Harold PinterFilmography

Working With Pinter

Actors: Harold Pinter

Art, Truth, and Politics

Actors: Harold Pinter

The Tailor of Panama

Actors: Dylan Baker, Pierce Brosnan, Geoffrey Rush, Jamie Lee Curtis, Brendan Gleeson, Catherine McCormack, Leonor Varela

Synopsis: Set amidst the controversy of the handover of the Panama Canal from America to Panama in late 1999, this espionage thriller follows seductive British spy Andrew Osnard (Pierce Brosnan), who has found himself recently banished to Panama. When Osnard stumbles into a tailor shop, he meets Harry Read More

Wit

Actors: Emma Thompson, Christopher Lloyd, Eileen Atkins, Audra McDonald

Synopsis: Mike Nichols directs Emma Thompson in this made-for-cable adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama by Margaret Edson. Thompson plays Vivian Bearing, a college professor who teaches a course on English poetry. Vivian learns that she has advanced ovarian cancer and only a short time to live Read More

Catastrophe

Mansfield Park

Actors: Frances O'Connor, Jonny Lee Miller, Alessandro Nivola, Embeth Davidtz, Harold Pinter

Synopsis: Freely adapted from a novel by Jane Austen, this period drama is set in the early 1800s, as a girl named Fanny (Hannah Taylor Gordon) is being raised by loving but desperately poor parents. Wanting a better life for Fanny, they send her away to live with her aunts, high-minded Mrs. Norris (Sheila Gish Read More

Mojo

Actors: Ian Hart, Ewen Bremner, Aidan Gillen, Martin Gwynn Jones, Hans Matheson

Synopsis: Jez Butterworth directed this adaptation of his own play about the 1958 rock scene in London's Soho. Silver Johnny (Hans Matheson) performs at the Atlantic Club where he catches the eye of big-shot Sam Ross (Harold Pinter). Ross invites Johnny and Johnny's manager Ezra (Ricky Tomlinson) for a Read More

Breaking the Code

Actors: Derek Jacobi

Synopsis: Originally produced for the BBC and Masterpiece Theatre, Breaking the Code tells the life story of the famed mathematician and computer science pioneer Alan Turing, the primary designer of the Turing Machine, an early computer used to solve the German Enigma code during World War II, a solution Read More

The Trial

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Kyle MacLachlan, Anthony Hopkins, Jason Robards, Jr., Jean Stapleton, Polly Walker

Synopsis: Franz Kafka's classic tale of Josef K., a bank clerk who is placed on trial for an unnamed, unknowable crime, is given a faithful, if not overly literal, treatment in this drama. Knowing only that he has been charged, Josef naturally sets out to defend himself, but soon finds himself deeply mired Read More

The Remains of the Day

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, James Fox, Christopher Reeve, Peter Vaughan, Hugh Grant

Synopsis: Filmed with the usual meticulous attention to period and detail of films from Ismail Merchant and James Ivory, The Remains of the Day is based on a novel by Kazuo Ishiguro. Anthony Hopkins plays Stevens, the "perfect" butler to a prosperous British household of the 1930s. He is so unswervingly Read More

Reunion

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Jason Robards, Jr., Christien Anholt, Samuel West, Françoise Fabian, Maureen Kerwin

Synopsis: Jason Robards plays an older Jewish man who returns to Stuttgart, Germany which he left in 1933 during the onslaught of the Third Reich. He reunites with a German man who, as a boy, was his childhood friend. ~ All Movie Guide Read More

The Comfort of Strangers

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Christopher Walken, Rupert Everett, Natasha Richardson, Helen Mirren, Manfredi Aliquo

Synopsis: In this erotic thriller, a young English couple on vacation in Venice find themselves seduced by a mysterious older couple. Mary (Natasha Richardson) and Colin (Rupert Everett) have come to Italy to chart the future of their troubled relationship. They soon meet Robert (Christopher Walken), the Read More

The Handmaid's Tale

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Natasha Richardson, Robert Duvall, Faye Dunaway, Aidan Quinn, Elizabeth McGovern

Synopsis: In this dystopian fable, a librarian wife and mother becomes the childbearing pawn of a Christian theocracy. In the near future, as war rages across the fictional North American Republic of Gilead and pollution has rendered 99 percent of the female population sterile, Kate (Natasha Richardson) Read More

Turtle Diary

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Harold Pinter, Glenda Jackson, Ben Kingsley, Richard Johnson, Michael Gambon, Rosemary Leach

Synopsis: Adapted by Harold Pinter from the novel by Russell Hoban, Turtle Diary stars Glenda Jackson as a famed author/illustrator of children's books. In the midst of her success, Jackson suffers from writer's block. While casting about for new ideas, she makes several visits to the turtle tank at the Read More

Betrayal

Crew: Play Author, Screenwriter

Actors: Jeremy Irons, Ben Kingsley, Patricia Hodge

Synopsis: Director David Jones adapted Harold Pinter's play of the same name -- with the help of Pinter himself -- to better fit this chronologically reversed drama of love and betrayal to the medium of film. The action starts with a scene in a London pub in which Jerry (Jeremy Irons) and Emma (Patricia Hodge Read More

The French Lieutenant's Woman

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Meryl Streep, Jeremy Irons, Hilton McRae, Emily Morgan, Charlotte Mitchell

Synopsis: John Fowles' original novel The French Lieutenant's Woman was distinguished by a literary technique that involved telling a story of Victorian sexual and social oppression within the bounds of a 1970s viewpoint. How does one convey this time-frame dichotomy on film? The decision made by director Karel Reisz Read More

Langrishe, Go Down

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Jeremy Irons, Judi Dench

Synopsis: Years before they became two of the most celebrated British actors of their generation, Jeremy Irons and Judi Dench were paired up for this dramatic tale of love and betrayal, produced for British television. Imogen Langrishe (Judi Dench) is a woman in her early thirties who lives with her sisters Read More

The Last Tycoon

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Robert De Niro, Tony Curtis, Robert Mitchum, Jeanne Moreau, Jack Nicholson

Synopsis: Elia Kazan directed this curiously constipated film adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's unfinished final novel, about Monroe Starr, a brilliant and efficient studio executive (based upon Fitzgerald's experiences with MGM wunderkind Irving Thalberg). Robert De Niro plays Monroe Starr in a cool and Read More

Rogue Male

Synopsis: Based on the film Man Hunt, the BBC-produced Rogue Male stars Peter O'Toole as a British aristocrat who attempts to assassinate Hitler. After he fails, he is hunted down by the German Gestapo. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Movie Guide Read More

The Collection

Crew: Play Author

Synopsis: Listed variously as a 1975 and 1978 release (it was actually produced in 1976), The Collection is a videotaped staging of the play by Harold Pinter. Described by one observer as the theatrical equivalent to a musical chamber work, this production stars Alan Bates, Malcolm McDowell, Helen Mirren Read More

Butley

Crew: Director

Actors: Alan Bates, Jessica Tandy, Richard O'Callaghan, Susan Engel, Michael Byrne

Synopsis: The American Film Theatre has made movies of a number of significant theatrical performances, including Laurence Olivier's Othello. Another of these filmed theatricals is Simon Gray's Butley, which was brought to the screen by playwright Harold Pinter, and which features an astonishing performance Read More

The Homecoming

Crew: Play Author, Screenwriter

Actors: Cyril Cusack, Ian Holm, Michael Jayston, Vivien Merchant, Terence Rigby, Paul Rogers

Synopsis: In The Homecoming, adapted from the play by Harold Pinter, Michael Jayston brings his wife Vivien Merchant home to visit his long-estranged family. Jayston's father Paul Rogers is a washout, his uncle Cyril Cusack is on the edge of senility, and his brothers Ian Holm and Terence Rigby are Read More

The Go-Between

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Julie Christie, Alan Bates, Margaret Leighton, Michael Redgrave, Michael Gough

Synopsis: The third collaboration between director Joseph Losey and writer Harold Pinter, following The Servant and Accident, continues their exploration of class rituals and the darker recesses of desire. Pinter's script adapts the 1953 L.P. Hartley novel about Leo Colston, a middle-aged man (Michael Read More

The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer

Actors: Peter Cook, Denholm Elliott, Ronald Fraser, Arthur Lowe, Vanessa Howard

Synopsis: Like Socrates of ancient Athens, Michael Rimmer (Peter Cook) of modern England believes the key to success is to ask the right questions. Lots of questions. So he gets a job with an advertising agency that conducts polls, rises swiftly through the ranks, and eventually runs the agency. Then he Read More

The Birthday Party

Crew: Play Author, Screenwriter

Actors: Robert Shaw, Patrick Magee, Dandy Nichols, Sydney Tafler, Moultrie Kelsall

Synopsis: Harold Pinter's theatrical piece The Birthday Party was committed to celluloid in 1968 by future Exorcist director William Friedkin. Robert Shaw plays a boarder in a sleazy British seaside-resort rooming house. The landlady (Dandy Nichols) holds a cheerless birthday party for Shaw, which is Read More

Accident

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Dirk Bogarde, Stanley Baker, Jacqueline Sassard, Michael York, Vivien Merchant

Synopsis: The complex relationships among an Oxford professor, one of his students, and the young woman who captivates both of them is the subject of this difficult but rewarding drama. Director Joseph Losey and writer Harold Pinter had previously collaborated on 1963's The Servant, and they surrounded this Read More

The Quiller Memorandum

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: George Segal, Alec Guinness, Max von Sydow, Senta Berger, George Sanders

Synopsis: This spy saga differs from the usual Bond-styled fare that was popular at the time. There are plenty of gadgets but the hero Quiller (George Segal) never once uses a gun. Quiller is called on by his superior Pol (Alec Guinness) to infiltrate a Neo-Nazi gang in Berlin after two British agents have Read More

The Pumpkin Eater

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Anne Bancroft, Peter Finch, James Mason, Cedric Hardwicke, Richard Johnson

Synopsis: Anne Bancroft stars as a restless, twice-married British woman with six children, whose third husband is a fledgling screenwriter (Peter Finch). When success spins Finch's head around, he begins to dally with women other than his wife. Meanwhile, Bancroft is forced to stay home and play "domestic Read More

The Servant

Crew: Screenwriter, Songwriter

Actors: Dirk Bogarde, Sarah Miles, Wendy Craig, James Fox, Catherine Lacey

Synopsis: Wealthy wastrel James Fox hires insouciant cockney Dirk Bogarde as a valet. No sooner has he donned his working clothes than Bogarde begins exercising a subtle but insidious control over his master. Suggesting that the house could use a little fixing up, Bogarde convinces Fox to spend a whopping Read More

The Caretaker

Crew: Play Author, Screenwriter

Actors: Alan Bates, Donald Pleasence, Robert Shaw

Synopsis: The Guest is a filmed adaptation of the Harold Pinter play of the same name. Donald Pleasence plays a laconic tramp, who is invited to stay in the home of Robert Shaw, on the implied promise that he, Pleasence, will be hired as caretaker. Shaw's off-in-the-coop brother Alan Bates is delighted to Read More

A Night Out

Crew: Play Author, Teleplay By

Actors: Tom Bell, Madge Ryan