Cinema: Fire and Ice

THE HOMECOMING

Directed by PETER HALL Screenplay by HAROLD PINTER

This is a precise adaptation of Pinter's play—the director and much of the cast are intact from the original 1965 London production—and it makes a fine, ferocious film. One reason for its success is that no one writes this well originally for films, not even Harold Pinter. His other screenplays are cool, exemplary, probably the best scenario writing now being done in English, as a recently published collection (Grove; $10) readily attests. The screenplays are all adaptations, though. They have the eerie accents of Pinter, share a great many of his obsessional themes,...