Harold Pinter

Pinter was a man of strong character, who had been nicknamed ‘the angry old man’, who until the end of his life defended his positions. Of socialist ideology, he was quite critical of the policies of US President George Bush, and the Iraq war. He came to write the book ‘War’ in 2003, a compilation of anti-war poems.

Born on October 10, 1930, in a humble London neighborhood, Harold Pinter was the son of a Jewish tailor and a housewife from Portugal. He soon discovered his theatrical vocation and although he ended up enrolling for a year at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, he dropped out because he preferred to work in the theatre. He started out as an actor, under the pseudonym David Baron. The first works that he wrote, ‘The Room’ and ‘Celebration’, were barely successful with the public, but ‘The Janitor’, written in the early 1960s, made him known worldwide. Inspired by Samuel Beckett , Franz Kafka and Ernest Hemingway, began by ascribing to the theater of the absurd, and later developed his own style, which was defined as ‘picturesque’, and which was distinguished by its long pauses.

In 1963, Harold Pinter wrote the screenplay for Joseph Losey  ‘s mythical drama The Servant , based on the novel by Robin Maugham , about an aristocrat who moves to London and hires an apparently ideal servant to take care of domestic service. The playwright stood out on screen for his impeccable adaptations of other people’s writings such as The Last Tycoon  (based on the text by F. Scott Fitzgerald),  The French Lieutenant’s Wife  (based on the novel by John Fowles , and which earned him a well-deserved Oscar nomination for Adapted Screenplay),  Accident  (from the aforementioned Losey, which is based on a text by Nicholas Mosley ),  The Messenger (also directed by Losey, based on a book by LP Hartley),  The Handmaid’s Tale  (with which Volker Schlöndorff brought writer Margaret Atwood to the movies) and  Strangers’ Pleasure  (based on a novel by Ian McEwan ) . Even her farewell to the cinema was an adaptation, this time somewhat discreet, of  The Footprint , based on the famous work by Anthony Shaffer .

Among Pinter’s original texts that were brought to the screen,  The Risk of Betrayal stands out  (with many autobiographical elements), where he adapted his own work, which earned him a second Oscar nomination. His love for the Seventh Art led him to make his directorial debut in 1974 with  Butley , about a teacher abandoned by his wife. Three television productions followed. Perhaps what is less known about Pinter is that he also worked as an interpreter in the cinema, in titles such as  The Tamarindo Seed ,  The Tailor of Panama , and others.

Divorced from the actress Vivien Merchant , in 1980, he joined the aristocrat Antonia Fraser, who accompanied him until his death. “He was a great guy and it’s been a privilege to live with him for 33 years,” Fraser said. In 2006, and although he was already seriously ill with cancer and required a wheelchair, Pinter went on stage for the last time to interpret a monologue by Samuel Beckett (his great friend of his).