Page 94 - Shakespeare in the Movie From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love

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creation of Elizabethan London and gradually moves in on the Globe
Theater as a performance is about to begin. An audience composed
of a few aristocrats and university students, middle-class citizens,
and groundlings crowding in front eagerly await the show. A Chorus
(Leslie Banks) begs everyone to forgive their "unworthy scaffold"
and employ each viewer's "imaginary forces" to fill in what the
company is unable to provide. As our star makes his entrance (Lau-
rence Olivier playing Richard Burbage playing Henry V, on a stage
within the cinematic image, a play within a film) the camera closes
in. We are now at one with the Elizabethan audience.
When this simple stage gradually transforms into a grand reen-
actment of history, the nioviegoing audience understands that this is
a visualization of the transformation the play's viewers are imagin-
ing in their minds. Olivier is making over the simple staged sugges-
tion of history to the spectacular vision Shakespeare hoped to inspire
them to see.
Branagh's film begins in the movie studio where his Henry V was
filmed. The Chorus (Derek Jacobi) strikes a match, illuminating the
encroaching darkness. He is the only personage in modern dress.
This Chorus is clearly familiar with modern conveniences and
throws an electric light switch. As he opens huge doors to an adjoin-
ing room, the camera passes by to witness a minimalist re-creation
of the past. Here the camera eye closes in on history. When the
Chorus reappears, his modern dress reminds us that this figure is a
surrogate for the moviegoing audience; he is us, peeking in on an
old play, confirming that it passes the test of time.
Olivier's Chorus served as a bridge between the gathered Eliza-
bethans (we "moderns" moving back in time with the play rather
than having it brought forward for us). Olivier's approach was the
generally accepted 1940s technique of construction; that is, creating
a reality for the viewer of that time to enter and exist within.
Branagh's is 1990s deconstruction, always reminding us of the essen-
tial artificiality of any drama, stage or film. "Branagh makes us
understand that his medium is film alone," Stanley Kauffmann
noted in the Saturday Review, "and that cinematic means, rather
than transmutations of theater, will be his matter"—his medium
and his message.
Branagh's Henry, though necessarily harsh, is nonetheless sensi-
tive in a way Olivier's blissful once-and-future hero-king is not.
Critic Sally Beauman noted that Olivier "removed from the hero's
mind almost every doubt"; Branagh put them all back in. Indeed, if