King Lear
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Movie Reviews of King Lear
Movie Review: Not the last
Summary: 4 Stars
It is not the best. Sometimes it is boring, sometimes the scenario doesnt help. Sometimes the actors reactions (including Olivier) look incompatible to the scene. But I think this is much more a hardship inherent to this complex play, wonderful and overwhelming creation of Shakespeare. What I think is that this picture is really good and must be praised.Movie Review: King Lear is Laurence Olivier!
Summary: 4 Stars
This video helped my direct a scene for a Shakespeare competition for my high school theatre. The blocking was better than other productions. I liked how the characters were portrayed in this production more so than others I've seen. Of course, Laurence Olivier---what more can I say??Movie Review: EXCEEDINGLY UNEVEN AND SEVERELY ABRIDGED
Summary: 3 Stars
Really.
We could have skipped the extended amateur sword play between Edgar and Edmund at the end in order to have John Hurt speak ALL of the Fool's lines, and had a much better performance all around. Instead we miss much of the Fool's best parts: The exit chanting "And such a daughter . . .", the exit chanting "things cut shorter . . ." and much else. Perhaps in other places the severe abridgement makes sense to place the focus all on Olivier (as it is all about Olivier here), but it is not Shakespeare anymore than was Nahum Tate's adaptation. In fact the early brief televised abridgement by Peter Brooks with Orson Welles might be considered more true. (See it, you must, at The Orson Welles, Double Feature #1: The Stranger/King Lear.
Believe me, I could have been spared the sight of an old man splitting a tanned and stuffed rabbit skin to pull out and eat a small sack of rubber something. What is this, the original Swept Away (Digitally Remastered Edition)? I do not read these stage directions in my The Oxford Shakespeare: The History of King Lear.
And yet we have the magnificent and masterful Leo McKern, he of Rumpole of the Bailey - The Complete Series and of Help!, etc. McKern makes the definitive Lord of Gloucester, by whom all else must be judged. Mrs. Peel is not too shabby as a daughter of Lear, and stands up well, but let us mourn lost opportunities here. The Oswald is pitiful, and the abridgement of "Tom's" lines before his death most unfortunate. But none can match Bob Hoskins in the King Lear: BBC Dramatization (BBC Radio Presents) (nor its Dame Judi Dench, nor above all its magnificent and unbeatable Gielgud).
In short, and for all of the pity and sympathy poured upon the wonderful Olivier here, we find a typically poor Great Performances production, which cuts corners not only in Shakespeare but also on actors, after springing for Olivier and Mrs. Peel, and a much shortened John Hurt.
I cannot believe they left out the entire interchange after Gloucester's reading of the fake letter given him by Edmund, to cutting Edgar overhearing Edmund's astrological moaning (La, Si, Sol), questioning in his greatest line Edmund's sincerity "How long have been you been a sectary astronomical?" but jumps immediately to a DIFFERENT SCENE altogether in a different time and place and the immediate deception of Edgar by Edmund. Unforgivable.
Movie Review: Lear
Summary: 3 Stars
Olivier was always a rather mannered actor, but very smart, and his intelligence shows in the first scenes of this version which are the best I've seen. This Lear is an unpredictable, powerful old man staging a self-congratulatory ceremonial of retirement that goes badly wrong when his favorite daughter refuses to play, causing him to deliver his divided kingdom into the hands of the two ruthlessly selfish older girls. Unfortunately, Olivier's performance in the storm is upstaged by too much wind and water (often the case). The mad scenes and the climax, though, are superb.
John Hurt as the fool, Diana Rigg as Goneril, Robert Lang as Albany, and Robert Lindsay as Edmund turn in fine performances, though Leo McKern's Cloucester apeaks indistinctly, and Donald Turnbull's Edgar is too fidgety--even his performance as a possessed beggar needs to be controlled. Anna Calder Marshall's Cordelia is a little on the neurotic side to my taste.
A good deal of the play makes it to the screen (though I'd have willingly exchanged much of Edgar's unnecessarily long fight scenes for some of the cut words, which include Albany's and Gloucester's best lines). The Olivier performance, though, is the chief reason for watching this version.
Movie Review: King Lear
Summary: 3 Stars
I gave it 3 star because of my own inadequacy - I am Filipino and we are more familiar with the American english. At first I had difficult time following the "British english" accent. Otherwise I would have rated it highier. It is very good because while it is a movie, you can still feel that it as if it was stage play. I recommend it for all students of Shakespeare