Page 90 - Shakespeare in the Movie From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love

The Hollow Crown / 79

ous characters (including River Phoenix as a hustler-Hotspur) sud-
denly start spouting poetry, the effect is ludicrous.

Band of Brothers
Henry V
Two Cities Films, 1945; Laurence Olivier
Samuel Goldwyn Company, 1989; Kenneth Branagh

At Falstaffs end, our brief glimpse of Henry V implies that we see a
"finished" man, however young. Hal, having completed his rites of
passage during the preceding misadventures, has now achieved
maturity and appears in control of the crown, England, and himself.
The two film versions of Henry V (Laurence Olivier's in 1944 and
Kenneth Branagh's in 1989), however, take radically different atti-
tudes toward the first difficult years of Henry's kingship, which was
the formative period Shakespeare focused on.
Olivier's interpretation of Henry is essentially static. He has
achieved full heroic status before the film begins and he self-
assuredly solves each new problem as it arises, supremely confident
that he is more than up to the effort. Branagh's Henry instead affects
a pose of proper kingly behavior, seeming secure to others. Inwardly,
he remains a complex, confused man with severe doubts about his
abilities. Even though he has abandoned his wild early ways, this
dynamic Henry V will fully believe in himself only after proving his
worth in debate and combat, "arcing" during the course of the film.
Olivier and Branagh assumed polar approaches, to tone and theme
as well as character, partly due to their different social-historical
contexts. Olivier's was wartime England. Britain needed patriotic
propaganda. A spectacular film, recalling past greatness and the abil-
ity to overcome against all odds, would aid the war cause. Winston
Churchill suggested to Olivier that a Henry V film would be much
appreciated.
Shakespeare offers Henry V as an ideal, in comparison to Richard
III, the earlier vision of total evil. He shows that in Henry V(1599)
he has matured as an author, no longer simplifying situations; rather,
humanizing characters by showing the dark sides of bright heroes
and decent elements in villains. Thus, in Henry V, Shakespeare
includes the scene in which boyhood friend Scroop, caught in a trai-