The Caretaker (1963)

Clive Donner's film of Harold Pinter's play, complete with its original stage principals (Alan Bates and Donald Pleasence, with Robert Shaw) comes to dual format Blu-ray and DVD from the BFI.

One bitterly cold evening, Aston (Shaw) brings home a tramp, Jenkins (Pleasence) to the squalid, claustrophobically cramped house owned by Aston's brother Mick (Bates). There's talk of a brawl that's resulted in Jenkins having had something stolen from him.

Aston takes him to the very top room ("The others wouldn't be suitable" he says) which is the one Aston himself inhabits along with buckets, the metal skeletons of shelving, and whatever bit of electrical gadgetry Aston is currently trying to fix. He offers Jenkins a bed for the night, but Jenkins finds himself staying for rather longer.

Made at a time when the 'kitchen sink drama' cinematic movement was in full force in Britain, THE CARETAKER feels both a part of it (the grim setting, the bleak realism of the locations) and entirely separate from it. What IS it actually all about, Harold? as Armando Ianucci famously got his audience to ask at the Cheltenham Literary Festival one year when he knew Pinter was in the next tent across. 

Of course, what it means to the viewer is entirely up to them, and the fact it can be read so many different ways is one of the reasons it's so highly thought of. I'm sure it says more about me than the playwright or director Clive Donner that in my own reading I saw Aston as a Christ figure who has suffered for our sins (Shaw's speech about his ECT is riveting) who has found God (Pleasence) wandering the streets having lost His memory, and brought him back to the highest room in the house (ie heaven) filled with clutter while the angel Gabriel (Bates) is trying to sort things out, but because of 1960s' man's loss of faith he has lost his confidence in quite what what to do as well. 

The BFI's disc comes with a commentary track (from 2002) featuring Bates, Donner and producer Michael Birkett. The film comes with an optional introduction by Michael Billington that you might prefer to watch after the film if you've never seen it before. There's also a 4 minute on-location piece from 1962, Clive Donner talking about making THE CARETAKER, the US opening titles (it was called THE GUEST over there), The Caretaker: From Play Into Film - a video essay, a stills gallery and, in the first pressing, you also get a booklet with new writing on the film from Amy Simmons. 

Clive Donner's film of Harold Pinter's THE CARETAKER is out on dual format from the BFI on Monday 15th April 2019