Film Studies: The cruelty of cricket

"Pinter-drama". As in "melodrama". That was my first response to the BBC's large, somewhat portentous and not-at-all Pinteresque tribute to the man Richard Eyre recommends as "a cricketer, a defender of human rights, a passionate polemicist...". Yes, of course, Eyre goes on to list the "playwright of rare power and profound originality", as well as the actor and the director. Still, putting cricket first is striking, and Eyre is an astute man. Cricket, of course, is a ritual of social facade, stilted athleticism, gentlemanly airs, laconic utterance and raw nastiness. And that does bring us closer to "Pinter-drama".

The press release for this Harold Pinter tribute includes the Oxford English Dictionary definition of "Pinteresque" ("marked especially by halting dialogue, uncertainty of identity, and air of menace") and this from Pinter itself, not just unexpected, but truly provocative: "I loved words as a child, and that excitement has remained with me all my life. I still feel as excited as I ever did about words on a page and about the blank piece of paper and the words that might fill it."

For someone possessed by that feeling, it is odd how little Pinter has written that is meant to be read – as words printed on a page. There was an early novel, The Dwarfs, published at last in 1990; there has been some political and polemical journalism – honourable and rather dull; there was, for years, the Proust screenplay which could only be read, and which seemed as orphan-like as any screenplay. For the rest, Pinter has written for voice and performance, and for an atmosphere in which hesitation and menace are exactly embodied in the simultaneity of precision and vagueness.

That this voice and style deserves to be in the OED is beyond dispute. What the overall achievement is seems far more open. If I say that Pinter casts a mood over our mindscape like Alfred Hitchcock, that attempts to do justice to his mannered sensationalism – and Pinter is like Hitchcock in interesting ways. They are both east Londoners; they work in a prolific mode – not just fecund but as if, perhaps, they are only happy when working; they cultivate good living and secret lust; they live for suspense; and they both deal in something broadly classified as menace, but sometimes going as far as cruelty. Equally, I think, the question lingers as to whether they are minor masters, people so much sui generis that they manage to isolate themselves from conventional criticism. Or might they be great artists? In a column of this length, it is more useful to ask that question than attempt an answer. Still, it's helpful to regard Pinter as someone raised on the linguistic elegance of Wilde and Coward, who chilled their fluency and wit with the various influences of Hemingwayese (think of the short story The Killers), noir movies and the mood of absurdist theatre so much in vogue in the 1950s. To that you must add this, a vital sauce: that Pinter (like his near-contemporary, John Osbourne) was out to undermine the English class system. And why not? But whereas Osbourne tore at it with tirade and mockery, Pinter preferred the stealthy dissolution of confidence. Few things are as suggestive of that as his screenplay for The Servant, a work that changed British cinema in so many healthy ways.

But a way of speaking, no matter how influential, can still lead towards such dead ends as cruelty and gloating – and similar charges have been levelled at Hitchcock. I am never sure that Pinter has the reach that gets at true character, at pity, or liking people. Time and again, his best plays are elaborately terse disguises for malicious intention, for the urge to see people dish dirt on each other, or something that is supercilious and sadistic and which seems to me the essence of Pinter-drama. No matter how brilliant the writing, or how suave and comic the playing (and Pinter has affected two generations of actors so that we seem sometimes to be surrounded by dark young men with pith for soul), this utterance cannot avoid monotony, just as menace, sooner or later, grows fossilised.

The one thing I'd love to see again is the 1963 television play, The Lovers, played by Alan Badel and Vivienne Merchant – so funny that you hear the sound of Wilde and Coward, and so ready to be tolerant of human fantasy and dream. All too often, I think, Pinter treats our sad hopes as a self-administered drug. He thinks we're creeps and wants to intimidate us into choking silence.

d.thomson@independent.co.uk

The Pinter season is on BBC2, BBC4, BBC Radio and BBCi to 9 Nov. David Thomson will be talking at the ICA, London SW1 (020 7930 3647), 2pm today and at the NFT, London SE1 (020 7928 3232), 6.30pm Tue