Film by Samuel Beckett (1965) - Video On Demand

Film by Samuel Beckett - Movie Review

Few films in the history of cinema deserve renewed attention as much as this little known masterpiece which the philosopher and film-theorist Gilles Deleuze has called "the greatest Irish film." Indeed its importance is magnified by the very fact that it is one of the few Irish films of any note which attempts to explore a uniquely Irish intellectual tradition.

In Film Buster Keaton plays a character who in Beckett's words is "in search of non-being, in flight from extraneous perception breaking down in the inescapability of self-perception." Beckett explains in his script that he has sundered his character in two: the character played by Keaton is called 'O' or the object who throughout the film is pursued by the subject 'E' or the 'camera-eye'. As long as the camera or 'E' stays behind Keaton (O), 'O' will avoid being perceived. The camera is designated, in Beckett's phrase, an "angle of immunity" of 45 degrees which it must not exceed at the risk of causing 'O' to experience the "anguish of perceivedness."

The film, which has no dialogue, takes as its basis Berkeley’s theory Esse est percepti, that is “to be is to be perceived”: even after all outside perception - be it animal, human or divine - has been suppressed, self perception remains.

This film, shot in black and white and lasting 22 minutes, was directed by Alan Schneider under the personal supervision of Beckett whose commitment to the project was demonstrated by his decision to travel to New York and be present throughout the shooting - an effort he was never prepared to make in relation to any of his theatre works, almost all of which Schneider had premièred for him in America. Schneider later speculated as to whether the opportunity to work directly with Buster Keaton had motivated Beckett's unusual decision to travel.

Film by Samuel Beckett - Cast & Crew

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