Masterly Inflections

By JAY COCKS

BARTLEBY

Directed by ANTHONY FRIEDMAN Screenplay by ANTHONY FRIEDMAN and RODNEY CARR-SMITH

Paul Scofield is a precision instrument. His performances are full of small gestures, asides and intuitions that are subtle, telling, always right. He is the master of inflection and implication if not, perhaps, of epic passion, which is why a Scofield Uncle Vanya is more successful than a Scofield Lear.

Scofield is at his most dexterous in Bartleby, bringing extraordinary wit to the rather dreary role of a beleaguered office boss (no name given). The film is adapted from Herman Melville's story Bartleby the Scrivener. Bartleby (John McEnery) is a kind of saintly madman, an almost ghostly figure employed (as the movie has it) as an accountant in Scofield's office.

His only previous experience, Bartleby tells Scofield, was working in the dead-letter division of the post office. Soon after Scofield hires him, Bartleby begins to retreat inside himself. Asked to perform some routine task, he replies, "I'd prefer not to," and never provides further amplification. He lives entirely in the office and becomes for Scofield a burden, an obsession and, finally, an inescapable moral responsibility. Bartleby will not leave when he is dismissed, so Scofield moves the whole office to new quarters. Bartleby remains behind, but he is like an embodiment of some old guilt that Scofield can never escape.

Director-Scenarist Anthony Friedman has modernized the story and transposed it from New York to London, which works, and played much of it for comedy, which doesn't. Scofield is elegant, a joy to watch, and he saves the film. But John McEnery has been directed to play Bartleby less as a ci pher than as a dogged straight man.

The film has the air of one of those dry English comedies of the '50s, a diverting enough style but hardly an adequate substitute for Melville's spiritual mysteries. The dialogue -- as when Bartleby muses, "I'm not ashamed of talking to myself. Everyone talks to themselves.

The trouble is no one ever listens" -- does Melville a disservice that borders on infamy.

-Jay Cocks

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