Boose, Lynda E., and Richard Burt, eds. Shakespeare,
the Movie: Popularizing the Plays on Film, TV, and Video.
London and New York: Routledge, 1997. x + 277 pp. ISBN: 0 415
16584 9 Cloth; 0 415 16585 7 Paper. Mark Thornton Burnett
The Queen's University of Belfast mburnett@clio.arts.qub.ac.uk
Burnett, Mark Thornton. "Review of Shakespeare, the
Movie: Popularizing the Plays on Film, TV, and Video." Early
Modern Literary Studies 3.3 (January, 1998): 17.1-6 <URL:
http://purl.oclc.org/emls/03-3/rev_bur.html>.
This authoritative
collection constitutes a "generic potlatch"
(1) of perspectives, since it ranges widely over
television interpretations and screen adaptations. A
number of essays recover key moments in the evolution
of the screen Shakespeare phenomenon. Thus Ann
Thompson, in a nuanced analysis, pieces together the
influences which lie behind Asta Neilsen's silent
film version of Hamlet, noted for the performance of
Neilsen herself in the central part. Thompson is
joined by Kenneth Rothwell, who admirably surveys the
role of the map in early cinematic renderings of King
Lear, and by Tony
Howard, who investigates Orson Welles' reading of the
monarch in Peter Brook's CBS TV production of 1953.
Howard is particularly adept at illuminating the
post-war myth of a second Elizabethan age that
informed Brook's undertaking.
To these appraisals of
earlier cinematic Shakespeares can be added the
chapters on more contemporary filmic assessments.
Clearly, Franco Zeffirelli must feature in such
approaches, and, in this regard, Robert Hapgood and
Diana Henderson do not disappoint. They provide
insightful accounts of the personal traumas that
structure Zeffirelli's films and the sense of felt
isolation that colours his The Taming of
the Shrew. Arguably
the most interesting of the essays here is
"Grossly Gaping Viwers and Jonathan Miller's Othello"
by Lynda Boose, in which
the director's striking use of black and white and
suggestive camera work are explored with a gratifying
critical felicity.
In recent years, the
colonialist inflections of the Shakespearean text
have received increased attention. Not surprisingly,
therefore, several essays are attuned to the fortunes
of Shakespearean films in the post-colonial
environment. Valerie Wayne offers a provocative
discussion of Geoffrey Kendal's Indian Shakespearean
playing company in her Shakespeare Wallah and "Colonial
Specularity": the differences between the diary
and filmic articulations of his experiences, she
argues, point to the turbulence created in the
transition from one political system to another.
Similarly, by juxtaposing the Othello films of Janet Suzman and
Trevor Nunn, Barbara Hodgdon discovers an underlying
racism, which acquires sharper meanings in the
context of a comparison with the O. J. Simpson trial.
Indeed, it is the means
whereby a Shakespearean film intersects with related
discourses that seems to occupy the contributors most
urgently. Many of the essays are interested less in
the traffic on screen than in the connections between
a host of cinematic conventions. For Donald K.
Hendrick, Branagh's Henry V is best understood as a
reworking of the Dirty Harry movies, while James N.
Loehlin finds in Richard Loncraine's film version of Richard
III a parody of the
heritage costume drama. These two essays are eloquent
meditations on the inseparability of the bard from
other narratives on celluloid. But the relationship
is not always one-way. In a neat inversion of the
schema, Katherine Eggert argues in her chapter that Antony
and Cleopatra is
the submerged source for a number of Hollywood films
(including Bugsy), the play itself being
unfilmable.
Such is the versatility
of these productions that Shakespeare's cultural
presence alone operates as a grammar through which
investigations into peculiarly modern concerns can be
conducted. In this connection, the essays of Sue
Wiseman (on My Own Private Idaho) and Richard Burt (on queer
Shakespearean appropriations) are crucial
interventions, for they trace with a telling
persuasiveness the ease with which Shakespeare can
form part of a critique of press censorship and
family abuse. Finally, it seems, the modern
Shakespearean film represents most frequently an
opportunity to comment upon and revel in the power of
technology. In her sensitive discussion of The
Animated Tales, for
instance, Laurie Osborne evokes the multiple ways in
which the twentieth century recreates Shakespeare's
texts. Pride of place in these technology-centred
readings, and in the collection itself, however, must
go to Peter Donaldson: his essay on Prospero's
Books is an
inspiring reflection upon the film's interactive
character, concern with the processes of
reproduction, and indebtedness to metacomputational
and metadigital elements.
Some films,
unfortunately, are rather under-represented. Recent
productions such as As You Like It (1992), Ill Met by
Moonlight (1994), Tempest (1982) and Twelfth
Night (1996)
receive only brief mentions, occasionally none at
all, and the very latest crop of movies (Hamlet [1997] and Romeo
and Juliet [1997]),
entirely understandably, are not considered in great
detail. In itself, however, this is a mark of the
vitality of the field and an indicator that there is
more work still to be done. Shakespeare,
the Movie will
intrigue and surprise: it forms an important and
original contribution to a rapidly growing area of
enquiry.
