Pinter and the Object of Desire: An Approach through the Screenplays (Legenda) (LEGENDA MAIN SERIES)

Harold Pinter was fascinated by film long before the theatre, but the importance of his screenplays, based on the work of other writers, has been overlooked. Renton shows him working from manuscript to final text to engage the spectator in a relationship of desire, or anxiety, with what is unseen. A newly discovered poem links Pinter to the Surrealists, and through the Surrealists to their contemporary, the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901-81). The present study shows Pinter working differently from mainstream cinema, places him at the forefront of film theory, and offers a fresh insight into his entire output. (Legenda 2001)