Burkman, K. H., (Ed.) Myth and Ritual in the Plays of Samuel Beckett (London and Toronto: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1987), pp 57,58
↑ Knowlson, James, Damned to Fame, London: Bloomsbury, 1997, p. 662
↑ Ferri, L., ‘Filosofia della Visione e l'Occhio Palindromico in "Film" di Samuel Beckett’ in Dolfi, A.,(Ed.) Il Romanzo e il Racconto Filosofico nella modernità, (Firenze: University Press, 2012), pp 189-215
↑ Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett, p 163
↑ Ben-Zvi, L., ‘Samuel Beckett's Media Plays’ in Modern Drama 28.1 (1985): pp 22-37
↑ The first part of the song in Words and Music was published separately as Song in Collected Poems (Faber, 1984).
↑ Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 163
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