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The Caretaker (1963) More at IMDbPro »

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9 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
Honest screening of a great play, 4 November 2002
8/10
Author: ian_harris from London, England

The Caretaker is a truly great play and lends itself only to minimal tinkering for the screen. Thank goodness, that's what the makers of this film decided to do, so the film is barely an adaptation. One or two short scenes are moved out of Aston's claustrophobic attic room, but for the most part we're stuck in there, just like the play. I'm too young to have seen the original cast on stage, so it is good to see how Alan Bates and Donald Pleasence must have plied their craft on the stage. Robert Shaw does an excellent job of Aston, a part that is often under-rated as it is best performed under-stated. I have seen two fine productions of this play on the stage, back in the 70's I saw Max Wall play the lead and more recently the mighty Michael Gambon supported brilliantly by Rupert Graves as Mick and Douglas Hodge as Aston. If you can get to see a great production of this play, I recommend it for the stage rather than film. In the absence of a fine cast just down the road, this film is a super second best.

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6 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
Extraordinary Film, 30 January 2002
Author: Kenneth Howe Jones (tatkhj@silverlink.net) from Hansville, WA USA

This is an extraordinary film and I have been looking for a tape or DVD for some time. Bates is perfectly cast, Pleasance is ideal and utterly memorable, and Shaw is simply brilliant. It is one of the finest films I've ever seen of it's type. Does anyone know if it's maybe hung up in some sort of litigation or has a property rights thing going? It's a real shame that people who weren't around in the 60's can't see it. I think that in some ways this finds each of the actors and even Pinter at their very best. I recommend this to anyone exploring Schopenhauer, Sartre, Beckett, or Genet. It's in my top 100 films ever made. --tatkhj

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4 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
first rate theatre film, 9 June 2004
Author: rufasff

This hard to find movie is now availible on an import DVD (with that "opened up" car scene) and it's worth seeking out. It's almost as good as the excellent

"Homecoming" film, and while Bates and Shaw shine, it is Donald Pleasance

who steals the show. How this great actor ended up in grade Z films at the end of his career must be a sort of tragic drama in itself. It's wild to remember this "kitchen sink" classic came out of England the year the Beatles took the world by storm. Those were the days.....

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4 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
It's not for everybody, but..., 12 November 2003
9/10
Author: Brian Holland from Houston, Texas

If you like films that focus on characters and superb acting skill, here is one not to be missed. It's hard to imagine any other actors (Robert, Alan, and Donald) playing these parts. Each seems completely suited for the role. Finding the film can be difficult however. I have an old copy on tape but I suspect there may be longer versions out there as I recall once seeing a scene (Alan Bates offers to drive Donald Pleasance to Luten to pick up his papers. The car drives in a circle and immediately returns to the starting point) which is missing from my copy. I've watched this movie many times, but only when I'm home alone. It's important not to be interrupted.

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5 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
Terrific acting, 28 August 2002
8/10
Author: rosscinema (rosscinema@cox.net) from Oceanside,Ca.

I have also been searching for this film on DVD or video but I can't find it either. I've seen it 3 or 4 times on PBS in the last twenty years or so and its a tough one to locate. I think it's Robert Shaw's best performance. So emotional without being emotional! The silence in this film is like a constant scream of pain. Low budget but I think that helps the film by enhancing the performances. If anyone finds a copy let me know. I guess I'll wait for PBS to show it again sometime and I have a blank tape ready!

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
hypnotic, 14 October 2005
10/10
Author: nicoli282000 from United States

Like the other commenter I too am wondering why this isn't available on DVD. Luckily I video-taped a PBS broadcast years ago but Pinter deserves to be immortalized in a DVD collection with all the supplementary material available. (Perhaps now that he's won the Nobel) This movie was my introduction to Pinter and while I have to acknowledge the acting it was the script that hypnotized me when I happened upon it channel surfing one evening. So brilliantly absurd that you may join it as I first did from any point in the play and be instantly compelled by Pinter's bizarre reality. Bates, Shaw and Pleasance are perfectly cast but Donald Pleasance reveals a brilliance pitifully missing in his many supporting Hollywood roles. One wonders if the actors felt the magic their collaboration conveys and if so they must have been ecstatic.

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3 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
THE CARETAKER (Clive Donner, 1963) ***, 2 June 2006
7/10
Author: MARIO GAUCI (marrod@melita.com) from Naxxar, Malta

This three-hander piece has no plot to speak of and, given author Harold Pinter's (typically) obscure intentions, attention must be paid constantly (not an easy task, having to contend with both the heavy British accents on display and the rather low volume of the audio itself); after having gone through the various supplements on the exemplary BFI DVD, the meaning of it all is still very much open to interpretation!

The performances, however, are extremely impressive and the fact that all three actors had already appeared in the various stage versions certainly helped: Donald Pleasance and Alan Bates have showy roles that are often broadly comic, but a brooding Robert Shaw is unusually subdued for the most part - though the character's speech about his traumatic spell in hospital, where he suffered at the hands of a sadistic doctor, is as riveting as the actor's celebrated (and similarly quietly-spoken) one about the transportation of the Atom Bomb in JAWS (1975). Though making only minute concessions to cinematic conventions, Donner's handling (abetted by the stark cinematography of Nicolas Roeg and some weird ambient sounds by Ron Grainer in place of a score) ensures that the whole doesn't come across as merely a piece of filmed theatre; it still feels at odds even with the contemporaneous "Kitchen Sink" films of the British New Wave, with which style THE CARETAKER has forever been identified!

Pinter's dialogue - alternately scathing and compassionate - is remarkably adult for its time, and the project only came through with the intervention of some celebrated admirers of the play: Richard Burton, Leslie Caron, Noel Coward, Peter Hall, Peter Sellers and Elizabeth Taylor, among others! I've watched the following Pinter-scripted films: THE SERVANT (1963), THE PUMPKIN EATER (1964), THE QUILLER MEMORANDUM (1966), ACCIDENT (1967), THE BIRTHDAY PARTY (1968), THE GO-BETWEEN (1970), THE LAST TYCOON (1976) and THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT'S WOMAN (1981); however, only THE BIRTHDAY PARTY was adapted from his own work (also featuring Shaw and largely revolving around three eccentric characters) and it's similarly intractable - if still required - viewing.

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"Barely an adaptation" summarizes it, 19 July 2007
10/10
Author: Eyesore_is_cool from quebec

Someone said in a comment that this is "barely an adaptation" and I have to second that. Though the cast list has names of characters other than the main three, that's because there's a minute or two where the film is outside so there were a few extras who got credit.

If you like the play (seeing it or reading it, whichever) you will love this interpretation of it. I can't believe this was made in 1963-the acting is passable even by today's standards and amazing for back then.

There are a few lines that are switched around, very very few that are removed altogether, and certain parts of scenes are set outside of the attic-otherwise it stays true to the original version.

I suppose if you know nothing of the play then this could still suit you, however, it has a strange premise, and is generally a bizarre movie altogether. The focus is mostly on character development and unusual dialogue, with monologues every three minutes, one of which is easily one of the best absurdist monologues of all time (Aston's bit at the end of act 2).

Personally I would buy it just for Aston's monologue, but the movie has many other virtues, and for the standards of its day I'd feel uncomfortable giving it anything other than a 10/10

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2 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
A biblical epic set in a dingy house, 20 November 2000
Author: grunsel from United Kingdom

Apart from the scenery and huge cast, this has all the ingredients of a Cecil B De Mille epic. Three men, (two of which are brothers and a cunning almost invited guest) struggle for power and dominance in their dingy little house. In my opinion it says something about the predicament of human behaviour what ever their surroundings.Its dark, sometimes funny and you can almost smell the decay.

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