Shakespeare on Film was the latest episode in BBC4's award winning arts series. Apparently the film that started it all was Laurence Olivier's Henry V. The actor took over directing when William Wyler and Carol Reed ruled themselves out. Released in 1944 it was a rallying cry and a morale booster for the country suffering the deprivations of the second world war. It's patriotic tone was what was needed. I always loved the introduction in a replica of the Globe Theatre that cuts to the fields of Flanders. We were then given a preview of some iconic movies, from an epic Russian Hamlet from 1964 and Olivier's adaptation of the same play that won the Oscar for best picture. And Orson Welles' Othello.
Penelope Wilton made a brilliant job of narration. We were told about the days of silent movies when there must have been over four hundred based on Shakespeare plays. One surviving piece of film is actually a short advertisement for a stage production of King John starring the famous Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree. The first Shakespeare film with sound was the 1929 Hollywood production The Taming of the Shrew starring Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Other versions of this battle of the sexes included Ten Things I Hate About You that I always thought was very clever.
There were, however, some notable failures including Roma Polanski's 1971 Macbeth. But Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 Romeo and Juliet was popular and won awards. King Lear became an international favourite. We were shown a Russian film, then Akira Kurosawa's 1957 Throne of Blood and Ran. Next came Peter Brook's King Lear. This was his 1971 film based on the stage production from 1962 that I was lucky to see in London at nearly 18, it being on the syllabus for A Level English. Paul Scofield was in both.
Chimes at Midnight is an Orson Welles adaptation of five Shakespeare plays where Falstaff appears. It contains one of the greatest battle scenes in the mud. This was followed by some strange foreign interpretations of plays. Fortunately the final section included some of the best recent movies. Of course Baz Luhrmann's wonderful Romeo + Juliet was included among some modern versions of The Tempest. There was the one in 2010 that starred Helen Mirren as Prospera and Felicity Jones as Miranda with a supporting all star cast. But I was disappointed that the ending featured Star Trek - The Undiscovered Country. This was never a reference to Hamlet, only that it sounded nice, like quotes from other Shakespeare plays that littered the movie. They could at least have included the speech about the afterlife, The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns. Hamlet's monologue is one of Shakespeare's best.
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