When Samuel Beckett Tried to Capture the Power of the Movies

In the summer of 1964, Samuel Beckett arrived in New York City for his first and only trip to the United States, to oversee production on what would be his first and only film. Titled “Film,” it was commissioned by the avant-garde publisher Barney Rosset as part of a triptych; the other two pieces were written by Harold Pinter and Eugène Ionesco (both of whom, like Beckett, were published by Rosset’s Grove Press), though Rosset was unable to bring those to fruition. Beckett, by the mid-nineteen-sixties, had cemented his global reputation with the successes of “Waiting for Godot” and “Endgame,” and he and Rosset marshalled a remarkable collection of talent for their movie: celebrated theater director Alan Schneider; cinematographer Boris Kaufman, who had worked on “12 Angry Men” and “On the Waterfront,” among other films; and, most notably, the silent-screen legend Buster Keaton.