Pssst, want to check out The Caretaker in our new look?
Information
- A.k.a.
- The Guest
- Year
- 1963
- Runtime
- 105 min.
- Director
- Clive Donner
- Genre
- Drama
- Rating *
- 7.3
- Votes *
- 371
- Checks
- 69
- Favs
- 9
- Dislikes
- 2
- Favs/checks
- 13.0% (1:8)
- Favs/dislikes
- 5:1
Top comments
-
Siskoid
In 1962, Donald Pleasence won a Tony Award for his work on the Harold Pinter play "The Caretaker". In 1963, he reproduced that performance on film. He plays a homeless man who is invited into a one-room apartment by Robert Shaw, and soon told he can stay as caretaker. Shaw's sadistic brother played by Alan Bates also lives there as the homeless man will come to find out. This was my first exposure to Pinter and a bit of a shock. I had to read up to really process what I had just watched. The Caretaker (AKA The Guest) definitely has Pinter's trademark menace, a claustrophobic world (even when they open it up a little because it's a film) where everyone seems dangerous, at least verbally. There's certainly a touch of the absurd in the way people speak, often without really answering one another. Gave me a taste for more. In the end, I came to see this particular play as a treatise on our need to take care of one another, but inability (or unwillingness) to do so. It is a cruel and thus off-putting play, but in no way did it give up all its secrets and interpretations in a single viewing. 6 years ago -
