*. We start off with some interesting credits. The film was basically crowdfunded by a consortium of celebs chipping in £1,000 each. The names included Leslie Caron, Noel Coward, Peter Sellers, Richard Burton, and Elizabeth Taylor. They had to do it this way because financing wasn’t available for projects with no reasonable chance of a commercial screening. With the funding provided, the film was then produced by a partnership (including all three leads and Pinter, who adapted his own play). No one received any payment.
*. And that’s Nicolas Roeg doing the photography. Before he was famous. Just the year previously he’d worked as part of the second unit on Lawrence of Arabia.
*. Is there anything in the way the film is shot that would make you think Roeg was going to be a star? I was looking for clues but didn’t come up with much. Though to be honest I was a bit distracted by the horrible editing. I mean, this movie is really choppy in its cuts. Was this deliberate? If so, it didn’t work for me.
*. I’ve always felt a special connection to this movie because when I first saw it I hadn’t read any Pinter. I was young, and it really turned my head. I also became a lifelong fan of Robert Shaw.
*. I hadn’t seen it in a long while, and was a bit nervous coming back to it. All too often we feel a let-down in such situations. And I did feel a bit of that at the start, until I fell under the strange spell of the play again and ended up enjoying the film as much as ever.

*. The cast works in an odd way. Robert Shaw (who would be cast against type as Stanley in William Friedkin’s 1968 version of The Birthday Party) is the embodiment of menacing threat as Aston. Alan Bates doesn’t strike me as a scary guy, but he’s scary here, while at the same time registering genuine concern for his brother.
*. And then there’s Donald Pleasence. There’s a lovely moment when Aston tells Mac that he couldn’t drink a Guiness out of a thick mug and we (along with Mac) suddenly realize that Mac is the only sane one in this house. This reminded me of David Thomson’s jibe in his essay on Halloween that Pleasance playing the psychiatrist was a bit of a joke since he’s rarely the sanest man on screen. Well . . . he is here! And he seems as surprised about it as anyone.

*. The crowded bric-a-brac in the bedroom is managed in a way that makes us feel that Mac is just another piece of garbage that Aston has picked up off the street and brought back to his room. It’s not claustrophobia but clutter. The characters don’t stand out from the piles of boxes around them.
*. Speaking of that crowded bedroom, the temptation to open the play up a bit because they were making a movie was irresistible. But they should have resisted. The few brief scenes where we get outside the house are all superfluous, and in fact I’m inclined to think they detract from the overall effect. They knew they were shooting a single-set play, and they also knew this was not going to be a commercial project. They should have just bitten the bullet and gone into full isolation mode.
*. It’s a special production, given that it was made so soon after the play’s theatrical debut in 1960, with a lot of the same talent (Pinter doing the screenplay and Bates and Pleasence reprising the roles they played on stage). In other words, it’s as close to an “original” version of The Caretaker as you’ll see. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best Caretaker we’ll ever have, but it does give it a special status.
*. I did think, watching it again, that it’s a play that has stood the test of time and could probably be adapted to a contemporary setting with very few changes. I can tell you for a fact that these three guys are still out there. They’re probably in your neighbourhood too, though you won’t see them very often.