Page 78 - Shakespeare in the Movie From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love

A Fairy Tale for Grown-ups I 67

Eastmancolor, rendering everything more realistic, which was not
the tone Trnka wanted for his fairy tale. He and composer Vaclav
Trojan conceived of their piece as "a spectacular fairy ballet"—less
an adaptation of Shakespeare, performed by puppets, than a transla-
tion of Shakespeare's stage play into a different artistic medium:
puppet animation.
Trnka worked not in the tradition of previous Shakespearean
cinema, but rather in the vein of Verdi, fashioning an opera from
Othello, or Prokofiev, with his ballet created in honor of Romeo and
Juliet. Trnka's conception was to cut away most of the dialogue,
expressing every idea and emotion through mimelike movement,
retaining only those words needed to make transitions comprehen-
sible. This necessitated creating the most sophisticated puppets ever
seen, since they had to convey complex ranges of expression. Rather
than presenting the illusion of movement, as he had done in the
past, Trnka insisted that every motion convey character: Courtiers
walk in ways that suggest their cool, ceremonious attitude; young
lovers express youthful passion with each turn; rude mechanicals
convey genial vulgarity through visual gestures rather than verbal
gags; sprites imply the alternative reality of a sensuous dream with
every flick of a hand.
For the first time in his career, Trnka fashioned puppets from plas-
tic rather than wood so that they would be more malleable. Other
directors had recently complained, in the words of one, that wide
screen was "good for nothing except filming snakes." This, of
course, only attests to the inability of such filmmakers to creatively
adapt to the ever-changing cinematic form. Functionally employing
wide screen, Trnka simultaneously played three scenes on-screen
which, in Shakespeare, follow one another in sequence, creating a
virtual three-ring circus on the screen. At other moments, Trnka
sensed the need for intimacy, creating a "frame within the frame" by
arranging angles so that trees, buildings, or other objects block off
the left and right sides of the screen.
Tragically, all of Trnka's imaginative work was undercut when
the film's English-language distributors, concerned the result would
be a hard sell, persuaded Richard Burton and members of the Old
Vic to dub in voices. Even with this unnecessary addition, the film
remains one of the finest examples of Shakespearean cinema; the
greater tragedy is that at the time of this writing it remains unavail-
able.