The Pumpkin Eater

Harold Pinter penned one of his superior scripts in this fastidious adaptation of Penelope Mortimer's novel about a compulsive child-bearer and her unfaithful screenwriter husband. The influence of European cinema (in particular Antonioni) is evident in the delineation of despair among the middle classes, and there is something peculiarly self-parodic in the heroine enduring a nervous breakdown in Harrods. Fine performances notwithstanding, the world of the Hampstead soap opera now seems so far away as to almost rate as science fiction.