Critical Essay | Critical Essay by John Updike

Critical Essay by John Updike

One approaches "The Proust Screenplay," by Harold Pinter …, determined not to complain that Proust's language has vanished. How could it not, given the foolhardy and fascinating idea of making a movie script of the immense "À la Recherche du Temps Perdu."… Still, one must marvel at how the playwright, a master of the laconic/elliptical/polymorphous-abrupt style of modern stagecraft, has cut this lushest of novels down from two million words to a string of four hundred and fifty-five shots….

Pinter's script makes no attempt to flesh out the dialogue with descriptive writing;… it places no significant reliance on the author's words in voice-over; and … it little resembles a conventional short story or novella. Indeed, I know of no other book that so uncompromisingly shows us what a film script looks like. Nor have I read another book, not even one of Beckett's, with such consciousness of the work of...
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