Film Screenings / Programs / Series
THE MIDDLE AGES ON FILM: SHAKESPEARE
November 20 – December 1
November 20 - December 1, 2013
ALL FILMS ON 35MM!!!
The second part of this calendar’s MIDDLE AGES ON FILM series showcases a selection of film adaptations of Shakespeare’s medieval-set or -inspired plays.
“Shakespeare’s world was closer to the Middle Ages than our own, not only in time and space but culturally and imaginatively. The plays draw extensively on medieval sources and themes. All of Shakespeare’s history plays, for example, are set in the Middle Ages except one: KING HENRY VIII (aka ALL IS TRUE) treats the Great Matter of Henry’s divorce from Katherine of Aragon, one of the events that marked the transition from medieval to modern. In these periods, time was perceived as a continuum; chroniclers traced history through their own day, and upon their deaths other writers revised or updated these chronicles to reflect current ideas and perspectives. Similarly, Shakespeare’s plays continue to be reshaped and replayed on film. Shakespeare may be clothed in modern dress or films may refer to, or take inspiration from, contemporary politics; others try to correct Shakespeare’s misrepresentations of historical detail. We recall characters like the much-maligned Richard III or Hamlet through the lens of Laurence Olivier, or Falstaff (a comic version of the historical figures Sir John Fastolf and Sir John Oldcastle) embodied as Orson Welles. Through film, Shakespeare’s Middle Ages are not lost but revived and revitalized in translation. And much of what we think we know about the medieval period has been shaped by Shakespeare, the plays and film adaptations living on in our memories more vividly perhaps than the history books’ accounts.” –Martha Driver
Curated in collaboration with Martha Driver, Distinguished Professor of English and Women’s and Gender Studies at Pace University, and the co-editor (with Sid Ray) of THE MEDIEVAL HERO ON SCREEN and SHAKESPEARE AND THE MIDDLE AGES (McFarland & Co.).
Special thanks to Sara Driver, Brian Belovarac (Janus Films), Chris Chouinard (Park Circus), Eric Di Bernardo (Rialto Pictures), Mark Johnson (Harvard Film Archive), Christopher Lane & Michael Horne (Sony), Eric Liknaitzky (Contemporary Films), Haley Markbreiter (Doc Films), Kristie Nakamura & Nicki Woods (WB Classics), Judy Nicaud (Paramount), and Todd Wiener & Steven Hill (UCLA Film & Television Archive).
Lawrence Olivier
HENRY V
1944, 137 min, 35mm. With Laurence Olivier.
“Dedicated to the British troops during WWII, this is one of the most influential films ever made. Olivier experiments with the transition from theater to film by reconstructing Elizabethan London and Shakespeare’s play as dramatized in the original Globe Theatre, creating awareness of the art of the drama (and its underpinnings) before fading into more direct action. Much of the film was shot on a soundstage and includes at its apex a bloodless Battle of Agincourt with scenes visually reminiscent of medieval manuscripts, especially the calendar pages of Books of Hours.” –Martha Driver
Wed, Nov 20 at 6:30, Mon, Nov 25 at 9:15, and Fri, Nov 29 at 6:30
Roman Polanski
MACBETH
1971, 140 min, 35mm. With Jon Finch, Francesca Annis, Terrence Bayler, and Martin Shaw.
Polanski’s blood-soaked, Hugh Hefner-produced version of MACBETH was the first film he made following the murder, at the hands of Manson and his cult, of his wife Sharon Tate. Perhaps unsurprisingly it’s a nightmarish, despairing, and graphic adaptation of what is already Shakespeare’s most brutal and unrelenting play. Working in collaboration with writer Kenneth Tynan, Polanski stays true to Shakespeare even as he creates a deeply personal film.“[Polanski’s version is] strong on youth, beauty, and inevitable gore. The wide-screen visuals swamp the dialogue, and the thematics have been turned inside out – but that's what movie adaptations ought to do.” –Dave Kehr, CHICAGO READER
Wed, Nov 20 at 9:15, Sun, Nov 24 at 6:15, and Sat, Nov 30 at 8:30
Orson Welles
MACBETH1948, 119 min, 35mm. With Orson Welles, Jeanette Nolan, Dan O’Herlihy, and Roddy McDowall. 35mm restored print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Preservation funding provided by The Film Foundation and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.
Wedding deliriously stylized sets and B-movie production values (including a 23-day shooting schedule) to Welles’s signature repertoire of deep-focus cinematography, deep-space blocking, and long takes, MACBETH re-imagines Shakespeare’s tragedy as a violent confrontation between paganism and early Christianity. Welles effectively places one of the greatest parables about hubris, betrayal, and power into dialogue with his own original treatment of those same themes, CITIZEN KANE. The result is an epic paroxysm of blood-letting and back-stabbing that serves as proof that, as Welles himself put it, one can “tackle difficult subjects at greater speed.”
Thurs, Nov 21 at 6:45 and Sun, Nov 24 at 9:00
Akira Kurosawa
THRONE OF BLOOD (aka THE CASTLE OF THE SPIDER’S WEB) / KUMONOSU-JÔ
1957, 110 min, 35mm. In Japanese with English subtitles. With Toshirô Mifune & Takashi Shimura.
“Perhaps the best rendering of Shakespeare’s MACBETH on film to date, this is set during Sengoku Jidai, a fifteenth-century period of civil strife in Japan. Thoroughly Japanese in language, style, and setting, the film engages profoundly with the original and is instantly recognizable as shaped by Kurosawa’s reading of Shakespeare. The scariest Lady Macbeth on record must be Asaji, her face whitened to resemble a Noh mask. Each of her gestures is formal and ritualized, seemingly self-controlled, and yet these do not conceal her driving ambition or her savagery. The forest witch, a version of the Weird Sisters, who spins a wheel and foretells the future, is equally eerie.” –Martha Driver
Thurs, Nov 21 at 9:15, Sun, Nov 24 at 3:45, and Sun, Dec 1 at 5:30
Orson Welles
CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT / FALSTAFF
1965, 115 min, 35mm. With Orson Welles, Keith Baxter, John Gielgud, Jeanne Moreau, Margaret Rutherford, Marina Vlady, and Fernando Rey.
“This compilation of stories about the fat knight John Falstaff is drawn from Shakespeare’s HENRY IV, HENRY V, MERRY WIVES, and HOLINSHED, among other sources, and represents a long American tradition of excerpting the funny bits from Shakespeare to cobble a play, in this case making Falstaff the central figure. Welles found a Spanish producer and financier to underwrite the film, but he could only hire John Gielgud to play Henry IV for two weeks, using a body double for the other scenes. Despite the difficulties around its production and its initially poor showing at the box office, the film was Welles’s favorite and has since received much critical acclaim.” –Martha Driver
Fri, Nov 22 at 6:45
William Dieterle & Max Reinhardt
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM1935, 133 min, 35mm. With James Cagney, Dick Powell, Olivia de Havilland, and (according to legend) Kenneth Anger.
“While it draws on ‘The Knight’s Tale’ and ‘The Tale of Sir Thopas’ by Geoffrey Chaucer, along with English folklore, romance, drama, and classical myth, this film comes out of staged productions by legendary showman Reinhardt which began to be seen from 1905. In Reinhardt’s enchanted forest, the fairies, gnomes, and elves are inspired by German folk tradition. While the bewildered young lovers and the rude mechanicals are imported intact from Shakespeare’s original, the spinning of Titania’s wedding veil (before she beds Bottom) to the Wedding March of Felix Mendelssohn, a modest addition to Shakespeare’s play, remains surreal and haunting. Jimmy Cagney is a crackjack Bottom and Pyramus while Joe E. Brown inhabits the twin roles of Flute and Thisbe with panache.” –Martha Driver
Fri, Nov 22 at 9:15, Mon, Nov 25 at 6:30, and Tues, Nov 26 at 7:30
Akira Kurosawa
RAN1985, 162 min, 35mm. In Japanese with English subtitles. With Tatsuya Nakadai.
“One of the most powerful adaptations of Shakespeare’s tragedy, this version of KING LEAR invokes samurai culture, epic, and Noh theater, and is set during Sengoku Jidai (the ‘Age of the Country at War’), a tumultuous hundred-year period that began in 1477, characterized by vicious warfare between rival clans. Lear’s daughters are recast as imperial sons, and Kaede, the eldest son’s cruel wife, might be said to combine Regan and Goneril, Lear’s power-hungry daughters. The youngest son, Saburo, is faithful to his father as Cordelia is to Lear. In a 1985 interview, the director explained that the subtext running just below the surface of this tragic tale ‘is the threat of nuclear apocalypse.’” –Martha Driver“[A] visual masterwork whose manners, which sometimes look old-fashioned, recall virtually the entire history of epic cinema.” –Vincent Canby, NEW YORK TIMES
Sat, Nov 23 at 3:00, Sat, Nov 30 at 5:15, and Sun, Dec 1 at 8:00
Peter Brook
KING LEAR
1971, 137 min, 35mm. With Paul Scofield & Cyril Cusack.
In keeping with his own modus operandi, Brook’s take on KING LEAR is an exceedingly dark one that emphasizes the blood-and-guts dimension of Shakespeare’s masterpiece of political intrigues and family ties. Paul Scofield’s Lear is a dilapidated monarch unable (or unwilling) to prevent the violence that threatens to bring his reign to an end – a fascinatingly inert, even absurd, version of one of world literature’s most oft-interpreted characters. Shot in Denmark and featuring an array of overwhelming landscapes, stylish camerawork, and remarkable modifications to Shakespeare’s play, Brook’s LEAR has been as influential as it is relentlessly nasty.
Sat, Nov 23 at 6:15, Wed, Nov 27 at 9:15, and Fri, Nov 29 at 9:15
Grigori Kozintsev
KING LEAR / KOROL LIR
1971, 139 min, 35mm. Based on a translation by Boris Pasternak; musical score by Dmitri Shostakovich. Print courtesy of the Harvard Film Archive.
“[A] visually impressive Russian recontextualization of the play with strong, empathic performances. Yuri Yarvet’s Lear is a wiry, Klaus Kinski look-alike who begins the film in megalomaniacal tones and ends it as a philosophical, crumpled old man. […] But Kozintsev and cinematographer Jonas Gritsius’s imagery is the main star of the film, the constantly moving camera, deep compositions, and windswept landscapes providing an acutely vivid milieu accentuated by Yenej’s sets and location work. […] KING LEAR was Kozintsev’s last film, and as a meditation on the tragedy of age and wisdom, it’s a moving, accomplished example of cultural transposition.” –Doug Cummings, FILM JOURNEY
Sat, Nov 23 at 9:00 and Wed, Nov 27 at 6:30
Bela Tarr
MACBETH
1982, 72 min, video. In Hungarian with English subtitles.
“Bela Tarr made this remarkable color video for Hungarian television, though it also served as his film-school thesis. Taped in a Budapest cellar and environs, it reduces the Shakespeare play to only two shots (the first, running about four minutes, appears before the main title), and all the witches are men. Most of the action occurs in the foreground, and the elaborate movements of the camera and actors are masterfully staged. Tarr has described this as a kind of documentary of the actors’ performances, and as such it’s a transition between the social realism of his earlier projects and the ‘diabolical’ formal virtuosity of his later ones.” –Jonathan Rosenbaum, CHICAGO READER
Sun, Nov 24 at 2:00 and Sun, Dec 1 at 3:45
