Page 43 - Shakespeare in the Movie From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love

32 I Shakespeare in the Movies

with Carol Reed as director (The Third Man; Odd Man Out). Korda
approached the esteemed Laurence Olivier (who had been knighted
in 1948, the youngest actor to achieve such an honor) and requested
that he star in a Richard III film. When Reed couldn't adjust his busy
schedule to accommodate this collaboration, Korda (aware of
Olivier's previous successes with Henry V and Hamlet) asked Olivier
to direct. A onetime veteran of England's West End theater scene,
inexpensive British films, and Hollywood superproductions for David
O. Selznick, Olivier had transformed himself into Orson Welles's
only serious competition as the world's most notable actor-director
of Shakespearean films. The commercial success of his movies
(Olivier was a highbrow matinee idol) led producers to believe that
Shakespeare might yet be a financially viable source for film pro-
jects.
The mid-fifties was the period when screen characters first suf-
fered from psychological problems. Joanne Woodward won an Oscar
for The Three Faces of Eve, while such solid stalwarts as John
Wayne (John Ford's Searchers) and James Stewart (Alfred Hitchcock's
Vertigo) played troubled antiheroes. Richard is a classic schizo-
phrenic, arrogantly insisting at Bosworth Field: "Let not our bab-
bling dreams affright our souls; Conscience is but a word cowards
use." Terrified, he counters this with "O coward conscience, how
dost thou afflict me! Is there a murderer here? No. Yes. I am: Then
fly. What, from myself?" A selfloathing, selfloving paranoid, he kills
suspected enemies, certain they are conspiring against him. Richard
was as made to order for the fifties as the genially courageous Henry
V had been during the war years.
Olivier's film stands as a striking example of "color noir," featur-
ing rich hues set against the focal character's moral bleakness for
ironic contrast. Richard's dark nature, crystallized in black garb, was
effectively set against Technicolor renderings of bright pomp and gay
ceremony. Slithering down a rope, this Richard transforms into a
black widow spider; his lackeys captured in unpleasant lighting to
make their faces appear green and yellow and disagreeably reptilian.
Ironically, many viewers initially saw Richard III in black and white.
The film was broadcast on TV nationwide, the same day it opened in
a limited theatrical release. By paying a then-enormous $500,000,
NBC and chief sponsor General Motors underwrote most produc-
tion costs. They also created a possible entry in the Guinness Book
of World Records: In a single afternoon more people saw this pro-
duction than had attended performances in the three and a half cen-