Page 48 - Shakespeare in the Movie From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love

The Winter of Our Discontent / 37

well have come up with the perfect alternative to Olivier's. Sadly,
that was not the case.
"I want to look a little like Clark Gable and a little like Vincent
Price," McKellen announced. The statement, however innocuous,
reveals why this accomplished actor, who does have many fine
moments, ultimately disappoints. Gable is Burbage, the sexy villain;
Price is Kean, the king as horror-movie heavy. Melding the two does
not provide a new interpretation, only admission of failure to take a
stand.
McKellen is quite devoid of the sex appeal Oliver projected, which
explains why the important early scene, in which Gloucester woos
and wins widowed Lady Anne (Kristin Scott Thomas), doesn't come
across. To be fair to McKellen the actor, the problem also derives
from adapter McKellen's cutting. Olivier abridged the text by paring
away redundant passages; McKellen strips it bare. Without animal
magnetism, there must be enough words to convey her conversion,
missing is the connecting material that might have allowed this dif-
ficult moment to come across.
The film proceeds at a machine-gun pace; perhaps an American
1930s gangster milieu might have proved more appropriate. There's
absolutely no tragic or epic weight, Richard himself more a malevo-
lent, merry prankster than truly dangerous authority figure. The film
plays like a classy period soap opera that transforms, before our eyes,
into something of a different order. Initially, the humor is Shake-
spearean, slyly puncturing any possibility for pretentiousness. Then
it changes to high-camp histrionics, going over the top in the
manner of 1960s pop-kitsch culture. Richard is not killed by Henry
Tudor or one of Henry's men; instead, he leaps down into a burning
building. As the camera travels with him (to the tune of Al Jolson
singing "I'm Sittin' on Top of the World"), he looks suspiciously like
Slim Pickens in Stanley Kubricks's Dr. Strangelove, riding the
atomic bomb down to oblivion.
The scene worked in 1964, since Kubrick employed black humor
for social satire. Here there's no obvious purpose other than out-
rageousness and flamboyance. By this point the film has degener-
ated from broad spoof to outright silliness. Richard Alleva noted in
Commonweal: "Such visual fizz constitutes the one real triumph of
(a film lacking) dramatic power because it never takes on the real
challenges of the play," summing up this movie as "a clever feat
which skims a story that only works when [presented] in fascinating
detail." Anyone who adores such a John Waters-David Lynch