Page 47 - Shakespeare in the Movie From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love

36 I Shakespeare in the Movies

short Saturday Night Live skit. Loncraine's movie was adapted from
a controversial staging of Richard III (a Royal Shakespeare production
for the National Theatre, directed by Richard Eyre). The production
first made waves in London, then enjoyed success on Broadway.
Despite its stage origins, though, the film is nothing if not cine-
matic.
Richard's opening lines do not appear for ten minutes. We first
witness a pitched battle in which Richard shoots rivals in their head-
quarters. As a big band accompanies the victory celebration, McKellen
throws away the famous soliloquy. Initially speaking a public address
to surrounding celebrants, he continues in a nearby lavatory, relieving
himself while, over his shoulder, confiding his true motives. Through-
out, sparse remnants of Shakespeare's dialogue are delivered via brief
scenes (none lasts thirty seconds) in intriguing settings, such as the
film's stand-in for the Tower of London, which is the abandoned Bank-
side electrical generating station on the Thames. This dank, dim,
dreary machine-age monolith symbolizes modern power.
If one ignores Shakespeare, this Richard III offers much in the way
of first-tier moviemaking. Loncraine effectively creates a mise en
scene allowing inanimate objects to contrast people and politics via
perfect camera placement. As Richard verbally manipulates fellow
nobility at dinner, the sequence is shot from below immense peeled
shrimps, conveying that Gloucester is about to devour victims as
they obliviously gobble down seafood. Loncraine's editing is bor-
rowed from the master himself, Hitchcock. A victim's shrill scream
in close-up cuts to a train (its whistle repeating the sound) entering
a tunnel, allowing for brief but effective transitions of time, place,
and theme. Individual shots convey symbolic as well as specific
information, such as when we sense that Lady Anne is dead, since
she does not react when a spider crawls across her face. Richard has
already been established as a symbolic spider; we know, then, with-
out seeing the murder, that he has killed her.
Ultimately, any Richard III rises or falls with the lead perfor-
mance. As Godfrey Cheshire noted in Variety, "McKellen's Richard
is less Machiavellian monster, more the craftiest of organization
men, bent on pushing his power as far as the system will allow,
chillingly amused at the various ruses that permit him to murder
his way to the top." That clearly defines McKellen's approach.
Whereas Olivier opted for Burbage's seductive monster, McKellen's
grotesque makeup is more in line with Kean, a horrifying figure of
disgust. If McKellen had taken this idea and run with it, he might