The Pumpkin Eater at Carpenter Center
Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts
Details:
Saturday June 16 at 7pm
Harvard Film Archive
24 Quincy Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
The Pumpkin Eater
Directed by Jack Clayton. With Anne Bancroft, Peter Finch, James Mason
UK 1964, 35mm, b/w, 118 min
A portrait of a failing marriage, The Pumpkin Eater is probably the Clayton film most closely linked to the European art cinema of the 1960s. It was celebrated at the time for its sophistication and gripping drama, thanks to a screenplay by Harold Pinter and riveting performances by Anne Bancroft and Peter Finch. Bancroft is remarkable as a woman incapable of either denying or accepting her own sensuality. Having helped to spark the British New Wave five years earlier, Clayton here takes advantage of that movement’s visual inventiveness by using a number of handheld shots, as well as unusual close-ups and camera angles.