Jim Lewis

Nacht und Träume (Night and Dreams) is the last television play written and directed by Samuel Beckett and broadcast on 19th May 1983. It is a wordless play, the only sound that of a male voice humming, then singing, from the last seven bars of Schubert’s lied Nacht und Träume, words by Matthäus Casimir von Collin: "Holde Träume, kehret wieder!" ("Sweet dreams, come back"). Schubert was a composer much loved by Beckett – "the composer who spoke most to him…whom he considered a friend in suffering" (Wiki) Beckett lists five elements that make up the play: evening light, the dreamer (A), his dreamt self (B), a pair of dreamt hands and the last seven bars of Schubert’s lied.

A man is waiting, reading a newspaper, looking out of the window, etc., seen first at distance, then again in close-up, and the close-up forces a very intense kind of intimacy. His face, gestures, little sounds. Tired of waiting he ends up getting into bed. The close-up enters into the bed. No words or very few. Perhaps just a few murmurs.

A lonely man is taunted by the voice of a woman he once knew.

Samuel Beckett directs for German television.

This Canadian adaption features real-life Scrooge interacting with puppet characters.[

Samuel Beckett directs for German television for the last time.

A lonely man is taunted by the voice of a woman he once knew.

Cloaked, cowled figures wander in patterns to rhythm instruments. First transmitted by the Süddeutscher Rundfunk in Germany on 8 October 1981. "Between the two parts there is an intermission of 100,000 years." -S.B. during the rehearsals.