The Shakespeare Film Series: Whole Lotta Laurence Part III: Richard III

Richard III (1955)

I have been struggling to come up with something intelligent to say about this film. I even had to watch it again to see if I was missing something. It is generally well-liked and judging by the Criterion Collection scale of excellence I mentioned last time, even viewed by some as the best of the three. I frankly don’t see it. It is a mediocre adaptation propped up by a great performance. Unlike the other two films, everything good and bad about Richard begins and ends with Olivier. Though he has perhaps the most star-studded supporting cast of any of his films (John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, Claire Bloom), Olivier dominates the film and, for the most part, wastes this talented cast. His did much more with his less well-known casts in the other two films.

The good and the bad of the film can be summed up in the division between Olivier the actor and Olivier the director. As an actor, this is Olivier’s filmic tour-de-force. Freed of the cultural baggage of Hamlet and Henry, he cuts loose here with a classic interpretation of Richard the charming sociopath.

However, the film falls flat because Olivier the director takes a back seat to the actor. Both of his previous films stood out from other Shakespeare adaptations of their time for their visual daring, from the beautifully oversaturated Henry V to the stark black-and-white of Hamlet. The first two films are held together by the tension between Olivier’s theatrical acting style and the self-consciously filmic aspects of his direction. Some of the most memorable moments in those films are not his soliloquies, but wordless shots such the survey of the British camp after the French attack or the long, ominous tracking shot of Ophelia entering the castle before her “flowers” speech. In Richard, he falls into the classic trap of simply capturing a great performance instead of making a great film.

Well, I guess that wraps up the Olivier series. Welles is up next, but that may be awhile, since finding good copies of all three of his Shakespeare films apparently requires the services of Robert Langdon. I will be back next week with some other non-literature stuff, including a new country song of the week and some thoughts on The Office and the NBA.

The Shakespeare Film Series: Whole Lotta Laurence Part II: Hamlet

Hamlet (1948)

I have become convinced that making a film version of Hamlet is less an artistic project than a form of theatrical sadomasochism that certain actors and directors inexplicably feel compelled to put themselves through. Having now seen this version, I have seen all four of the most notable versions (the others being Branagh’s, Zeffirelli’s and Almereyda’s). More than any other Shakespeare play, the directors and lead actors seem to never overcome their sense of intimidation in the face of the text. I believe that is why I have always liked Almereyda’s version, as he and his lead actor Ethan Hawke fall victim to this less than the others.

There’s a lot more to say in comparison of these four versions, but we will save that for another day. Today its about Olivier. This stark black-and-white version could not be more different in tone and style than Henry V and Richard III and is often treated as the Jan Brady (forgotten middle child) of the Olivier-Shakespeare trilogy. Even the Criterion Collection, which released the DVDs of all three films, gives Hamlet the short shrift. Henry V gets a commentary track and the illuminating illustrations from the “Book of Hours” that I mentioned in my earlier post. Richard III gets the full-on 2-disc special edition treatment. The Hamlet disc doesn’t even include the trailer. (Digression: Will the way films are presented on DVD affect our formulation of the film canon? It seems like it is already happening to some degree. We’ll take this up another day as well.) This reputation is somewhat justified as it doesn’t measure up to the other films either as Shakespearean adaptations or films unto themselves.

However, the film does raise several questions about the play and methods of adaptation that are worth exploring. The first I want to talk about is Olivier’s famous voice-over prologue in which he declares it “A story about a man who could not make up his mind”. Shakespearean scholars groan at this ridiculous oversimplification of perhaps the most complex drama in the Western canon, but is this really such a bad thing? Scholars and theatrical people (actors, filmmakers and theatrical directors) are not doing the same job, only working on the same material. Though many think of Olivier as some type of Shakespearean scholar, he is not, he is an actor. In the lecture by Marjorie Garber that I mentioned last time, she argued that the disciplines involved in the production of art (theatre, painting, sculpture, etc) should not be in the humanities at all. They have more in common with engineers and other experimental sciences than they do with scholars of literature or art history. When filmmakers or theatrical directors get too scholarly, they lose the life of the work and you end up with something like Branagh’s Hamlet, which everyone more or less admires but rarely watches. Olivier has the guts to make a specific interpretation of Hamlet, even if that interpretation is not entirely successful.

The reason for this failure is what I mentioned in the opening paragraph. Olivier can never overcome his intimidation in the face of the text to fully go with a quirky interpretation. He was definitely weighed down withe burden of being "Laurence Olivier: Greatest Shakespearean Actor of Generation; Heir to Garrick and Kean" to go all the way. He would be much freer in Richard III, a play with much less cultural baggage than Hamlet.

The other issue is one that I have always been fascinated by: actors’ age-appropriateness. Olivier was 40 when he played Hamlet opposite a 27-year-old Gertrude (Eileen Herlie) and an 18-year-old Ophelia (Jean Simmons, who spends the movie looking like she hopped off a Swiss Miss package). The years 1944 to 1948 were apparently rough on Olivier, as he looks at least a decade older than he did as Henry V, and believing that he just returned from college really stretches the old suspension of disbelief. What is better, a great reading by an actor of inappropriate age, or a less-technically precise performance from an actor who actually looks like their character (a la Ethan Hawke in Almereyda’s film)? It is of course an endless debate, but where you fall says a lot about the lens through which you view Shakespeare.

The Shakespeare Films Series: Whole Lotta Laurence Part I: Henry V

So, here it is finally: the first in our series on Shakespeare’s films. For those of you just joining us, I have recently been compelled to undertake a serious study of Shakespeare’s films after reading Michael Anderegg’s Cinematic Shakespeare. I am starting with mini-marathons of the three great Shakespearean actor-directors: Olivier, Welles and Branagh. These posts are not serious scholarly work in any sense of the word, or even necessarily very good movie reviews. Instead, they are simply a forum for recording my impressions as I view the films and encouraging feedback.

Today, we are talking Olivier. The three Shakespeare films Olivier directed and starred in remain a gold standard for what a “faithful” and “traditional” Shakespearean adaptation should look like. Since it is taking longer to write these than I planned and because I don’t want to make an ungodly long post, I am splitting my Olivier evaluation up by film, with a final post to come comparing the three.

Henry V (1944)

Famously financed by the British government to boost morale during WWII, this film remains the most celebrated of Olivier’s adaptations, and rightfully so. It is a truly breathtaking film on many levels. First and foremost is the fact that Olivier the actor, despite giving a tremendous performance, does not dominate the film. Rather, it is primarily an achievement for Olivier the director, one he would never again come close to matching.

Much has been made of the film’s unusual structure and reading about it in Anderegg’s book and other places, I did not know how he could possibly pull it off and still make anything resembling a realistic film, but he does. The film starts out as a performance at the Globe, with a rowdy audience in full view and slapstick backstage antics. Olivier then answers the Prologue’s plea for a “muse of fire” as each succeeding act moves us farther from the world of the theatre to the world of film. First, the audience disappears and then, eventually, Henry and his men are outside, on the shores of France. It is hard to capture in words how effective this potentially corny device is, but it is rather astounding.

The second great accomplishment by Olivier the director is the production design. The Criterion DVD has some great reproductions from a medieval “Book of Hours” that illustrates where Olivier drew his inspiration from. The oversaturated colors show the glories of “merry old England” without dropping off the precipice into kitsch.

As for the main attraction, Olivier gives the most energetic and compelling performance of any of his Shakespeare films. Even his scenery-chewing turn in Richard III does not command your attention the way young Henry does. Anyone who grew up with the grumpy old man Olivier of Boys from Brazil and Clash of Titans will be shocked at his striking good looks and sexual magnetism in this role (and this is coming from a straight man). He of course nails the big spots (the St. Crispin’s Day speech, the wooing of Katherine) but it is the smaller moments, such his nervous cough before going on stage for the first time and the campfire scene, that make this by far his most affecting Shakespearean film performance. This propagandistic version obviously gives us a cleaned-up Henry (no threats to rape and pillage, no hanging of former tavern mates), but Olivier still manages to give him a human frailty to keep him from becoming a caricature.

Negatives? Just one major one that’s not entirely Olivier’s fault. The low comic characters – Bardolph, Pistol and Nym – are more insufferable in Henry V than in pretty much any other Shakespeare play. Olivier is often criticized for his willingness to cut the plays to make the lead characters more prominent (we will get into this more with Hamlet) so why he felt the need to not cut more of the comic scenes, I do not know.

All in all, Henry V is far and away Olivier’s best Shakespeare film and possibly the best example of a “traditional” Shakespearean adaptation. It has set a high standard for the rest of the films.