Bartleby

A new clerk is taken on at an accountancy office. Bartleby starts work, and after a while he quietly refuses the tasks he is given. Every time he says the same sentence: I would prefer not to. He does not get angry, does not argue, and does not leave either. When the other employees have to take on his work as well the office stops functioning, and his employer can neither dismiss him nor help him. The film moves Herman Melville’s story from nineteenth century New York to London in the seventies. The gap that opens around a person who says no without giving a reason is the real subject. Paul Scofield and John McEnery appear in Anthony Friedmann’s seventy eight minute British film, completed in 1970.