The Caretaker (film)

The Caretaker (also known as  The Guest) is a 1963 British drama film directed by Clive Donner and starring Alan Bates, Donald Pleasence and Robert Shaw. It was based on the Harold Pinter play of the same name.

It was entered into the 13th Berlin International Film Festival where it won the Silver Bear Extraordinary Jury Prize.

Plot
While renovating his home in London, Aston, out of pity, allows an old homeless man to live with him while Aston's brother Mick torments the old man.

Cast

 * Alan Bates as Mick
 * Donald Pleasence as Mac Davies / Bernard Jenkins
 * Robert Shaw as Aston

Production
The film was made by a partnership of six people, none of whom took payment: Clive Donner, Donald Pleasence, Alan Bates, Robert Shaw, Harold Pinter and Michael Birkett.

No distributor expressed interest in funding the film, which meant it was unable to attract investment from the National Film Finance Corporation, because it was unable to give money to projects without a reasonable chance of a commercial screening. The budget was eventually raised with the support of a consortium, credited in the film as being Peter Bridge, Peter Cadbury, Charles Kasher, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Harry Saltzman, Peter Hall, Leslie Caron, Noël Coward and Peter Sellers, each member giving £1,000.

Composer Ron Grainer was tasked to produce not a score but a sequence of sound effects, often metallic in nature, but which also include the sound of a drip which occasionally falls from the attic ceiling and a squeak as Aston uses a screwdriver. Grainer used his previous experiences working with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in the creation of the sound picture.

Release
The film was unable to obtain a release in London until it first screened in New York.

Reception
The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "With a screenplay by Pinter himself, and with two of the original cast repeating their stage performances on the screen, this is a very commendable example of the filmed play – worth making for the sake of bringing the authentic flavour of the original to a wider audience, and worth seeing if you missed it on the stage. Donald Pleasence's singularly vile tramp and Alan Bates's eccentric joker certainly deserve to be preserved on film, and Robert Shaw, playing the brain-washed philanthropist with hypnotic distinction, gives a performance no less wonderfully right. Between them, in fact, these three bring out all that seems to matter; it is always what they say and the way they say it that holds one in thrall."

According to Janet Moat, "the film is striking. Donner deploys a non-musical soundtrack, close-ups and two-shots to unsettling and menacing effect."