Page 44 - Shakespeare in the Movie From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love

The Winter of Our Discontent / 33

turies since Richard III was written. At that moment, the phrase
"global village" became a reality.
Although Richard III featured 165 scenes involving thirty featured
players, forty actors in smaller roles, and hundreds of extras for
crowd scenes, it had been produced in a brief seventeen weeks,
including two weeks' rehearsal time in London followed by a month
of exterior shooting in Spain. In contrast, Hamlet had taken six
months, while Henry V (due to wartime conditions) consumed a
year. Olivier spent three weeks filming the final battle of Bosworth
Field on a plain outside Madrid, insisting (like a good action hero) on
performing the riding stunts himself. Olivier's desire to find a work-
able balance between Shakespeare's word-heavy text and the visual
terrain of cinema was clear from the opening, a lavish depiction of
Edward IV's coronation. The moment with which Shakespeare began
the play—Richard, alone in darkness, whining about this being "the
winter of our discontent"—was postponed for ten minutes. Olivier
was not interested in photographing himself performing the play,
rather to fully convert drama to cinema.
Which explains the many liberties taken with the original. Years
later, Olivier explained: "It's a difficult play to film—involved,
obscure. I felt it necessary to do more simplification than before.
Though every commentator and critic through the centuries has
attacked the structure, I now expect to be accused of vandalism."
To speed up the action (although the director's cut does run 155 min-
utes, release prints were trimmed to 139), the significant role of
Queen Margaret, as strong, if unpleasant, a woman as Lady Mac-
beth, was shorn to a virtual cameo. The mutual lamentation of the
three Queens was omitted (a scene many purists consider key), along
with Henry Tudor's rousingly nationalistic final speech, which
resulted in a notably darker ending than Shakespeare intended.
There were notable additions. Edward IV's mistress, Jane Shore
(Pamela Brown), silently glided through the film while observing all,
rather than merely being alluded to, as in the play. The murder of the
little princes, mentioned in Shakespeare, is graphically visualized. By
far, the most controversial change occurred during the surprisingly
successful wooing of Lady Anne (Claire Bloom), widow of Edward V,
over the coffin of her recently dispatched husband; in the play, it had
been the coffin of Henry VI. Olivier broke the single sequence into
two separate scenes rather than Shakespeare's extended one.
This decision split the critics. Robert Hatch of the Nation com-
plained: "Perhaps (Olivier) thought the seduction would appear less