Main Cast: Jeremy Irons, Ben Kingsley, Patricia Hodge
Release Year: 1983
Country: UK
Run Time: 95 minutes
Plot
Director David Jones adapted Harold Pinter's play of the same name -- with the help of Pinter himself -- to better fit this chronologically reversed drama of love and betrayal to the medium of film. The action starts with a scene in a London pub in which Jerry (Jeremy Irons) and Emma (Patricia Hodge) hold a subtly sardonic conversation on the nature of human failings as they meet for the first time after the end of their affair. The next scene, introduced by an intertitle, details how their romance fizzled and is followed by the next vignette, one year earlier, on how Jerry broke the news to Emma's husband Robert (Ben Kingsley) that he and Emma were lovers. And so it continues, through a total of nine scenes, back to the beginning of a complex, interpersonal drama. The film benefits considerably from Kingsley and Irons as the lead males, and the backwards story is in no way hard to follow. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
Review
Adapted by Harold Pinter from his play, Betrayal (1983) recounts the story of a failed love affair in reverse chronological order, belying the fantasy that love conquers all. Beginning with a meeting between the former adulterous lovers a year after their break-up, and ending with the first fleeting acknowledgment of their attraction, the narrative is progressively clouded by the end of the affair between Emma (Patricia Hodge) and Jerry (Jeremy Irons), but also by the revelation of their treachery to Robert, Emma's husband and Jerry's best friend (Ben Kingsley). Pinter and director David Jones add poignancy to the relationship through the foreknowledge of its failure, turning the story's mystery into how the affair ended rather than how it will turn out. The superbly nuanced performances by the star trio similarly tap into the conflicted emotions of the couple's betrayal and the husband's double wronging. Voted Best Picture of the Year by the National Board of Review, Betrayal also earned Pinter an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
Chloe Billington - Charlotte (5); Hannah Davies - Charlotte (9); Michael König - Ned Age 2; Ray Marioni - Waiter; Alexander McIntosh - Ned Age 5; Caspar Norman - Sam; Avril Elgar - Mrs. Banks
Credit
Eric Rattray - Associate Producer, Jean Muir - Costume Designer, Jane Robinson - Costume Designer, Ted Morley - First Assistant Director, David Jones - Director, John Bloom - Editor, Dominic Muldowney - Composer (Music Score), George Frost - Makeup, Eileen Diss - Production Designer, Mike Fash - Cinematographer, Eric Rattray - Producer, Sam Spiegel - Producer, Brian Simmons - Sound/Sound Designer, Harold Pinter - Screenwriter, Harold Pinter - Play Author
Pinter based the drama on the clandestine extramarital affair in which he engaged for seven years, from 1962 to 1969, with television presenter Joan Bakewell, who was married to the producer and director Michael Bakewell, while Pinter was married to actress Vivien Merchant.[3][4]
The storyline of Betrayal follows significant moments in the seven-year extramarital affair of art gallery owner Emma (Patricia Hodge) with literary agent Jerry (Jeremy Irons), the best friend of her husband Robert (Ben Kingsley), a London publisher. With titles such as "Two years earlier" and "Three years earlier," nine sequences are shown in reverse chronological order with Emma and Jerry meeting for the first time at the conclusion of the film.
The absolutely brilliant thing about Betrayal is that it is a love story told backward. There is a lot in this movie that is wonderful -- the performances, the screenplay by Harold Pinter -- but what makes it all work is the structure... The Betrayal structure strips away all artifice. It shows, heartlessly, that the very capacity for love itself is sometimes based on betraying not only other loved ones, but even ourselves.[2]
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History
Distributed by Twentieth-Century Fox International Classics (USA), it was first screened in movie theaters in New York in February 1983.[5]
The Seinfeld episode The Betrayal, telecast November 20, 1997 was inspired by this movie. All of the events in the episode occur backwards with the end at the beginning and vice versa.
^ Susan Hollis Merritt, Pinter in Play: Critical Strategies and the Plays of Harold Pinter (1990; Durham and London: Duke UP, 1995) 236, 300. The first film reviews of such New York commercial screenings cited by Merritt date from 20 February 1983 (236-39).
