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bart writes:

I know that this topic is called "Best Shakespeare adaptations," not "films of scripts by Shakespeare." But sometimes I think film makers have been too willing to sacrifice the Shakespeare's words for the sake of beautiful visuals and compelling action.

All too true. But the trimming isn’t always voluntary. Olivier was told by the moneymen to cut “Hamlet” drastically or else, and the financial travails of Orson Welles’ later productions are well known, as FauxPas notes. On the other hand, some things need to be cut for the screen. Shakespeare uses words for the scene setting and action that the movies can show us – do you keep or cut, and if so, how? On stage, the verse comes first, but on the screen images cannot help imposing themselves on the viewer – how do you keep the verse from being overpowered while avoiding a static film?

canbelto writes:

One of the most unexpressive screen actresses of her generation, IMO, and that's why her films and performances are relatively forgotten.

Shearer was not a particularly good actress, but she was a great star in her day – as big as Garbo and Crawford – and today she retains presence and authority even when she’s getting on your nerves. She was a charming ingenue in the very early days and rather terrific in her Sinful Woman phase of the early thirties. Her name is known primarily to buffs today not so much because of her acting skills or lack thereof but because she made very few classic films – “The Women” is the only one that’s regularly revived today. ( In that one, even though her part is sappy and the supporting actresses have all the great lines, she carries the picture. That’s a star.)

bart writes:

he DIDN't slather his face with shiny brown shoe polish, as did Olivier.

It should be borne in mind that the Olivier version of Othello is basically an unvarnished shooting of the stage production with nothing, including the acting, toned down for the camera. Olivier spent hours perfecting his makeup before every performance – no slathering involved, I assure you. :D

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dirac, I don't think I expressed myself well. My concern is not the quantity of words left in the script. It is the way the lines (verse or not) are read. The ability to make these words speak naturally as well as beautifully, along with the ability to convey meaning, is a rare one. Branagh, I believe, has it. Vanessa Redgrave, ditto, in her televised scenes preparing for her National Theater performance as Cleopatra. And Ian Holm in Lear, plus almost everyone else in the wonderful supporting cast.

Actors who become stagey, IMO, include Olivier (esp Othello) and Welles. This is not necessarily bad, when the verse flows and is accessible, as it always is with them.

McKellan has done stylized and naturalistic equally well on flm. Ditto Anthony Hopkins in Titus, a play where that must have been very difficult indeed.

Mel Gibson's Hamlet has generally received reviews that suggest "it's not that he does it well, but that he does it at all". Glenn Close came very, very ... well ... close. It would have been interesting to see her with a more sensitive and reactive Hamlet to play against.

... some things need to be cut for the screen. Shakespeare uses words for the scene setting and action that the movies can show us – do you keep or cut, and if so, how? On stage, the verse comes first, but on the screen images cannot help imposing themselves on the viewer – how do you keep the verse from being overpowered while avoiding a static film?

An excellent point. You made me think (perversely) of its opposite: the highly dramatic, very descriptive lines from Henry V, in the Olivier production, when Shakespeare uses a narrator to conjur images of the preparations for war in France. Olivier marries this text beautifully with film image. I love the surprising and magical transition from what had formerly been presented as a staged work enclosed in an Elizabethan theater, opening up and expanding as the camera soars out into the real world.

I don't recall who does these lines, but in Branagh's version, shot more conventionally, has a truly marvellous Derek Jacobi. Now that man CAN read Shakespeare well.

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An excellent point. You made me think (perversely) of its opposite: the highly dramatic, very descriptive lines from Henry V, in the Olivier production, when Shakespeare uses a narrator to conjur images of the preparations for war in France. Olivier marries this text beautifully with film image. I love the surprising and magical transition from what had formerly been presented as a staged work enclosed in an Elizabethan theater, opening up and expanding as the camera soars out into the real world.

I don't recall who does these lines, but in Branagh's version, shot more conventionally, has a truly marvellous Derek Jacobi. Now that man CAN read Shakespeare well.

I think that the part that you are referring to (I think it's called "Chorus" in the text of the play) is played by Jacobi.

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FauxPas writes:

Orson also had a tendency like Donald Wolfit and other 19th century actor/managers to cast non-entities around him - look at the "Macbeth" with Jeanette Nolan.

Thank you, FauxPas, for your excellent posts. Wolfit was indeed an actor-manager (as I’m sure you know, the role played by Albert Finney in “The Dresser” – the actor who tirelessly tours the provinces -- was modeled on Wolfit), but he wouldn’t qualify as a nineteenth-century one. :blushing: As you note correctly, however, the actor-manager ideal hung on among actors who moved into directing well into the 20th century. This didn't necessarily result in the hiring of nonentities by any means, but these men did often seem to operate from a belief that, finally, their own performances were enough.

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Deepdiscountdvd is having a big sale, so I'm wondering, what are your thoughts on:

1. Macbeth - Dench, McKellan

2. King Lear - Ian Holm

3. Hamlet - Richard Burton

4. Twelfth Night - 1996 adaptation

5. Merchant of Venice - Trevor Nunn, 2001 film

6. As You Like It - Olivier, Bergner

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Orson also had a tendency like Donald Wolfit and other 19th century actor/managers to cast non-entities around him - look at the "Macbeth" with Jeanette Nolan. This crew isn't so bad but done in by the production style and cutting. Michael McLliamoir isn't charismatic enough on screen as Iago but the Emilia of Fay Compton is fine. This film was done in bits and pieces with no budget over several years. The skimpy sets are offset by clever chiaroscuro lighting but there is a lack of supernumeries and props as well. Continuity is weird and I think the whole thing was post-dubbed. The Desdemona is a beautiful French actress, Suzanne Cloutier who has no clue with Shakespearean dialogue. She is dubbed but I can't tell if she does her own voice or if it is someone else.

I think it is Suzanne Cloutier's own voice. The "LA Times" did an article a while ago on the Welles "MacBeth," and as I recalled it explained that the film had to be "blind looped" (looped without benefit of the film) by the cast.

The Welles discussion reminds me of one I forgot... "Chimes at Midnight." Not all that easy to find and it's generally in terrible condition even if you can find it, but the Movie Place on 105th St. used to have a copy.

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Thank you so much, sidwich, for mentioning “Chimes at Midnight,” which is Welles’ retelling of the Falstaff story, cutting and pasting from the history plays and Holinshed’s Chronicles. It’s untidy to say the least, largely because of the horrific financial obstacles Welles was facing, but it’s well worth anyone's time. (The first half hour or so is hard to take because of the awful sound, but stay with it.) John Gielgud plays Henry IV, and Keith Baxter is a fine Prince Hal.

bart writes:

Actors who become stagey, IMO, include Olivier (esp Othello) and Welles. This is not necessarily bad, when the verse flows and is accessible, as it always is with them.

You know, I don’t think of Olivier and Welles as stagey except on bad days. They perform with a high theatricality that can degenerate into ham but isn't quite the same thing.

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Deepdiscountdvd is having a big sale, so I'm wondering, what are your thoughts on:

1. Macbeth - Dench, McKellan FP: Must own, get it!

2. King Lear - Ian Holm - Good solid stuff, worth getting at their price.

3. Hamlet - Richard Burton - filmed onstage, actors in rehearsal clothes, minimal no sets, for Burton fans and completists.

4. Twelfth Night - 1996 adaptation - Haven't seen it.

5. Merchant of Venice - Trevor Nunn, 2001 film - I heard good things about it - the one with Jeremy Irons, right?

6. As You Like It - Olivier, Bergner - Olivier is gorgeous, young and so good as Orlando. Bergner is arch and calculating and too old. Her fey elfin charm must have been magical in Berlin in 1927 but the camera and time don't do her any favors. Her German accent doesn't help here either. The forest is built on a soundstage with very phony pseudo realism. It has a kind of tacky Biedermeier shepherds and shepherdesses quality that is just wrong.

The BBC showed a very good "Macbeth" with Eric Porter and Janet Suzman that would be a worthy addition to the DVD market. Also, the RSC had on videotape the "Antony and Cleopatra" with Richard Johnson and Janet Suzman. Suzman is a magnificent Cleopatra who must been seen even if the production clearly was done without the budget for spectacular scenery and pageantry a TV version would need. It clearly is a bare bones stage production filmed for TV without sphinxes, armies, palaces and horses. If we only had Suzman and Shakespeare in the Mankiewicz "Cleopatra" with those sets and costumes.

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Deepdiscountdvd is having a big sale, so I'm wondering, what are your thoughts on:

4. Twelfth Night - 1996 adaptation - Haven't seen it.

Suzman is a magnificent Cleopatra who must been seen even if the production clearly was done without the budget for spectacular scenery and pageantry a TV version would need.

A really charming record -- set in an Edwardian country house -- of a play that is often difficult to get across. Just about every young to middle-aged British classical actor of the 1990s is in it. Nigel Hawthorne's Malvolio is memorable and reallyl quite sympathetic. Ben Kingsley's Feste is eery: like someone imported from another play. The very strangeness of it makes it work.

I agree on Susman. This was really a shock to me, having seen her before only as the dull, narrow, neurotic and rather small-scale Empress Alexandra in the dull Nicholas and Alexandra.

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I agree on Susman. This was really a shock to me, having seen her before only as the dull, narrow and rather low-key Empress Alexandra in the dull Nicholas and Alexandra.

Wasn't that stupefying? Suzman is really shown to poor advantage there. Damned if I could figure out why Nicholas kept calling her 'Sunny.' :clapping:

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I gather she had a short season of charm and lightness early on. But it was long gone by the time the film began. Odd, the way that film tended to present the Tsar and Tsarina as victims of the system rather than as people who benefited from and exploited it to the limit. Poor little Empress!

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Well I had a virtual Shakespeare festival this weekend. It being steaming hot, I went to my local Blockbuster and rented:

Branagh's Henry V

Richard III (McKellan)

Othello (Fisburne, Branagh)

Much Ado About Nothing (Branagh version)

First of all, Much Ado was better than I remembered it. Emma Thompson is really delightful as Beatrice, but as dirac noted the eclectic casting hurts the play (Denzel is great, but Keanu is an absolute disaster), and Branagh and Thompson strangely have very little chemistry. I still think this was a disappointing adaptation. It starts out very well but gets less and less interesting.

Othello frustrated me. I LOVED Branagh's Iago. He strangely makes Iago the most appealing character of the play -- his snarky asides are wonderful. On the other hand, Fishburne has the dignity but none of the anguish of the Moor, and Jacob needs English lessons. Plus, I realize Othello is a long play but surely there was a better way to preserve more of the text.

The only unmitigated success IMO is Richard III. Ian McKellan was wonderfully slimy and creepy, and although it was a "concept film" I thought the concept worked very well, except for the obvious "My kingdom for a horse!" line as Richard was on a tank at that point.

I have yet to see Henry V.

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Sounds like a great way to spend a weekend!

[ ... ] Branagh and Thompson strangely have very little chemistry.

What they share with each other, and what these actors express very well I think, are intelligence, a huge sense of fun, a love of word play, and a willingness to grow.

They both have learned by the end of the play that (as Benedick says), "man is a giddy thing, and this is my conclusion." No one else in their world reaches this level of awareness.

It's a rare kind of chemistry.

And it will probably keep them in love with each other long after Hero and Claudio and most of Shakespeare's other couples will have gone their separate emotional ways. Can we really imagine that love and understanding will continue to grow, after the happy endings of their plays, betwen Kate and Petrucchio, Viola and the Duke, or any of the lovers in Midsummer Night's Dream? And then -- what WOULD have happened to all that passion between Romeo and Juliet, or Antony and Cleopatra, if death had not intervened?

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Yes, indeed, bart -- beautifully said. Although aren't Romeo and Juliet and Antony and Cleopatra functioning in a very different context? Yes, their passion is their downfall -- but isn't that the point?

Interesting observation, with Romeo and Juliet actually conceivable (if we could really know all of the context) as continuing in some fashion, although I'd never thought of it till now. In any case, they didn't betray each other, so they could have loved each other alive as well as dead. That is not true of Antony and Cleopatra, as he could have only come to hate her had they lived, after her ghastly and quite unaristocratic betrayal of him at sea which is chronicled better by Plutarch than Shakespeare (who was strongly and often influenced by Plutarch). One might say he had it coming, and one would be right, but only to a degree. With death, and in such claustrophobic and enclosed circumstances, they may well have been able to experience an enormous surge of 'jouissance' of their own tragedy that makes our own fascination with their story seem pretty limp and garden variety. Then we get to leave it all to Charmion to wrap things up and give Cleopatra's reputation the last word (at least on the premises.)

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In Greenblatt's book "Will of the World" he makes the case that Shakespeare's essentially a downer when it comes to romances, and he paints a pretty bleak future for even the "successful" pairs. In some ways I agree with him. Hard to imagine Portia and the pretty playboy/freeloader Bassanio really being happy. Orland's drippy romanticism might wear fast considering Rosalind's no-nonsense personality. Orsino is insufferably morose -- I still don't see why Viola loves him so much.

However, I'd also make a case that Shakespeare was using the classic romantic comedy device of having opposites attract. They're so different that they can't possibly fall in love, but they do! Jane Austen uses the same device in Pride and Prejudice, most of the screwball comedies are also based on this dramatic arc. Could Godfrey stand Irene's scatterbrained prattling for more than a minute? In real life, probably not, but in the movies, yes. Shakespeare wasn't trying to portray real-life -- he was making a romantic comedy, and in romantic comedies, the girl has to get the guy.

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This is very interesting stuff.

I think it's sometimes useful to distinguish between the characters as they appear on the page (i.e., the raw material they are given by Shakespeare), and the way they develop on stage when interpreted by individual actors, each making his or her own choices.

There is evidence in Much Ado that B and B have learned something about themselves and the need to moderate (if not completely alter) their personalities for the loving relationship to work.

Some actors do not make much of this, and -- I think -- it's not really essential that they do so.

Branagh and Thompson, on the other hand, make a great deal of it. They, unlike the others in their version of "Messina", have truly earned their participation in the joyful dance that so beautifully ends the film.

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Good points, bart.

canbelto writes:

Hard to imagine Portia and the pretty playboy/freeloader Bassanio really being happy. Orland's drippy romanticism might wear fast considering Rosalind's no-nonsense personality. Orsino is insufferably morose -- I still don't see why Viola loves him so much.

Many of Shakespeare’s heroes aren’t worthy of his heroines. I think especially of the intrepid Helena in “All’s Well That Ends Well,” stuck with Bertram for the rest of her life. (And Imogen and Posthumus!)

papeetepatrick writes: That is not true of Antony and Cleopatra, as he could have only come to hate her had they lived, after her ghastly and quite unaristocratic betrayal of him at sea which is chronicled better by Plutarch than Shakespeare (who was strongly and often influenced by Plutarch).

Oh, I think he would have forgiven her, had things gone better. Those two knew each other's weaknesses very well. And Antony’s own nose was hardly clean in the betrayal department. :)

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In Greenblatt's book "Will of the World" he makes the case that Shakespeare's essentially a downer when it comes to romances, and he paints a pretty bleak future for even the "successful" pairs.

Bernard Knox, I think it is, somewhere comments that Homer rings down the curtain mighty fast as soon as Odysseus is reunited with Penelope. The story is always over when the match (or reunion) is made; we don't want to see anything more! I think that's just because we ordinary mortals know the reality of romance's shelf life. The sequel to "Pride and Prejudice" would probably be titled "Adultery and Alimony." And "Sleeping Beauty" would be followed by "Wide Awake Now."

But I have to agree with Bart. Beatrice and Benedick are one of Shakespeare's most delightful couples, and I think one does tend to think their relationship has a better chance than most of surviving in the long run. Emma Thompson is just a joy (born under a dancing star indeed!), and Branagh is really good, too. The rest of the cast is hit-or-miss, the music is an overblown disaster, but the two leads save the day.

For me, Shakespeare seems largest and most humane in the comedies. Anyway, in a good performance they move me to tears more often than the tragedies. I always have the feeling that if we could meet Shakespeare the man, he would most resemble the guy we'd expect from "Much Ado," "As You Like It," "Twelfth Night."

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Emma Thompson is just a joy (born under a dancing star indeed!), and Branagh is really good, too. The rest of the cast is hit-or-miss, the music is an overblown disaster, but the two leads save the day.

I agree about Thompson, but I have to disagree about Branagh. There's something about his onscreen persona I find off-putting -- a bit smarmy, but not good-looking or charismatic enough to pull off the smarm. Especially as a romantic lead. I don't know, this is one film I really wanted to enjoy but just didn't.

Branagh however was the saving grace of Othello, which I thought was a disaster on so many levels.

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re Antony and Cleopatra -- it's ALL about trust and betrayal, the Roman desire for permanence ( and Anthony's smart enough to see that's a prison, but he's a Roman nevertheless and wants it) and something protean and ever-self-refreshing about Cleopatra, who's young all over again like the Nile delta with every spring flood ("Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale/her infinite variety....")

He says "Thou has beguiled me to the very heart of loss."

and she says "Not know me yet?"

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Continuing.....

Judith Anderson was a really chilling Lady Macbeth..... I think her husband was Ralph Richardson, can't recall but she was really something. The way she behaved when the murder came to light was deeply horrifying? "What, in our house?" The facade of family values!

I have to disagree with most of y'all about the old Hollywood adaptations -- Leslie Howard is the best Romeo I've ever seen, the only one who makes it plausible that he might have been up all night, an intellectual -- it's ALL THROUGH the text, he writes sonnets, he's a philosopher, and a romantinc one at that, he's not a sleepy kittenish warm cuddly sexy teenager, he's a nervous-wreck bookish kid.

And I loved Norma Shearer; true they did have to superannuate the whole rest of the cast to make her look young enough, but good God, they used to do that -- Sarah Bernhardt was the first Salome, and she was no spring chicken. Indeed, the close-ups of Fonteyn in the movie wreck hte illusion that she's a teen-ager -- her neck's all crepe-y, etc etc -- but her performance is fantastic (as was Ulanova's when she was in HER 50s-- realism is not nearly as important as imagination in a role like this.)

ALso, I find Orson Welles's the only English-language Othello that i can bear; it's heart-breaking. All the others make Othello look like a fool and let Iago run away with the production. Macliammor is a haunted, FABULOUS Iago -- his delivery of the line "If I were Othello, I would not be Iago" is so mysteriously desperate, hollow, wretched, it makes me understand how he could act out all his bitterness with such glee, as a distraction from his own self-loathing.

The Russian Othello is magnificent, as is the Russian King Lear.

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Sarah Bernhardt was the first Salome, and she was no spring chicken. Indeed, the close-ups of Fonteyn in the movie wreck hte illusion that she's a teen-ager -- her neck's all crepe-y, etc etc -- but her performance is fantastic (as was Ulanova's when she was in HER 50s-- realism is not nearly as important as imagination in a role like this.)

Thank you for those eloquent posts, Paul, and for sticking up for Leslie and Norma. An aging Bernhardt played Joan of Arc and had the audience eating out of her hand, but that was on stage. Age does matter in front of the camera. I wouldn’t be without the film of Ulanova’s Juliet – it gives you an idea of the stage performance, even if it’s only a shadow of what it must have been – but making a record of a legendary dance performance is another thing from casting Juliet in a straight version of Shakespeare. You couldn’t get away with a thirty five year old in the role today, and overall I think that’s a good thing.

Judith Anderson was a really chilling Lady Macbeth..... I think her husband was Ralph Richardson, can't recall but she was really something.

If it's the production I'm thinking of, I think her Macbeth was Maurice Evans.

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