Shakespeare Movies

I recall a delightful made-for-television (on videotape) production of Taming of the Shrew from the early '80s. Starred John Cleese!

BTW, I very much enjoyed the brief snippets of R&J as staged within Shakespeare In Love.
 
Roman Polanski's version of MacBeth was the best I have seen.

I have seen the DVD of Burton in Hamlet and, crummy production values notwithstanding, he is the best.

Fishbourne as Othello is execrable. It is only second to Matrix reloaded for pure bad acting. Whenever Branugh was in a scene with him his lack of skill was palpable. Horrid, just plain horrid.

There was a tv cycle of the Shakespeare plays done by BBC, I think. It was 20 years ago or more but I recall them as being excellent.
 
Welles "Macbeth"...oops, "The Scottish Play".

I think he just about got it right. Very angst ridden and atmospheric.

I like his Othello too, as has been mentioned already, the Turkish Bath scene is great, also I like the way Welles uses some dramatic license in starting the film at the end of the play with Iago already captured and caged and fullfilling Lodovico`s promise:

"If there be any cunning cruelty,
That can torment him much, and hold him long,
It shall be his..."
 
I must be the only one to remember the Moonlighting episode that was done as a musical "Taming of the Shrew".
 
Badger said:
I must be the only one to remember the Moonlighting episode that was done as a musical "Taming of the Shrew".
Click to expand...

I remember it well but I don't recall it being a musical. I remember all the iambic pentameter and the use of "Close To You" on lute for Bianca's wedding was inspired, but I don't think it was a musical.

Taming of the Shrew was, by the way, the inspiration for Moonlighting, according to Glen Gordon Caron.

Glory
 
Bruce Willis' singing in it is what inspired me to pick up his album "Return of Bruno".

I didn't know that Shrew inspired Moonlighting, though. But now that you mention it, the wordplay between Maddie and David fits.
 
Brown said:
Actually, Reeves was okay in that role because it was a shallow character with no motivation. Don John is one of Shakespeare's weakest one-dimensional bad guys, and since Reeves has trouble acting beyond one dimension, the role was pretty well suited for him.

I suspect that Reeves was hired in part because of one line, in which he speaks of "the most exquisite Claudio." Reeves utters "exquisite" much like he utters "excellent" in the "Bill and Ted" movies.
Click to expand...
Aha! I think I get it now. Thank you.
 
Glory said:
Okay, I'll admit it. I liked Romeo and Juliet with Decaprio and Danes. It captures what I feel is the central theme of the play, the madness of young love and the impetuousness of adolescents. Teens are still committing suicide over their boy/ girlfriends. They still think that everything that happens to them is something worth dying over. Also, John Leguizamo is utterly underrated as a performer.
Click to expand...

I agree.

People always get Romeo and Juliet wrong. It isn't about love, unless you have Borderline Personality Disorder. It's about adolescent infatuation, sex, and violence.

The best production of A Midsummer Night's Dream was, I'm ashamed to admit, directed by my mother with a community college cast. Although the movie version with Mickey Rooney as a youngster is pretty good, too.

The best production of Much Ado about Nothing was an RSC production around 1985. I still have the soundtrack on a 12 " 45. I also saw a later production and an earlier production that had Marshall Efram (sp?) of The Great American Dream Machine and, of late, the computer game The Space Bar rolling around like a glob of mercury singing "Hey nonny nonny."
 
Badger said:
I must be the only one to remember the Moonlighting episode that was done as a musical "Taming of the Shrew".
Click to expand...

No, I remember it, and it was excellent.
 
I'll add to the chorus of agreement for Branaugh's Hank5. I also love the Richard III with McKellen. Also Scotland, PA is one of the best 'alternate setting' Macbeth's ever made.

Now a disappointment: I saw on TV recently, for the first time, the 1936 version of "As You Like It," one of my favorite Shakespeare plays. It has Olivier as Orlando, and he's fine, but Elizabeth Bergner is wretched as Rosalind -- ruins the entire thing.
 
I saw Hamlet 2000 with Ethan Hawk on DVD since some of you recommended it and I am sorry but I didn't like it at all.

I remember how many lessons we devoted to the concept of theatrical time while we were studying ancient Greek dramatology. Since Shakespeare is considered the fourth of the tragics regardless if he was aware of the work of the Greeks or not I guess that some things apply.

Theatrical time is the time that the actors need in order to move around the stage.The theatrical time that an actor needs in order to cross 1m on the stage in enormous!

The ancient poets and Shakespeare who was an actor too, knew very well how to play with the meter in order to cover the theatrical time.

A film in NY that uses the Shakespearean poetry crashes in the most vulgar way every notion of theatrical time that the poet took into consideration when he composed his play. The result? It's very difficult to follow the text and although Hamlet is not my favorite play I felt that It was a pity to destroy it.

Some tricks were good. I particularly liked the video trick that "narrated" Hamlet's monologues/thoughts. Some scenes were powerful. The first meeting of Hamlet with the ghost was good but was the ghost that mad? I don't remember that.
Oh I also liked the first meeting of Hamlet with Rosengratz and Gilderstern in that club. That was good.

The finale lacked the climax therefore it was a catastrophy. Ethan Hawk was "Hamletian" in the looks but you can't really tell when he gets crazy, his performance was rather flat.

I have a question.

Does anybody know anything about Shakespearean dramatology? Was it acceptable in Shakespeare's time to show the bloodsheds on the scene? I am asking because in the Greek tragedies it's totally unacceptable unless... they are put on scene by a British director who doesn't hesitate to present the whole bloodshed something that I attribute to the Shakespearean tradition. I wonder if I am right.

The next play I will see is the modern version of Romeo and Juliet.
 
Yes, Di Caprio is the reason I haven't seen it yet but many people have said good things about the movie.
 
This afternoon I saw on DVD Richard III with Ian MacKellan and I adored it.

It seems that swing and the '30ies suit well...on Shakespeare whilst techno doesn't :)


Of course for one more time I remembered why Shakespeare is not a favorite, all those logical fallacies in the plot are too much for my classical taste.

The cast was great. The script was great, it was fast and it had its own rythme, some scenes were very good. I particularly liked the scene of Clarence's monologue in the Tower just before he gets murdered, maybe the reason why I liked it so much is because Nigel Hawthorn is one of my favorite British actors. Actors that play on stage are so different than the cinema actors ...they know how to breathe.

Anyway. Very good film and within the Shakespearean spirit which ever this might be.Another proof that Hamlet is the worse play that was ever been composed and Shakespeare should always be taken lightly; like swing music :)
 
Cleopatra said:

Anyway. Very good film and within the Shakespearean spirit which ever this might be.Another proof that Hamlet is the worse play that was ever been composed and Shakespeare should always be taken lightly; like swing music :)
Click to expand...
:rolleyes: ...my kingdom for an asp...:D
 
Mercutio said:
:rolleyes: ...my kingdom for an asp...:D
Click to expand...

LOL

Come-on Mercutio somebody must hate the Bard in this forum, somebody should play that role so as his lovers compose great posts and win the language award... :p

I haven't spent time studying the Shakespearean literature so, is Shakespeare considered a misogynist the way Euripides is?

Poor Eurypides! If he dared to depict a wife accepting an engagement ring from the murderer of her husband over his dead body he would be expelled from Athens ....
 
Cleopatra said:

I haven't spent time studying the Shakespearean literature so, is Shakespeare considered a misogynist the way Euripides is?
Click to expand...
Actually, there is a very good argument that Shakespeare's favorite characters, and the most complex, were his women (with 2-1/2 exceptions). Aside from Hamlet, Falstaff, and perhaps Mercutio *blush*, Shakespeare's women tend to be more complex than his men. Cleopatra, of course, and Portia, Kate the shrew, Beatrice, Rosalind, Viola, Lady MacBeth...

...the argument is not mine, though...I have been looking for my source on this, and can't find it. I'll follow this up when I do.
 
I understand that. Medea is a woman's character that has no match in perfection but because of her and other heroines but mostly because of her Eurypides was accused of misogynism.
 
Mercutio said:
Actually, there is a very good argument that Shakespeare's favorite characters, and the most complex, were his women (with 2-1/2 exceptions). Aside from Hamlet, Falstaff, and perhaps Mercutio *blush*, Shakespeare's women tend to be more complex than his men. Cleopatra, of course, and Portia, Kate the shrew, Beatrice, Rosalind, Viola, Lady MacBeth...
Click to expand...

Accusing Shakespeare of misogyny (or racism or some other -ism) is a bit of a parlor game.

The thing is, he was pretty damned good at exploring human emotion in a way that still holds up. A lot of people wrote more stuff than he did, but nobody had the consistent quality. Being that good, he's bound to be a prime target for projectile snot. If one is talentless, what better a goal than to put down Shakespeare to a sympathetic audience?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom