| | - | | Back | | - | | | | | | | | | - | | | | Antoni Llena talks about Samuel Beckett's "Film" Descárgate el Flash Player para escuchar este MP3. | | - | |
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Pel·lícula 16 mm transferida a VHS, b/n, sense so, 20' | |
Col·lecció MACBA. Fundació Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona |
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Beckett, Samuel
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Dublín, Irlanda
1906 | |
París, França
1989 | | | |
Film,
1965 |
 You can watch the movie here.
Cast and Crew
Written by: Samuel Beckett
Director: Alan Schneider
Featuring: Buster Keaton, Nell Harrison, James Karen, Susan Reed
Art Director: Burr Smidt
Camera Operator: Joe Coffey
Edited by: Sidney Meyers
Photography Director: Boris Kaufman, A.S.C.
Production: Evergreen Theatre, Inc.
Executive Producer: Barnet Rosset
Technical specifications: Shot in 35mm and released in 35mm and 16mm. 20 min, B/W
Production information
"The only chance of renovation is to open our eyes and see the mess. It is not a mess you can make sense of. I have proposed that we let it in because it is the truth." Samuel Beckett
Film is Samuel Beckett's only incursion into cinema. Alan Schneider directed and Buster Keaton starred in the movie, which was written in 1963 and filmed in New York in the summer of 1964. For the filming, Beckett made his first and only trip to the United States in July of that same year.
The film, which has no dialogue and only one single sound—a subtle "sssh"—, is based on Berkeley's theory Esse est percipi,or "to be is to be perceived": even when it goes beyond all exterior perception—be that animal, human, or divine—auto-perception remains. However, despite this philosophical principle, the film, like all of Beckett's work, contains comic elements. Buster Keaton plays the role of a man who, escaping via a practically deserted street, enters the main door of a building, climbs the stairs and enters into a bedroom—presumably his own—, where he carefully erases all exterior reality. He closes the curtains, covers the mirror, and kicks out both a cat and a dog, locking the door behind them, and then covers a birdcage and a fishbowl, and proceeds to destroy photographs of his past. However, the problem of auto-perception remains insoluble.
In the opinion of philosopher and film critic Gilles Deleuze, the entire film is "the tale of Berkeley who has had enough of being perceived and of perceiving. The role, which could only have been taken by Buster Keaton, is that of Berkeley, or rather it is the passage from one Irishman to another, from Berkeley, who perceived and was perceived, to Beckett, who has exhausted all of the ‘happiness of the perceiver and the perceived'". Whatever the source that inspired the conception of this film, the work successfully recreates the Beckettian universe, portrayed so distinctively in his plays and novels.
Film won various awards, among them the Critic's Choice Award at the 1965 Venice Film Festival, the Jury's Special Selection at the 1966 Tours Festival (France), and the Special Award at the 1966 Oberhausen Festival (Germany).
Samuel Beckett, Film, Tusquets publishers, Barcelona: 1985
Additional Information
>Director Alan Schneider talks about the film shooting
>Producer Barney Rosset talks about the film shooting | | | |
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