Isn't Shakespeare Great?

          Recently my life has been full of Shakespeare. I have started a Shakespeare reading group with some of my New Jersey friends, I saw an excellent production of Measure for Measure at the Globe Theatre in London this week, and I am in the middle of reading King John for my own pleasure. I have ambitions to read through the entire canon before I turn thirty, and at 25 am happy to say that I have read about twenty so far. Part of the fun of reading Shakespeare is then watching film adaptations of his work – from Orson Welles and Laurence Olivier to Ingmar Bergman and Akira Kurosawa, many auteurs have used the bard as inspiration and directed their own versions of his plays. When I was last back in America, I made it a point to watch three of the most epic Shakespeare adaptations on my parents' big screen television, and feel comfortable in saying that each is in the canon of not just the greatest Shakespearean films, but some of the greatest films of all time. These were the 1996 Hamlet, Chimes at Midnight, and Ran.

               I was already a big fan of Laurence Olivier’s 1948 Hamlet adaptation, a black and white picture that puts the Dane into a backdrop reminiscent of German expressionism. I was pleasantly surprised when this version was even better. Branagh’s world, visually, could not be more different – set in the 19^th century, filmed at Blenheim Palace in beautiful 70 mm film, this is a sharply defined world of the not too distant past – much like the past I imagine Shakespeare was trying to evoke to his audience. Unlike Olivier’s abridged film, every line of the original text is used, giving the work a run time of over four hours. Perfectly paced, it is very easy to sit through in one viewing without checking the time. This was Branagh’s third, and biggest, Shakespeare film, and in order to get funding the studio demanded an all star cast, which includes Kate Winslet, Derek Jacobi, Robin Williams, Charleton Heston, Jack Lemmon, Billy Crystal, Timothy Spall, Brian Blessed, John Gielgud, Judy Dench, Gerard Depardieu, and Richard Attenborough. From the biggest role to the smallest, they all deliver.

                      

          Unlike Hamlet, which is a direct adaptation of the play it’s based on, Chimes at Midnight (1965) takes bits from Richard II, Henry IV Part I and II, Henry V, and The Merry Wives of Windsor to fashion a story around Falstaff, recasting his story as a tragedy in friendship. The drunken buffoonish Falstaff is betrayed by Hal, whom he could never really connect with, as Hal was heir to the English throne. In the first act, in what is usually delivered as a monologue, Hal playfully tells Falstaff that he is merely acting base so that when he becomes King h is ascendency “shall show more goodly”. When he does become Henry V, he affects to not recognise Falstaff, and banishes him from his royal sight. Orson Welles directed and starred as Falstaff in this film, one that he financed by pretending that he was filming an adaptation of Treasure Island. A lot of the production has a ramshackle feel to it – stand-ins often replaced actors and the sound quality is often muddy, but the film is strong enough to outweigh these weaknesses. Along with Citizen Kane, this is Welles’ greatest work, but sadly it remains mostly unknown. The entirety is available on YouTube and I highly recommend it to anyone who has read these plays.

             Ran, unlike the other two films, doesn’t use Shakespeare’s language; rather it is a Japanese language film directed by Akira Kurosawa and based on Shakespeare’s King Lear. Many details are changed – Lear (or Hidetora, as he is renamed) has sons, not daughters, and, unlike in Shakespeare’s play, we see the family's history in Ran and better understand their actions. The two sycophant sons betray their father not out of infidelity to a filial duty, but rather because they recognise their father as a bloodlustful warlord who committed atrocities to acquire his kingdom. These brothers both fall under the spell of the beautiful Lady Kaede, whose family was brutally murdered by Hidetora and wants nothing but vengeance. Like Welles, Kurosawa had much difficulty in getting his later work produced, and spent ten years working on this film, which was eventually financed by foreign contributors as Kurosawa had fallen so out of favour in Japan. At the age of 75, Kurosawa personally identified with Lear, once stating “Hidetora is me.” Unlike Hidetora, however, Kurosawa walked away from Ran triumphant, as his last epic film became his biggest success in twenty years.

            There are several other great film adaptations of Shakespeare’s work out there – two nineties versions of Richard III starring Al Pacino and Ian McKellen, Anthony Hopkins in Titus, Ralph Fiennes’ Coriolanus, Shakespeare in Love, Orson Welles’ Macbeth and Othello, and both Olivier and Branagh’s versions of Henry V are amongst my favourites. Almost four hundred years after his death, Shakespeare has never been more popular, with his work studied and performed on all continents. These are just some of my favourite film adaptations, and I look forward to discovering more.