Shakespeare on the screen

[Frank Bunn]

The Hollow Crown. (2012-16)

A seven part, movie length series covering some of the Shakespeare history plays

Richard II
Henry IV Part 1
Henry IV Part 2
Henry V
Henry VI Part 1
Henry VI Part 2
Richard III.

It features a who's who of British actors including Ben Whishaw, Rory Kinnear, Jeremy Irons, Patrick Stewart, Lindsay Duncan, David Morrissey, James Purefoy, Tom Hiddleston, Julie Walters, Michael Gambon, Anton Lesser, John Hurt, Adrian Dunbar, Judi Dench, Philip Glenister, Benedict Cumberbatch, Keeley Hawes.

The production values are strong - great sets and costuming. They remain faithful to the text without including every line. This, and the delivery by the actors makes Shakespeare more accessible than it sometimes can be.

 

[Frank Bunn]

Richard II.

It's a good yarn featuring Ben Whishaw as King Richard, Rory Kinnear as Henry Bolingbroke, James Purefoy as Thomas de Mowbray.

Enjoyable but not a classic.

6/10

 

[Frank Bunn]

Henry IV, Part 1

Henry IV (Jeremy Irons) is actually hardly in it. There's a lot of time spent with Prince Harry (Tom Hiddleston) and Falstaff which is not interesting. The comedy fell flat for me. It gets better at the end when Prince Harry has to get serious and lead the King's forces against the rebels on the battlefield.

4/10

 

[Frank Bunn]

Henry IV, Part 2

Again, the King Henry IV character isn't in this play very much though the Jeremy Irons' scenes are top quality. There's more time spent with Falstaff who is either more relevant to Shakespearean times or badly depicted in this rendition. Tom Hiddleston as Prince Harry didn't work for me. When he is emoting happiness I was thinking I was watching Tom Hiddleston not the character.

4/10

 

[Frank Bunn]

Henry V

This is exceptional. The play is one of Shakespeare's best and this is a great production of it. It focuses on the nobility and the build up to the battle of Agincourt, but also has some interesting scenes with peasant characters who become foot soldiers in the war. The battlefield scenes are realistically depicted in shortened form. The final scenes with King Henry and Princess Catharine (Mélanie Thierry) are touching. John Hurt provides the commentary. Lambert Wilson is King Charles VI of France. .

There's a couple of classic monologues.

Spoiler

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o’erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O’erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swill’d with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit
To his full height. On, on, you noblest English.
Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!
Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,
Have in these parts from morn till even fought
And sheathed their swords for lack of argument:
Dishonour not your mothers; now attest
That those whom you call’d fathers did beget you.
Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
And teach them how to war. And you, good yeoman,
Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
The mettle of your pasture; let us swear
That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not;
For there is none of you so mean and base,
That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game’s afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry ‘God for Harry, England, and Saint George!’

Spoiler

This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian:’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.’
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember’d;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

10/10

 

[Roobs321]

Of the Hollow Crown renditions (which are all good), Richard II was the standout (one of my most preferred plays too), but I felt Henry VI Part 2 was very well done and came close (although Henry VI 3-part plays are the only history plays I haven't read so went in blind there). The second lot of Cumberbatch ones in 2016 were a little stronger than the Hiddleston ones in 2012.

 

[Frank Bunn]

Henry VI Part 1

Another superbly crafted Shakespeare play expertly rendered to the screen. The bard sets up the conspiracies between the different parties so you feel like shouting at the young king about what is really going on!

Hugh Bonneville probably takes the acting honours as The Duke of Gloucester. I kept expecting Adrian Dunbar to say "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph and the wee donkey"

A couple of debatable things. Why have Joan of Arc speak with a broad northern English accent? Joan was very French. In Henry V they had Catharine speaking in French.

And Sophie Okonedo as Margaret. Okonedo is a fine actress and did a great job. But she looks Nigerian. That's not realistic.

For the most part the show has depicted the characters as somewhat as they most likely they appeared and sounded in real life. Older actors are used for older characters. Young actors for young characters. Peasant characters are given bad teeth and complexion etc. There's an attempt to preserve the illusion of reality but both the Joan of Arc and Margaret depictions distract from that.

8/10

 

[Frank Bunn]

Henry VI Part 2

Things get nasty! Lots of deaths and revenge killings in pursuit of the crown. There's no messing about with minor characters getting drunk in taverns and extended dialog - and this rendition is better for it. It helps if you have watched the series in order but this movie stands up on its own. There's a lot of events and change of alliances so maybe they tried to squeeze too much into this episode.

Benedict Cumberbatch starts off low key but he is great when his character gets into it.

The more I watch Shakespeare the more I can understand the slightly obscure dialog at first listen.

7/10

 

[Frank Bunn]

Richard III

This a masterclass by Cumberbatch. There's a lot of tight shots of him talking into the camera and you really get to understand his evil motivations.

It's a great play. So many good characters and played here by some serious acting talent. Some of the brutality is implied rather explicit but you are in no doubt that children, wives and brothers are being murdered. There are a couple of classic passages of dialog. "Now is the winter of our discontent...". "My horse, my horse, my kingdom for a horse".

In reality, it's a bit of a hatchet job on Richard III. The 'chroniclers' of a new royal dynasty tended to rewrite history in a good light for them and bad for those they defeated. Shakespeare seems to have gone along with that. Apparently, Richard wasn't nearly as physically deformed as made out and wasn't any more evil than his predecessors.

The power struggles makes you wonder if modern shows such as Succession have been influenced by Shakespeare. Or maybe human nature hasn't changed.

8/10.

 

[Roobs321]

The power struggles makes you wonder if modern shows such as Succession have been influenced by Shakespeare. Or maybe human nature hasn't changed.

8/10.

Without a doubt. Look at something like The Lion in Winter, a 20th century play steeped in those sort of histories and stage dramas, that feels very Succession to me as well. Others do predate Shakespeare but power was such a particular theme in a lot of his work, and is also one of the themes that can tend to stand the test of time (when insightfully done) because it remains innate and relevant regardless of the epochal trends. A lot of social realist literature from the 19th century sort of comes at these situations similarly, sort of transactional, dysfunctional human relations.

 

[Frank Bunn]

Hamlet. (1996)

It is Shakespeare's longest play and considered one of his best. It has influenced many other works over the years. For example, in recent times - The Lion King, Star Trek, Sons of Anarchy. In addition, many of the lines have become familiar, without people necessarily knowing their origin.

Spoiler

To be or not to be

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil

The lady doth protest too much

Alas poor Yorick I knew him

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark

What a piece of work is man

To sleep, perchance to dream

Frailty, thy name is woman!

Neither a borrower nor a lender be

To thine own self be true

Murder most foul

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

brevity is the soul of wit

Hoist with his own petard

Death, the undiscovered country

Kenneth Branagh adapted and directed the full four hour version. It's epic.

Branagh is brilliant as Prince Hamlet. At different times he's mournful, angry, crazy or deeply contemplative then switches between them and we are not sure when he is faking. The rest of the cast is stellar. Derek Jacobi, Julie Christie, Richard Briers, Kate Winslet, Rufus Sewell, Charlton Heston, Richard Attenborough, Judi Dench, Robin Williams, Gérard Depardieu, Jack Lemmon, Billy Crystal, John Gielgud.

The sets are grand. Blenheim Palace for the exterior scenes and the interior palace built at Shepperton Studios. The costuming is impressive.

I must admit it was a slog to get through the whole thing. There are passages of the old style dialog that are hard to understand, especially when spoken quickly. I was cutting back and forth between watching it, the written text and analysis. But it was worth it. It's a classic story with so many gems.

 

[Frank Bunn]

Throne of Blood. (1957). Japanese with subtitles.

This is Kurosawa's version of Macbeth done Samurai style. He captures the spirit of the play without using Shakespeare's prose. Torshiro Mifune is expressive in the lead role. Isuzu Yamada is quite creepy as a brooding, scheming and shuffling Lady Washizu (Lady Macbeth).

It's very good but could have been better. At times it doesn't quite flow. It seems to skip some important events and also wastes time in scenes like when a couple of guys on horseback are charging around around in fog for a few minutes. And it's a shame it was shot in black and white and 4:3 aspect ratio. The costumes must have been amazing in colour. There were hundreds of extras and horses. They built a real castle near Mount Fuji that would have looked better in widescreen.

7/10