SHAKESPEARE ON FILM . 'Shakespeare's stunning fluidity through time and space suggests an imagination hungry for a camera...' Robert McKee in his book Story- Substance, Structure, Style & the Principles of Screenwriting .
A while ago it was posited that if Shakespeare were alive today, he would be writing for Eastenders. It's more probable that if Shakespeare were alive today, he would be far too busy collecting royalties for the use of his plots, characters and dialogue. There have been literally hundreds of adaptations of Shakespeare's plays (over 400 feature length films) and William Shakespeare is regarded as the most widely filmed writer ever. Yet a debate still rages, that Shakespeare is box office poison. It was so widely felt that the use of his name would put off potential viewers, that Miramax seriously considered renaming Shakespeare in Love. The recent spate of teen adaptations of Shakespeare has certainly proved a bigger box office draw than the original text versions of Shakespeare. Is it possible to make a cinematic film of Shakespeare which is faithful to the original text as Kenneth Branagh has done (his Hamlet was 242 minutes long), or does the dialogue conflict with the very nature of film? . 'I am rewriting Shakespeare, the wretched fellow has left out the most marvelous things...' Ferdinand Zecca, French silent film director of the 1910 Cleopatre . Baz Luhrmann's 1996 film Romeo + Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, set in motion the idea of sexy and successful Shakespeare updates by placing the play in the modern gangland of Verona Beach. This was followed by the high school updates of 'O' (Othello), Get Over It (A Midsummer Night's Dream), She's the Man (Twelfth Night) and perhaps most successfully 10 Things I Hate About You, a 1999 reworking of The Taming of the Shrew starring Heath Ledger. It is also possible to see how the works of Shakespeare as inspiration in films has been even more far-reaching: from the betrayals of Macbeth invoked in every Hollywood gangster film including Scarface and The Godfather, to Keira Knightley taking on a Henry V role and delivering a 'Once more unto the breach...' at the climax of Pirates of the Carribean 3: At World's End. . 'I see Shakespeare's text not only as a dialogue, but as a landscape, notes from the author's diary, lines of verse, quotations...' Grigori Kozintsev King Lear - The Space of Tragedy Perhaps the greatest legacy of Shakespeare on film has been the universality, the quite astonishing number of movies in every language and from every culture. It is truly magnificent that one writer, dead for nearly 400 years, should continue to inspire film makers in Tibet, Serbia, India, China, Venezuela, Japan, Russia, America, Australia and South Africa. | Play & Poem Film History Facts . All's Well That Ends Well Antony and Cleopatra As You Like It The Comedy of Errors Coriolanus Cymbeline Hamlet Henry IV Pt 1 Henry IV Pt 2 Henry V Henry VI Part 1 Henry VI Part 2 Henry VI Part 3 Henry VIII Julius Caesar King John King Lear Love's Labour's Lost Macbeth Measure for Measure The Merchant of Venice The Merry Wives of Windsor A Midsummer Night's Dream Much Ado About Nothing Othello Pericles Richard II Richard III Romeo and Juliet The Taming of the Shrew The Tempest Timon of Athens Titus Andronicus Troilus and Cressida Twelfth Night The Two Gentlemen of Verona The Two Noble Kinsmen The Winter's Tale |
