Film (1964)

Film is a film written by Samuel Beckett, his only screenplay. It was commissioned by Barney Rosset of Grove Press. Writing began on 5 April 1963 with a first draft completed within four days. A second draft was produced by 22 May and a forty-leaf shooting script followed thereafter. It was filmed in New York in July 1964.

Beckett’s original choice for the lead – referred to only as “O” – was Charlie Chaplin, but his script never reached him.The director Alan Schneider was interested in Zero Mostel but he was unavailable. Beckett was “enthusiastically in favour” of Jack MacGowran as a replacement but he also became unavailable. James Karen, who was to have a small part in the film, talked constantly about the 68 year old Buster Keaton and persuaded Schneider to consider him when MacGowran’s circumstances changed. Schneider credits Beckett himself with the suggestion however.

The filmed version differs from Beckett's original script but with his approval since he was on set all the time, this being his only visit to the United States. The script printed in Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (Faber and Faber, 1984) states:

“This is the original film project for Film. No attempt has been made to bring it into line with the finished work. The one considerable departure from what was imagined concerns the opening sequence in the street. This was first shot as given, then replaced by a simplified version in which only the indispensable couple is retained. For the rest the shooting script followed closely the indications in the script.”

It was remade by the British Film Institute (1979, 16 mm, 26 minutes) without Beckett’s supervision, as Film: a screenplay by Samuel Beckett. David Rayner Clark directed Max Wall.

It first appeared in print in Eh Joe and Other Writings (Faber and Faber, 1967).

More has probably been written about the making of this film than the film itself. An entire play has even been devoted to the story, The Stone Face by Canadian playwright Sherry MacDonald.

Beckett had never seen Schneider direct any of his plays and yet continued to entrust him with the work. Why then, for this particular project did he decide to make the trip? Schneider has speculated that it may simply have been the opportunity to work directly with Keaton. “It has even been suggested that the inspiration for Waiting for Godot might have come from a minor Keaton film called The Lovable Cheat in which Keaton plays a man who waits endlessly for the return of his partner - whose name interestingly enough was Godot.”

“When Schneider managed to hunt up Keaton, he found that genius of the silent screen — old, broke, ill, and alone — some $2 million ahead in a four-handed poker game with an imaginary Louis B. Mayer of MGM and two other invisible Hollywood moguls.

“‘Yes, I accept the offer,’ were silent Keaton’s unexpected first words to Schneider. Keaton was dying even as they made the film. ‘We didn’t know that,’ Rosset told interviewer Patsy Southgate in 1990, ‘but looking back at it, the signs were there. Couldn’t speak — he was not so much difficult, he just wasn’t there.’ Keaton would in fact die 18 months after the shooting of Film.”

From this one might think that Keaton jumped at the chance but this is not the case. James Karen remembers:

“He had to be talked into it by Eleanor [his wife] and I remember calling and saying, ‘You know, it could be your Les Enfants du paradis. It could be that wonderful, wonderful thing.’”

Beckett had wanted to work with Keaton several years earlier, when he offered him the role of Lucky in the American stage premiere of "Waiting for Godot," but Buster turned it down. It's said that Buster didn't understand Godot and had misgivings about this script as well. Presumably this went a long way to make him think twice about this new project.

During a meeting with documentary filmmaker, Kevin Brownlow, Beckett was quite forthcoming:

“Buster Keaton was inaccessible. He had a poker mind as well as a poker face. I doubt if he ever read the text - I don't think he approved of it or liked it. But he agreed to do it and he was very competent … Of course, I had seen his silent films and enjoyed them – don't suppose I could remember them now. He had a young woman with him – his wife, who had picked him up from his alcoholism. We met him at a hotel. I tried to engage him in conversation, but it was no good. He was absent. He didn't even offer us a drink. Not because he was being unfriendly, but because it never occurred to him.”

Scheneider’s recollection of that awkward first meeting confirms all of this and more: “They simply had nothing to say to each other, no worlds of any kind to share. And all of Sam's good will and my own flailing efforts to get something started failed to bring them together on any level. It was a disaster.”

But not entirely. Although the role called for Beckett’s seemingly ubiquitous bowler hat, Keaton had brought along some of his trademark flattened-down Stetsons and it was quickly agreed that he should wear one of those. On the Monday morning they “traipsed down in Joe Coffey's ancient Morgan to just beneath the shadow of Brooklyn Bridge and began the shooting.”

Beckett continues:

“The heat was terrible - while I was staggering in the humidity, Keaton was galloping up and down and doing whatever we asked of him. He had great endurance, he was very tough and, yes, reliable. And when you saw that face at the end - oh!’ He smiled, ‘At last’”

Both Beckett and Schneider were novices, Keaton a seasoned veteran. That said, “Keaton's behaviour on the set was … steady and cooperative … He was indefatigable if not exactly loquacious. To all intents and purposes, we were shooting a silent film, and he was in his best form. He encouraged [Schneider] to give him vocal directions during the shot, sometimes starting over again without stopping the camera if he felt he hadn't done something well the first time. (Nor did he believe much in rehearsal, preferring the spontaneity of performance.) Often when the crew was stumped over a technical problem with the camera, he came through with suggestions, inevitably prefacing his comments by explaining that he had solved such problems many times at the Keaton Studios back in 1927.”

Both Beckett and Schneider pronounced themselves more than pleased with Keaton's performance; the latter called him "magnificent."

Keaton’s negative comments about the film are often reported but this final recollection by Schneider may redress the balance: “Whatever he may have subsequently said to interviewers or reporters about not understanding a moment of what he was doing or what the film was about, what I remember best of our final farewell on the set was that he smiled and half-admitted those six pages were worth doing after all.”