Page 80 - Shakespeare in the Movie From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love

A Fairy Tale for Grown-ups / 69

He avoided Mendelssohn's nineteenth-century romantic music as
well as the lovely Pre-Raphaelite vision of an enchanted kingdom.
Indeed, the only "greens" on view here are sickly sea greens for faces
of sprites, who wear drab, earthy, leaden-looking clothing—when
they are dressed at all.
"This is not a film from a stage production or a film based on the
play," Hall insisted. "It attempts to bend the medium of film to
reveal the full quality of the text." To establish his total reconcep-
tion of the play as a film, rather than recording his preexisting pro-
duction, Hall avoided the studio. Despite an ostensible Athenian
setting, he perceived the play not as Mediterranean but Northern,
moving cast and crew to Compton Verney. A seventeenth-century
home and surrounding grounds served as a natural setting. Adding to
that sensibility, Hall's cinematographer, Peter Suschitzky, filmed
with a handheld camera, adding a documentary flavor. Then, fearful
of becoming too realistic (thereby rendering Shakespeare's stylized
poetic dialogue ridiculous), Hall dubbed in all sound and voices later,
eliminating natural noise in favor of a tightly controlled track.
Theseus (Derek Godfrey) was played as a serious British manor
lord rather than a gleeful pagan warrior. The young men (David
Warner's Lysander, Michael Jayston's Demetrius) were Renaissance
courtiers not unlike those who might appear before Elizabeth herself.
The sprites (Ian Holm as Puck, Judi Dench as Titania, Ian Richard-
son as Oberon) emerged as horrific Halloween creatures rather than
classic creations of Greek myth.
Many of the fairies appeared nude; this was, recall, the age of
Aquarius and Hair! Furthering that modern sensibility, Hermia
(Helen Mirren) and Helena (Diana Rigg) were bedecked in Carnaby
Street miniskirts. Hall used a minimum of editing owing to his
belief that "Shakespeare works in paragraphs rather than sentences,"
deriving his montage from the text's intrinsic rhythm. So scenes drag
on in single-camera setup as they would not in a film by, say, Franco
Zeffirelli. Certainly Hall succeeded in making this as unpleasant a
viewing experience as possible, "challenging" audiences with an
alternative perception. Ultimately, though, the work seems a dis-
tortion; remove the pleasurability from Shakespearean comedy and
you remove the audience's reason for attending.
This is a film of heightened ugliness, which—in its defense—
makes it as frightfully representative of the late sixties as Warner's
was, with its crystallization of high culture, of the mid-thirties.
"There could not be a greater contrast between this version and that