Beckett and Alan Schneider originally wanted Charlie Chaplin, Zero Mostel and Jack MacGowran; however, they eventually did not get involved.

[6] As the camera begins to pan right and up, it is discernable as a wall; we are outside a building (an old factory situated in Lower Manhattan).

No longer conscious of being observed, O starts off again, knocking over a trestle and stumbling over a railway sleeper—anything to stay as close as possible to the wall.

The couple look at each other and the man "opens his mouth to vituperate"[7] but the woman shushes him, uttering the only sound in the whole play.

"[9] The man—and the camera following him from behind—survey its contents: a dog and a cat share a basket, a caged parrot and a goldfish in its bowl sit atop a small table.

There is also a couch with a filthy pillow, some blankets and a rug on it, a rocking chair[12] with a "curiously carved headrest"[13] and there is a window with a tattered roller blind with full-length net curtains to either side.

Systematically, O takes each object or creature in the room and disables its ability to 'see' him: he closes the blind and pulls the net curtains across, he covers the mirror with the rug, the cat and dog (“a shy and uncooperative, little Chihuahua”[14]) are – with some difficulty – ejected from the room and the picture is torn up.

Although stated simply, the mechanics needed to execute these tasks are laborious (e.g., as he passes the window, he hides behind the blanket which he holds in front of himself to cover the mirror and he carries the cat and dog facing away from him as he tries to put them out the door).

"Beckett initially contemplated setting Film in the evening, but had to decide against it for a practical reason: 'to remove all possibility of his putting off light in room.

'"[17] Finally O sits down opposite the denuded wall, opens the folder, and takes out seven photographs of himself, which he examines in sequence: He spends twice as long on pictures 5 and 6.

“[I]n Beckett the distant past is always more tenacious than recent events.”[19] Afterwards he rocks slightly, hands holding the armrests and then checks his pulse once more.

(See the opening two paragraphs of Richard Cave's review of the 1979 version of the film for a discussion of the possible definition of 'investment' here).

This time E whirls round to the right, passing the window, the mirror, the birdcage and fishbowl and finally stops in front of the space on the wall where the picture was.

A 'middle-ground' review would probably be "a poor attempt by a genuine writer to move into a medium that he simply hadn't the flair or understanding of to make a success".

In fact, The Eye[25] was an early title for Film, though admittedly, at that time, he had not thought of the need for the opening close-up.

As a student of French literature, Beckett would have been familiar with Victor Hugo’s poem La Conscience.

Alan Schneider, the director of Film, was once asked if he could provide an explanation that ‘the man in the street’ could understand: In between takes on the set near the Brooklyn Bridge, Keaton told a reporter something similar, summarizing the theme as "a man may keep away from everybody but he can't get away from himself."

In Beckett's original script, the two main characters, the camera and the man it is pursuing are referred to as E (the Eye) and O (the Object).

But E is also self, not merely O's self but the self of any person or people, specifically that of the other characters — the elderly couple [sic] and the flower-lady — who respond to its stare with that look of horror.”[28] E is, so to speak, O's blind eye.

The narrator of The Unnamable answers: “They depart, one by one, and the voices go on, it’s not theirs, they were never there, there was never anyone but you, talking to you about you…”[33] The old woman in Rockaby appears to be the exact opposite of O but although she actively seeks to be seen by someone while O does everything to avoid perceivedness, the irony is that both characters are alone with only themselves for company.

R. C. Lamont writes that "Film deals with the apprenticeship to death, the process of detaching oneself from life.

The veiling of the windows and mirrors, the covering of the birdcage – the extinction of light, reflection and light – are so many ritualistic steps to be taken before final immobility, the resignation of the end.”[34] At the end of Film, O is seated in his rocker with his face buried in his hands; at the end of Rockaby, the old woman's head inclines forward as if, finally, she had died.

[35] The final scene in Film is also comparable to the moment in the library when the old man in That Time sees his own reflection in the glass covering a painting.

It could be tempting to think of O and E as a Beckettian Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – indeed in notes for the first draft Beckett did toy “with the idea of making ‘E tall’ and ‘O short (and) fat’ which corresponds with the dual physique of Jekyll and Hyde” – but Film is not concerned with representations of good and evil, only with the concept of the second self, of pursuer and pursued.”[26] The special relationship existing between O and E - an atypical case of Doppelgänger - constitutes what has been called "palindromic identity.

It has even been suggested that one inspiration for Waiting for Godot might have come from a 1949 film called The Lovable Cheat in which Keaton has a small part as a man who is convinced by the main character, who owes him money, to wait endlessly for a man named Godeau, who will pay the debt.

that genius of the silent screen — old, broke, ill, and alone — some $2 million ahead in a four-handed poker game with an imaginary Louis B. Mayer of MGM and two other invisible Hollywood moguls.

James Karen remembers: Beckett had wanted to work with Keaton several years earlier, when he offered him the role of Lucky in the American stage premiere of Waiting for Godot, but Buster turned it down.

Although the role called for Beckett's seemingly ubiquitous bowler hat, Keaton had brought along some of his trademark flattened-down Stetsons and it was quickly agreed that he should wear one of those.

He encouraged [Schneider] to give him vocal directions during the shot, sometimes starting over again without stopping the camera if he felt he hadn't done something well the first time.

Often when [the crew was] stumped over a technical problem with the camera, he came through with suggestions, inevitably prefacing his comments by explaining that he had solved such problems many times at the Keaton Studios back in 1927.”[2] Both Beckett and Schneider pronounced themselves more than pleased with Keaton's performance; the latter called him "magnificent."