Page 45 - Shakespeare in the Movie From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love

34 I Shakespeare in the Movies

outrageous if a little time were allowed to intervene halfway through
the process," allowing for the encounter of Richard with Clarence,
under arrest. "In fact, it is even less tolerable, for now we must sup-
pose that a measurable space for reflection could not show her the
black disloyalty into which weakness was leading her." Philip T.
Hartung of Commonweal insisted that "the successful wooing of
Anne is more credible now that it takes place on two separate occa-
sions rather than in one long diatribe."
Olivier's interpretation was radical enough to cause rifts not only
between critics from competing journals but two writing for the
same publication. John McCartney of the New Yorker dismissed
Olivier for depicting Richard as a "creature impossible to sympa-
thize with in any way." For McCartney, Olivier tried and failed to
create a Richard in the Kean mold. In the same publication, Mollie
Panter Downes praised Olivier: "[He] succeeds, if not in whitewash-
ing Richard, at least in making him more fascinating than his vic-
tims." For Downes, Olivier successfully created a Richard in the
Burbage vein.
Olivier put it this way: "The real challenge (is) to make Richard a
dangerous creature, not just a hog. He was a clever and amusing man
as well as a villain. That has to show, if the whole thing's not to be
melodrama and hammy high jinks." Indeed, his Richard exists in
the Burbage mold of villain as sex symbol, Olivier's charisma oozing
through scads of hideous makeup. The wooing of Lady Anne is a
case in point; however one feels about splitting the scene in two, a
viewer does believe and accept her conversion from despising
Richard to being spellbound by him.
Olivier shaped his material under the influence of Alfred Hitch-
cock, who fifteen years earlier awarded the young actor his first
choice film role in Rebecca. For Hitch, good and evil were never
opposing extremes; they always coexisted within a single human
frame. That was Olivier's approach here, stirring up a modicum of
Aristotelian pity and fear for the Crookback when, endangered and
on foot, he shrieks: "My kingdom for a horse!" That line rings with
Shakespeare's intended irony, since the crown proved hollow when
the greatest power in England could not find a mount and continue
the battle. Richard is reduced to Everyman—a lesson in humility
learned too late.
Sir Laurence took Shakespeare's cue, making Richard bold and
more admirable than before at his moment of truth. Sir William
Catesby, a good soldier, marvels that the horseless leader "enacts