The Caretaker [film screenplay] (1962)

Harold Pinter

Film screenplay

English

The Caretaker takes place in a house in west London during the 1950s and examines the relationship between a tramp, Davies, and two brothers, Mick and Aston. The play opens as Aston saves Davies from a fight and invites him home. Davies, initially grateful, reveals himself to be a master manipulator. When Aston offers Davies the job of caretaker for the building he accepts but is then quick to turn his allegiance to Aston’s brother, Mick. In contrast to the mild-mannered Aston (who, we learn, has previously been sectioned and subjected to electric shock therapy), Mick is aggressive and self-assured, baiting Davies, catching him off balance and deliberately confusing him. Throughout the play, each member of the trio struggles to assert their authority, culminating in the expulsion of Davies who has gone too far in his attempts to disrupt the disparate existence of the two brothers.

Adapting Pinter's play was first suggested by Clive Donner and Donald Pleasance after the play successfully moved from London to New York in 1960. Donner was initially unable to find a backer for the film but a private 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, agreed to put up a minimum of £1000 each.

The screenplay augments the text of the original play with he addition of establishing shots, exterior scenes such as one where the two brothers silently contemplate a feature in the garden, and a scene in the street in which Mick invites Davies into his van to be given a lift to Sidcup.

The database entry for the film can be accessed here.

Date of Composition: 1962 Confidence Level

Linked Works

The Caretaker

Linked Places

373 Chiswick Road, London (Type of place: Place of composition)

373 Chiswick Road, London

Pinter moved here with his wife and newborn son in 1958. They lived here until 1960.

373 Chiswick Road, London (Type of place: Place of inspiration)

373 Chiswick Road, London

Pinter moved here with his wife and newborn son in 1958. They lived here until 1960.

Pinter was living here with his first wife in 1959 in a first floor flat. The owner was in the building trade, and his brother lived in the house. The brother had suffered ECT treatment in a mental hospital. This latter invited a homeless person to stay with him for three or four weeks. Pinter recalled this as inspiration for The Caretaker (1960).

Maudsley Hospital, London (Type of place: Place of inspiration)

Maudsley Hospital, Camberwell, London

As an unemployed actor and in need of any income, Pinter volunteered as a 'guinea pig' for a psychiatric experiment which took place at this hospital. He was paid around ten shillings. He was subjected to loud noises through a set of earphones. The experience informed a scene in his 1958 play The Hothouse, extracted and adapted for a sketch entitled Applicant (1959), and also the treatment of Aston in The Caretaker.

The Great West Road (Type of place: Location (within the fiction))

The Great West Road, Brentford, London

The first of many references to London locations made by Davies in The Caretaker. He often speaks of places or roads that place him at the periphery of or beyond the city.

Shepherd's Bush (Type of place: Location (within the fiction))

Shepherd's Bush

Davies in The Caretaker refers to having a friend in Shepherd's Bush who recommended visiting monks near Luton for a pair of shoes. After his reference to the Great West Road, this would seem to locate him as a West London down and out.

Acton (Type of place: Location (within the fiction))

Acton

Further confirming his migration around West London, Davies in The Caretaker mentions knowing a bootmaker in Acton.

Luton (Type of place: Location (within the fiction))

Luton

In The Caretaker, Davies claims to have visited a monastery 'just the other side of Luton'. No functioning monastery of the early 20th century easily fits this description, but Dunstable Priory, a former monastery and extant place of worship, is perhaps the closest match. Of course, it is just as likely that Davies is spinning a yarn than referring to any real event or location.

Watford (Type of place: Location (within the fiction))

Watford

Davies in The Caretaker speaks of getting a pair of shoes in Watford, after a failed mission to do so beyond Luton.

The North Circular Road, past Hendon (Type of place: Location (within the fiction))

The North Circular Road

Davies in The Caretaker speaks of getting 'on the North Circular, just past Hendon', adding to the list of places on the periphery of Greater London that he mentions.

Sidcup (Type of place: Location (within the fiction))

Sidcup

In The Caretaker, Pinter has the character of Davies claim he needs to travel to Sidcup to collect his 'papers'. This would have been a good distance from the West or North London location it might be assumed the play takes place. Sidcup would have indicated a certain degree of middle-class respectability. Sidcup was also the location of the Royal Artillery after the war, and 1960 audiences might have inferred that Davies's papers suggested a military history, and his evasiveness in relation to them might even indicate a dishonourable ending to that history or, more sympathetically, a source of inner-conflict and mental illness. In the film script, there is an external scene in which Mick offers Davies a lift to Sidcup in his van, which Davies declines.

Wembley (Type of place: Location (within the fiction))

Wembley

Davies in The Caretaker talks of possibly seeking a job in a café in Wembley.

Shoreditch (Type of place: Location (within the fiction))

Shoreditch

Mick in The Caretaker delivers a bewildering speech to Davies that starts with a claim that the tramp reminds him of a man he knows in Shoreditch, before then listing multiple locations in London: Aldgate, Camden Town, Putney, Fulham, the Caledonian Road, Angel, Essex Road, Dalston Junction, Upper Street, Highbury Corner, St. Pauls' Church. The bus routes he recounts are historically accurate examples of the sorts of journeys between some of these landmarks, and recall the buses home to Hackney that Pinter himself would have used in his youth.