The Birthday Party Details

Directing only his second film, William Friedkin opted for a safe and rather uncinematic approach to Harold Pinter's first full-length play. This is all about text and performance, and, compelling though the action is, it's clearly diminished by the loss of the immediacy you get in the theatre. Robert Shaw is too sturdy an actor to convince as the frightened mystery man hiding away in a seaside B&B. Veterans Sydney Tafler and Dandy Nichols are left to steal the show with performances that suggest both had been rather wasted during their earlier movie careers.

Overlong but otherwise satisfactory film record of an entertaining if infuriating play, first of the black absurdities which proliferated in the sixties to general disadvantage, presenting structure without plot and intelligence without meaning.