Page 151 - Shakespeare in the Movie From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love

140 / Shakespeare in the Movies

ever, since the story is drawn from a tale that hearkens back to
medieval times and Zeffirelli early on decided the film's atmosphere
ought to evoke the Dark Ages, it was consistent with his approach
that rapiers be abandoned for heavy-duty broadswords. This dimin-
ished the sensation, so strong in Olivier's version, that the duel
begins as a courtly performance, then gradually degenerates into an
out-of-control bloodbath; in Zeffirelli's film there's an unromanti-
cized banging about that's as unique a reversal of the cliche as was
his interpretation of the Mercutio-Tybalt fight in Romeo and Juliet.
With a Zeffirelli adaptation, we are never watching canned the-
ater, but a work that is truly cinematic from beginning to end. We
see Shakespeare's play entirely reimagined for the camera. Yet
Olivier's film, for all its considerable cuts and questionable inter-
pretation, came closer to communicating the full scope of the origi-
nal. As David Denby noted in New York magazine: "The physical
action has been expanded, but the play's amazing reach is gone—its
sense of man as godlike but corruptible, a paragon who decays—the
range that makes it the universal drama of Western literature." The
paradox is that while carefully constructing a movie that beautifully
plays to a modern audience, Zeffirelli allowed something of Shake-
speare's eternal wisdom to slip away.

A Winter's Tale
Hamlet
U.S/British, 1996; Kenneth Branagh

Branagh's announced intention to film the entire play (the popular
first folio, plus a scene and several lines from the less authoritative
second folio) for the first time caused even Bard buffs to wonder if,
like one of Shakespeare's tragic heroes, Branagh suffered from over-
whelming ambition. However, his film belied such concern. "All
other movie versions," Richard Corliss marveled in Time, "seem
like samplings." Despite the 242-minute running time (the second-
longest English-language film ever, about a minute less than Cleopa-
tra], Hamlet was squarely aimed at the mass audience, with clarity,
not complexity, the goal. It was shot on 65-millimeter film stock
for projection in 70 millimeter and was intended for malls, not the
art houses.