100 Shakespeare Films

Daniel Rosenthal

• Publisher: British Film Institute
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781844571703
• eBook ISBN: 9781838714086
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film History & Criticism

From Oscar-winning British classics to Hollywood musicals and Westerns, from Soviet epics to Bollywood thrillers, Shakespeare has inspired an almost infinite variety of films. Directors as diverse as Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa, Franco Zeffirelli, Kenneth Branagh, Baz Luhrmann and Julie Taymor have transferred Shakespeare's plays from stage to screen with unforgettable results. Spanning a century of cinema, from a silent short of 'The Tempest' (1907) to Kenneth Branagh's 'As You Like It' (2006), Daniel Rosenthal's up-to-date selection takes in the most important, inventive and unusual Shakespeare films ever made. Half are British and American productions that retain Shakespeare's language, including key works such as Olivier's 'Henry V' and 'Hamlet', Welles' 'Othello' and 'Chimes at Midnight', Branagh's 'Henry V' and 'Hamlet', Luhrmann's 'Romeo + Juliet' and Taymor's 'Titus'. Alongside these original-text films are more than 30 genre adaptations: titles that aim for a wider audience by using modernized dialogue and settings and customizing Shakespeare's plots and characters, transforming 'Macbeth' into a pistol-packing gangster ('Joe Macbeth' and 'Maqbool') or reimagining 'Othello' as a jazz musician ('All Night Long'). There are Shakesepeare-based Westerns ('Broken Lance', 'King of Texas'), musicals ('West Side Story', 'Kiss Me Kate'), high-school comedies ('10 Things I Hate About You', 'She's the Man'), even a sci-fi adventure ('Forbidden Planet'). There are also films dominated by the performance of a Shakespearean play ('In the Bleak Midwinter', 'Shakespeare in Love'). Rosenthal emphasises the global nature of Shakespearean cinema, with entries on more than 20 foreign-language titles, including Kurosawa's 'Throne of Blood and Ran', Grigori Kozintsev's 'Russian Hamlet' and 'King Lear', and little-known features from as far afield as 'Madagascar' and 'Venezuela', some never released in Britain or the US. He considers the films' production and box-office history and examines the film-makers' key interpretive decisions in comparison to their Shakespearean sources, focusing on cinematography, landscape, music, performance, production design, textual alterations and omissions. As cinema plays an increasingly important role in the study of Shakespeare at schools and universities, this is a wide-ranging, entertaining and accessible guide for Shakespeare teachers, students and enthusiasts.

Appendix 1

Shakespeare – The Animated Tales

UK/Russia, 1990–4 – 12 x 25 mins

Shakespeare – The Animated Tales was a remarkable co-production between S4C, the Cardiff-based Welsh arm of Channel 4, and Moscow-based animation studio Soyuzmultifilm, founded in 1935 and known as ‘the Soviet Disney’. Adapter Leon Garfield scripted a dozen abridgements, which won three Emmy Awards and have screened in more than fifty countries. They merit collective rather than selective recognition among this book’s 100 films, firstly because they provide an accessible introduction for young viewers to twelve plays, and, secondly, because they triumphantly demonstrated to viewers of all ages that a medium too often associated solely with children’s stories could realise adult Shakespearean imagery and themes with as much imagination and poetry as live-action film.

The twenty-five-minute limit on each play made Garfield’s task extraordinarily difficult, and almost every retained line of dialogue, he explained, had to ‘carry the weight of narrative’. The scripts inevitably emphasise plot over character (Romeo and Juliet becomes almost absurdly frenetic), and use formal prose narration, delivered in voiceover, to set the scene and bridge gaps (‘A fierce ambition burned in the heart of Richard,’ announces Alec McCowen at the start of Richard III, and so on). They are admirably explicit with the more violent tales (Hastings’s head is served on a platter in Richard III) and only a few of the omissions unnecessarily soften the mood (no imprisonment of Malvolio in Twelfth Night) or unbalance twinned storylines by neglecting a subplot (less than a minute of the Shrew is devoted to Bianca/Lucentio).

The animators worked from pre-recorded soundtracks superbly voiced by actors who have graced some of the best RSC or National Theatre productions, including Roger Allam (Orsino), Fiona Shaw (Viola), Brian Cox and Zoë Wanamaker (the Macbeths), Antony Sher (Richard III) and Timothy West (Prospero).

Production and costume designs place the action around Shakespeare’s time, or the play’s historical period, a tactic previously used by the BBC’s complete television Shakespeare cycle (1978–85) and designed to give consistency and, with an eye on long-term educational and consumer video sales, prevent films from dating, as might happen with, say, Romeo and Juliet in a 1990s’ city.

Conventional cel animation was used for Julius Caesar and Othello (both have the robust, chiselled heroes you might expect to find in an animated DC Comic), a rather bland Romeo and Juliet, a Macbeth as shadowy and brutal as an adult graphic novel, and a Dream whose garish colours made it the only Tale to feel like a children’s television cartoon.

Three films – Hamlet, Richard III and As You Like It – saw every frame hand-painted onto glass suspended beneath the camera, photographed and then repainted, giving every characters’ movement a blurred quality, which in the Doré-like Hamlet created an astonishing visual representation of the Prince’s melancholy and Elsinore’s shadowy froideur.

The Tempest, Twelfth Night, The Taming of the Shrew and The Winter’s Tale used puppets made from metal skeletons, around six to ten inches high and animated by stop-motion filming. This gave us many memorable characterisations, including a translucent silver Ariel with angel’s wings and ballerina’s grace. It is not surprising that the magic of The Tempest and the Dream lent themselves to the visual freedom afforded by animation, but the more realistic Tales also contain dozens of arrestingly fluent effects that might seem laughable if placed beside flesh-and-blood actors but perfectly suit this more expressionistic form, as when the scroll thrown into Brutus’s orchard morphs into a snake, or a stained glass window comes alive to depict the slaughter of Macduff’s family.

Prod: Dave Edwards; Scr: Leon Garfield; As You Like It Dir: Alexei Karayev. Hamlet Dir: Natalia Orlova. Julius Caesar Dir: Yuri Kulakov. Macbeth Dir: Nikolai Serebriakov. A Midsummer Night’s Dream Dir: Robert Saakiants. Othello Dir: Nikolai Serebriakov. Richard III Dir: Natalia Orlova. Romeo and Juliet Dir: Ephim Gambourg. The Taming of the Shrew Dir: Aida Ziablikova. The Tempest Dir: Stanislav Sokolov. Twelfth Night Dir: Maria Muat. The Winter’s Tale Dir: Stanislav Sokolov. (Region 1 DVD: Ambrose Video; Region 2 DVD: Metrodome.)

Appendix 2 – Video and DVD Guide

Titles go in and out of print at regular and unpredictable intervals. However, online shopping has made it easier to track down new and second-hand copies of out-of-print titles. The most straightforward method is to locate a film’s entry on the Internet Movie Database <www.imdb.com> and click on the constantly updated ‘Shop’ options in the top right-hand corner of the page. These links take you to Amazon’s UK, US and other sites, where stock may be available from Amazon or its (generally reliable) Marketplace Sellers.

The best-stocked specialist online retailer for Shakespeare on video is the Ontario-based <www.bardcentral.com> (stocking mostly North American formats); other useful sites include <www.caiman.com>; <www.moviesunlimited.com>; <www.inetvideo.com>; <www.blackstar.co.uk> and Ebay. Google searches (e.g. ‘Johnny Hamlet + DVD’) can also yield results.

The information below (compiled in January 2007) lists titles available on Region 1 (R1) DVD and VHS NTSC (North America formats), and Region 2 (R2) DVD and VHS Pal (UK and Europe formats). R1 DVDs and NTSC videos require an NTSC-compatible television and a multiregion DVD player or NTSC-compatible VHS player. Films are listed alphabetically by title and, if relevant, year, followed by the format and distributor. [OP] indicates ‘Out of Print’, but worth hunting for online. Of the 100 films in this book, those not listed below appeared to be unavailable in any edition, in or out of print.

All Night Long – R2 DVD: Carlton.

Antony and Cleopatra – VHS NTSC: Embassy Home Entertainment [OP].

As You Like It (1936) – R1 DVD: Image Entertainment; VHS NTSC: United American Video Entertainment [OP]; R2 DVD: DD.V.

As You Like It (1992) – R2 DVD: Sands Films.

As You Like It (2006) – release pending.

Bad Sleep Well, The – R1 DVD: Criterion Collection; VHS NTSC: Home Vision Cinema; R2 DVD and VHS Pal: BFI.

Banquet, The – NTSC DVD (all regions): HanJi <www.hkdvdstore.com>.

Chicken Rice War – VCD NTSC: Mei Ah Entertainment <www.meiah.com>.

Children’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, The – R2 DVD: Sands Films.

Double Life, A – R1 DVD: Republic Pictures; VHS NTSC: Lionsgate.

Forbidden Planet – R1 and R2 DVD, VHS NTSC and Pal: MGM.

Hamlet (1948) – R1 DVD: Criterion Collection; R2 DVD and VHS Pal: Carlton.

Hamlet (1964) – R1 DVD: Facets Video.

Hamlet (1990) – R1 DVD and VHS NTSC: Warner; R2 DVD: Momentum.

Hamlet (1996) – VHS NTSC: Warner; VHS Pal: Columbia TriStar.

Hamlet (2000) – R1 DVD and VHS NTSC: Walt Disney Video; R2 DVD: Cinema Club.

Hamlet Goes Business (1987) – R2 DVD: Sandrew Metronome.

Henry V (1944) – R1 DVD: Criterion Collection; VHS NTSC: Hallmark Home Entertainment; R2 DVD and VHS Pal: ITV DVD.

Henry V (1989) – R1 DVD and VHS NTSC: MGM; R2 DVD: Universal; VHS Pal: 4 Front Video.

Johnny Hamlet – R2 DVD: Koch Media.

Julius Caesar (1950) – R1 DVD: VCI Entertainment.

Julius Caesar (1953) – R1 DVD and VHS NTSC: Warner; R2 DVD and VHS Pal: MGM.

Julius Caesar (1970) – R1 DVD: Paramount Home Video; VHS Pal: 4 Front Video.

King Lear (1970) – R1 DVD: Facets Video; VHS Pal: Tartan [OP].

King Lear (1970) – VHS NTSC: Warner; R2 DVD: 4 Front Video; VHS Pal: Cinema Club.

King of Texas – R1 DVD and VHS NTSC: Turner Home Entertainment.

King Rikki [sold as The S...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Antony and Cleopatra (play synopsis)
• Antony and Cleopatra, Charlton Heston, 1972
• As You Like It (play synopsis)
• As You Like It, Paul Czinner, 1936
• As You Like It, Christine Edzard, 1992
• As You Like It, Kenneth Branagh, 2006
• The Comedy of Errors (play synopsis)
• The Boys from Syracuse, A. Edward Sutherland, 1940
• Hamlet (play synopsis)
• Hamlet: The Drama of Vengeance, Sven Gade, Heinz Schall, 1920
• Strange Illusion, Edgar G. Ulmer, 1945
• Hamlet, Laurence Olivier, 1948
• The Bad Sleep Well, Akira Kurosawa, 1960
• Ophélia, Claude Chabrol, 1963
• Hamlet, Grigori Kozintsev, 1964
• Johnny Hamlet, Enzo G. Castellari, 1968
• Hamlet, Celestino Coronado, 1976
• Hamlet Goes Business, Aki Kaurismäki, 1987
• Hamlet, Franco Zeffirelli, 1990
• Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, Tom Stoppard, 1990
• Hamlet, Kenneth Branagh, 1996
• Hamlet, Michael Almereyda, 2000
• The Banquet, Feng Xiaogang, 2006
• Henry IV (play synopsis)
• Chimes at Midnight, Orson Welles, 1966
• My Own Private Idaho, Gus van Sant, 1991
• Henry V (play synopsis)
• Henry V, Laurence Olivier, 1944
• Henry V, Kenneth Branagh, 1989
• Julius Caesar (play synopsis)
• Julius Caesar, David Bradley, 1950
• Julius Caesar, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1953
• Julius Caesar, Stuart Burge, 1970
• King Lear (play synopsis)
• King Lear, Grigori Kozintsev, 1970
• King Lear, Peter Brook, 1971
• Ran, Akira Kurosawa, 1985
• A Thousand Acres, Jocelyn Moorhouse, 1997
• My Kingdom, Don Boyd, 2001
• King of Texas, Uli Edel, 2002
• Love’s Labour’s Lost (play synopsis)
• Love’s Labour’s Lost, Kenneth Branagh, 2000
• Macbeth (play synopsis)
• Macbeth, Orson Welles, 1948
• Joe Macbeth, Ken Hughes, 1955
• Throne of Blood, Akira Kurosawa, 1957
• Macbeth, Roman Polanski, 1971
• Men of Respect, William Reilly, 1991
• Macbeth, Jeremy Freeston, 1997
• Makibefo, Alexander Abela, 2000
• Bleeder, Leonardo Henriquez, 2000
• Scotland, PA, Billy Morrissette, 2001
• Maqbool, Vishal Bhardwaj, 2003
• Macbeth, Bo Landin, Alex Scherpf, 2004
• Macbeth, Geoffrey Wright, 2006
• The Merchant of Venice (play synopsis)
• The Merchant of Venice, Peter Paul Felner, 1923
• The Maori Merchant of Venice, Don C. Selwyn, 2002
• William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, Michael Radford, 2004
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream (play synopsis)
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Max Reinhardt, Wilhelm Dieterle, 1935
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Peter Hall, 1969
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Adrian Noble, 1996
• William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Michael Hoffman, 1999
• The Children’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Christine Edzard, 2001
• Midsummer Dream, Ángel de la Cruz, Manolo Gómez, 2005
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Ed Fraiman, 2005
• Much Ado About Nothing (play synopsis)
• Much Ado About Nothing, Kenneth Branagh, 1993
• Much Ado About Nothing, Brian Percival, 2005
• Othello (play synopsis)
• Othello, Dimitri Buchowetzki, 1922
• A Double Life, George Cukor, 1947
• Othello, Orson Welles, 1952
• Othello, Sergei Yutkevich, 1955
• All Night Long, Basil Dearden, 1961
• Othello, Stuart Burge, 1965
• Otello, Franco Zeffirelli, 1986
• Othello, Oliver Parker, 1995
• O, Tim Blake Nelson, 2000
• Othello, Geoffrey Sax, 2000
• Souli, Alexander Abela, 2004
• Omkara, Vishal Bhardwaj, 2006
• RICHARD III (play synopsis)
• The Life and Death of King Richard III, James Keane, 1912
• Richard III, Laurence Olivier, 1955
• Richard III, Richard Loncraine, 1995
• Looking for Richard, Al Pacino, 1996
• King Rikki (aka The Street King), James Gavin Bedford, 2002
• Romeo and Juliet (play synopsis)
• Romeo and Juliet, George Cukor, 1936
• The Lovers of Verona, André Cayatte, 1949
• Romeo and Juliet, Renato Castellani, 1954
• West Side Story, Robert Wise, Jerome Robbins, 1961
• Romeo and Juliet, Franco Zeffirelli, 1968
• Tromeo and Juliet, Lloyd Kaufman, 1996
• William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, Baz Luhrmann, 1996
• Shakespeare in Love, John Madden, 1998
• Chicken Rice War, Cheah Chee-kong, 2000
• The Taming of the Shrew (play synopsis)
• Once Upon a Time, Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1922
• The Taming of the Shrew, Sam Taylor, 1929
• Kiss Me Kate, George Sidney, 1953
• The Taming of the Shrew, Franco Zeffirelli, 1967
• 10 Things I Hate About You, Gil Junger, 1999
• The Taming of the Shrew, David Richards, 2005
• The Tempest (play synopsis)
• The Tempest, Percy Stow, 1908
• Forbidden Planet, Fred McLeod Wilcox, 1956
• The Tempest, Derek Jarman, 1979
• Tempest, Paul Mazursky, 1982
• Prospero’s Books, Peter Greenaway, 1991
• The Tempest, Jack Bender, 1998
• Titus Andronicus (play synopsis)
• Titus, Julie Taymor, 1999
• Twelfth Night (play synopsis)
• Twelfth Night, Yakov Fried, 1955
• Twelfth Night, Trevor Nunn, 1996
• Twelfth Night, Tim Supple, 2003
• She’s the Man, Andy Fickman, 2006
• Appendix 1: Shakespeare – The Animated Tales
• Appendix 2: Video and DVD Guide
• Appendix 3: Further Reading
• Index
• List of Illustrations
• eCopyright