Pinter and the Object of Desire

Harold Pinter was fascinated by film ling before he began writing for the theatre, but the importance of his screenplays, based on the work of other authors, has been overlooked. Renton traces his progress from first draft to a final text in which the unspoken and unseen provoke in us a response of acute desire or anxiety. A newly discovered Pinter poem links him to Surrealists, and through the Surrealists to their contemporary, the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901-81). The present study distinguishes Pinter's methods of composition from those of mainstream screenwriters, places him at the forefront of film theory and offers a fresh insight into his entire artistic output.