Thought I'd better return to the safety of the Cinema board Stanley.
 I saw the original production of the Caretaker and of course the film but sad to say when any one speaks of the film what I most recall is that I saw it in a flea-pit in Portsmouth having spent the day sun-bathing on the beach. As the film went on I felt increasingly unwell and when I tried to get up at the end I screamed in pain  and could hardly move, I was the colour of salmon and covered in blisters. Can not remember how my wife got me home but it was a ****** good  job I didn't have to get up to Sidcup. I played Romeo in the school play and Tybalt managed to put his sword down my throat!
  Saw Bates in the Go-Between on TCM yesterday, A Pinter screen-play  but not very impressed, I remember it came out at the same time as Death in Venice which far up-staged it for me.

A wise move, Ted.      I have memories of the H M Theatre, Aberdeen - a splendid Matcham theatre - where the safety curtain - it used to be obligatory to lower it once during the evening, in the presence of the audience -  was inscribed, beneath the advertisements,  "For thine especial safety"   (Hamlet?).

Again, I have to go down memory lane, as I saw the original production of 'The Caretaker' at The Arts Theatre, before it transferred to the Duchess Theatre for a long run.   Shattered to check and find that I saw it in April 1960.   Let me not think on't.    A peerless cast: Donald Pleasance, Peter Woodthorpe and Alan Bates.  I saw it two or three times and how well they sustained their performances.

The 1963 film version has many qualities, although Robert Shaw (a good actor) couldn't replace the lost world which Peter Woodthorpe mined so easily.   Most of us knew little about the barbarity of electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) although it was widely practiced at the time.  Subsequently, Aston is forever trying to connect with gadgets.   A recent biography of Alan Bates,  Otherwise Engaged -The Life of Alan Bates - by Donald Spotto, mentions that the budget was £30,000, donated by film and west-end luminaries so the fees for the cast would probably be what we used to call 'taxi money'.    It was filmed, entirely on location, except for a few exteriors, in an abandoned, unheated house at 31 Downs Road, Hackney, and completed in six weeks.   Spotto adds, 'With this picture Alan again demonstrated his mastery of the differences between stage and film acting - the size of gestures, the variety of tonal nuance, the need to convey character by inference.'       Of course, the film is Pleasance's in so many ways.    I've spoken to an actor who played opposite him in Anouilh's  'Poor Bitos' at the Duke of York's Theatre.  Your experience will have taught you about the importance of eye contact, in performance, and how the thought processes go, outwards, from the eye.  A po-faced colleague told me that the reverse applied in the case of Pleasance and this may explain his capacity to suggest the disturbed, or unhinged.   He was certainly remarkable, albeit a trifle scary.    

I have reservations about the film opening-up for the occasional exterior.   The play is claustrophobic and Aston's monologue about the effects of ECT is climaxed by a shattering blackout at the end of Act 2 which was terrifying in the theatre.   In 2002, BBC 4 did a Pinter season, over 2 weeks, - all from earlier recordings, often with original casts - and the longer nights are encouraging me to go from off-air video to DVD.    I'll open a separate thread with full details of this season and, if you'd like to see, say, 'The Caretaker' again, in less traumatic circumstances, I'll be more than happy to do you a copy with my compliments.  

 Thank you for the link Pim. The 2nd WW veterans were very un-happy with Dirk Bogarde's portrayal of the General in ABTF( sorry don't know his name) For myself I thought our Dirk's turned -back cuffs very fetching.

 Thanks v. much Stanley, I'll be in touch.

The same was until recently true of the Theatre Royal in Brighton.

  # 4   Literally picking up the thread, albeit slightly nor' by nor' west!    The Lt-Gen in "A Bridge Too Far" (1976) was Sir Frederick 'Boy' Browning.    The oblique link to 'The Caretaker' relates to the low fees also paid to the starry cast of Alain Resnais's 'Providence' and Dirk Bogarde did it for pin money, knowing that he would soon earn much more for 'A Bridge Too Far'.     In his recently published Letters he wrote, 13 Sept 1976,  "...Providence won't make a nickel in comparison to the Disney-War up the road in Deventer, Holland..."

31st July 1977     "...Richard Attenborough got me into the shit over Browning, and I find it hard to forgive him...since he refused to listen to my complaints that Browning, whom I knew, was not a c##t and never ever made the frightful balls up the film suggests.   It all got a bit up-tight and I was on the point of returning my fee (small in comparison to the Yanks) to Lady Browning for some Charity...Eventually, we made a sort of patch-up.   He and she were simply shattered by the effects on the critics and many of the public who wrote bitterly complaining..."