Thomas Crowl’s Shakespeare and Film’s second chapter, “Close up: Major Directors I” features three directors. These three directors are most responsible for the atmosphere of the Anglo-American Shakespeare film. Laurence Oliver (1907-1989,) Orson Welles (1915-1985,) and Kenneth Branagh (b. 1960) each fashioned different methodologies to transfer the text from Shakespeare’s plays to innovative and thought-provoking films.
Crowl writes this chapter to inform readers with an unbiased and fair review of directors who have successfully and profoundly constructed reproductions of Shakespeare’s plays. All three directors are considered artistic geniuses, because, as Crowl describes, each brings a new component on how to interpret Shakespeare’s work,
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and more importantly, how to incorporate creative and novelty film techniques to bring more relevancy to Shakespeare in the modern world. Crowl has made available excellent descriptions of the best of the best when learning about Shakespeare in film. There is no other article that better explains the relationship between highly acclaimed directors and their works and how it has shaped America’s love for Shakespeare. Englishman Laurence Olivier is known for his highly stylized, heroic, and powerful approach to Shakespeare.
Olivier reigned in on his nation’s need for self expression during wartime and Shakespeare fit the bill perfectly. Olivier’s sagacity led him to rewriting and directing Henry V that fused his nation’s need for self expression during wartime and Shakespeare. It did not take much work to trim and style Henry V to relate it to England during World War II. He used this piece to rally and at the same time awareness to the great works of Shakespeare. Olivier also directed Hamlet and Richard III and acted in several Shakespeare films. His Hamlet was filmed in black and white and offered a dark and psychological approach in contrast to the cheerful and patriotic Henry V. Olivier decided to do the opposite of typical films by pulling away from characters as speeches developed, instead of zooming in. This technique offered fresh and visually appealing films and gained much laudatory remarks. Olivier was known for his “physical and vocal power as an actor.” His standing and accomplishments as an actor and director brought “Shakespeare to a wider audience,” and “contributed to making the Shakespeare film a vital …show more content…
genre.” Olivier ‘s mission to make Shakespeare film a category was helped by one of the most famous American filmmakers, Orson Welles. “Welles did much to create an American tradition of performing Shakespeare.” Welles started by producing an all-black Macbeth in Harlem during the 1930’s, and a fascist version of Julius Caesar. His cultural reach and yearning to film taboo subjects reached far beyond his location in New York. Welles came back to Macbeth and made a film out of only 23 days of production. He created a “radically new cinematic landscape” that matched the internal thoughts of the characters on screen. He brings this idea to a better thought-out Othello, which won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1952. He used black and white as a visual device for the racial issues in the play. Welles filmed Iago and Othello in and out of the sunlight and shadow, until welding the two together, mirroring Shakespeare’s text in the play. Welles plays with darkness and light, landscapes, and thought provoking devices. Welles also wrote a screenplay called Chimes as Midnight based on Falstaff’s point of view. All of his films are known for being passionate, unpredictable and rough around the edges. Kenneth Branagh created films using the best of both of these men to craft filmic romanticism and sustained momentum.
Branagh did things much like Shakespeare when it came to borrowing from past work. He took the best ideas from other films, and combined them into his Shakespeare films. One aspect that Branagh brings from film to film is comedy. Branagh is known for taking fresh actors and mixing them with strong and well known British actors. What the chapter failed to mention was that both Olivier and Welles portrayed men of color by using blackface for all of the Shakespeare re-productions. Branagh was the only one to leave the roles to talented African American actors. Branagh’s Shakespeare films are known for their controversial casting, but he is just trying to make films with “different accents, different looks . . .” and a modern Anglo-American looking cast. Branagh also attempted to link his Shakespeare films to popular Hollywood models like screwball comedy, intellectual epic, war film, and musical comedy. All of these attempts to modernize Shakespeare brought his work to an even wider viewing
audience. Olivier, Welles, and Branagh all contributed to how Americans view Shakespeare in film. Their innovations brought much interest to Shakespeare, and introduced many people to his work. The creation of a Shakespeare film is important, because it does not only create a visually perfect performance, but is available to anyone at any time, unlike a live play. Through film, each director has enlarged Shakespeare’s audience and has acquainted those unfamiliar with his work. Crowl has written an exceptional book that is both dynamic and insightful. He discusses each feature of the directors fully, and never makes a statement without backing up his thoughts in multiple ways. This is just a brief synopsis of the directors’ work, but to read and understand more, check out Thomas Crowl’s Shakespeare and Film. You won’t be disappointed!
Filmmaking and cinematography are art forms completely open to interpretation in a myriad ways: frame composition, lighting, casting, camera angles, shot length, etc. The truly talented filmmaker employs every tool available to make a film communicate to the viewer on different levels, including social and emotional. When a filmmaker chooses to undertake an adaptation of a literary classic, the choices become somewhat more limited. In order to be true to the integrity of the piece of literature, the artistic team making the adaptation must be careful to communicate what is believed was intended by the writer. When the literature being adapted is a play originally intended for the stage, the task is perhaps simplified. Playwrights, unlike novelists, include some stage direction and other instructions regarding the visual aspect of the story. In this sense, the filmmaker has a strong basis for adapting a play to the big screen.
Kenneth Branagh creates his own individualistic adaptation of this classic through the use of visual imagery, characterization, and setting. Branagh cut many lines and speeches from the text to better support his interpretation of a more open and informal society of warm-hearted, affectionate characters. Though Shakespeare's mood is more formal, Branagh remains true to the essence of the play as all of the same characters and most of the dialogue are justly included in the film. Although distinct differences can be made between Branagh’s film and Shakespeare’s written work, they both share a common denominator of good old-fashioned entertainment; and in the world of theater, nothing else really matters.
Shakespeare's comedy Much Ado About Nothing is a witty play that is interpreted in many different ways for many different audiences. Branaugh's movie rendition, compared to the Shenandoah Shakespeare Company's play, have many separately emphasized points. If we look at elements such as use of space, costuming, and love relationships we find that Kenneth Branaugh emphasizes the separation of the military from the domestic which eventually heads down to the separation of men and women, while in the stage production, the director emphasizes the relationship and friendship between Claudio, Benedict, and Don Pedro.
Vickers, Brian. Appropriating Shakespeare: Contemporary Critical Quarrels. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. 1993.
Vickers, Brian. 1993. Appropriating Shakespeare: Contemporary Critical Quarrels. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Vickers, Brian. 1993. Appropriating Shakespeare: Contemporary Critical Quarrels. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
William Shakespeare, poet and playwright, utilized humor and irony as he developed specific language for his plays, thereby influencing literature forever. “Shakespeare became popular in the eighteenth century” (Epstein 8). He was the best all around. “Shakespeare was a classic” (8). William Shakespeare is a very known and popular man that has many works, techniques and ways. Shakespeare is the writer of many famous works of literature. His comedies include humor while his plays and poems include irony. Shakespeare sets himself apart by using his own language and word choice. Shakespeare uses certain types of allusions that people always remember, as in the phrase from Romeo and Juliet, “star-crossed lovers”.
William Shakespeare was a very famous English poet, playwright, and actor. One of the famous plays that he wrote was “Hamlet”. Hamlet is a very famous play and many play writers or directors interpret Shakespeare’s play differently. A Great scene to compares is Act5 scene 2. The two films that will be compared are “Hamlet” from 1996 directed by Kenneth Branagh and “Hamlet” from 2009 directed by Gregory Doran. The two different directors took the same play and made it reflect their own interpretation. The films are very different, but similar in many ways. “Hamlet” from 1996 directed by Kenneth Branagh and “Hamlet” from 2009 directed by Gregory Doran both use the theme guilt. The theme of guilt will be explain through the comparison of how Gertrude
Being a director in a production such as Romeo and Juliet is no easy task, and I enter into this paper with that in mind. My goals are to be creative, and do things differently from the many versions of the play we have viewed in class. Each of those directors took the original text, written by William Shakespeare, and turned it into a unique version of their own; unique in the sense that they changed the tragedy by taking out lines, conversation or even entire scenes to better suit that particular director’s needs.
Vickers, Brian. Appropriating Shakespeare: Contemporary Critical Quarrels. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. 1993.
Shakespeare’s influence continues even in the world of film, not invented until several hundreds of years after his death in 1616. As well as the inevitable BBC remakes of most of his plays, newer adaptation such as Kenneth Branagh’s ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ (starring Keanu Reeves and Denzel Washington) and Baz Luhrmann’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ (featuring Claire Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio) have met critical acclaim and can be credited with bringing Shakespeare to a new generation not inclined to visiting theatres.
The movie of Hamlet was an excellent, as far as book-movies go. I believe it was produced with focus, reason, and logic. The characters were also portrayed with a good interpretation. There were several changes to the play compared to the book, although the movie was done in such a way that they were not particularly missed, from the movie's point of view.
By using just the right combination of words, or by coming up with just the right image, Shakespeare wrote many passages and entire plays that were so powerful, moving, tragic, comedic, and romantic that many are still being memorized and performed today, almost four centuries later. But the greatness of Shakespeare’s ability lies not so much in the basic themes of his works but in the creativity he used to write these stories of love, power, greed, discrimination, hatred, and tragedy.
Critique of the Film Shakespeare in Love Shakespeare in Love is a fictional movie about the great writer and poet, William Shakespeare. The story is of a young William Shakespeare barely making ends meet and trying to write a play for the local theatre. However, Shakespeare is suffering from writer's block, and is seeking inspiration by having a muse. A muse is a power, in this case a female, used to inspire a poet. Of course, a love story proceeds.
The name most associated with excellence in theatre is William Shakespeare. His plays, more than any other playwright, resonate through the ages. It may be safe to say that he has influenced more actors, directors, and playwrights than any thespian in the history of the stage. But what were his influences? During the Middle Ages theatre was dominated by morality, miracle, and mystery plays that were often staged by the church as a means to teach the illiterate masses about Christianity. It wasn’t until the early sixteenth century that Greek tragedy experienced a revival, in turn, inspiring a generation of renaissance playwrights.