Page 161 - Shakespeare in the Movie From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love

150 I Shakespeare in the Movies

shot entirely in Italy. Chip Corman (a.k.a. Andrea Giordana) played
the title character who returns home following the Civil War to dis-
cover his father dead and his uncle now married to Johnny's mother
and running the ranch. With the help of a Horatio-like foreman
(Gilbert Roland), Johnny sets out to learn the truth and afterward
exact revenge. The idea sounds better than it plays due to an obvious
script (Shakespeare's words were not used) by Sergio Corbucci and
Enzo G. Castellari as well as uninspired direction by Castellari.
Although the movie was produced by Leone Film, it lacks the sto-
rytelling brilliance Sergio Leone brought to such classics as The
Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
Certainly, though, it is more watchable than producer Walter
Hill's Blue City (1986), an embarrassing adaptation of Ross Macdon-
ald's crime novel. Judd Nelson plays a teenage tough guy who
returns to his Florida hometown after the murder of his father and
brings down the criminal Establishment. Ally Sheedy, who costarred
with Nelson in The Breakfast Club and St. Elmo's Fire, is his non-
suicidal Ophelia; at the end, they are victorious in this botched
attempt to do a film noir for the Brat Pack generation. Far better, in
its own modest way, was Strange Brew (1983), the comic reworking
of Hamlet. This film proved to be the only screen vehicle for the
MacKenzie Brothers of Canada's SCTV, appealingly played by Rick
Moranis and Dave Thomas, who also cowrote and directed. Their
propensity for beer brings them to Elsinore Castle, where clever sit-
uations provide nice in-jokes for Shakespeare buffs.
Last if not least, Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Are Dead (1990) deserves at least passing mention. Stoppard himself
directed the film version of his own highly regarded theater-of-the-
absurd play, with Gary Oldman and Tim Roth as the fated duo. Per-
haps the least important characters in the original, they are here the
point of focus, licking their lips with anticipation as to the reward
awaiting them in England, little suspecting that seemingly oblivi-
ous Prince Hamlet (Iain Glen) has cleverly sealed their fates. Their
conversations are always clever, often dripping with existential
meaning, but there is so much talk here and so little action that it's
easy to understand why the vehicle failed as a film. It had succeeded,
however, on the off-Broadway boards, where intimate character stud-
ies are the order of the day.