The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film
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The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #68: Hamlet (1948)
68. Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet (1948) I first saw Olivier’s Hamlet sometime in 1988 or 1989 in my English class as a senior in high school. The film was Shakespearean kryptonite for teenagers: a shaky black and white print of a study of melancholia expressed with exaggerated erudition. The very notion that I should flatter such work with Continue reading
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The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #67: Tromeo and Juliet (1996)
67. Lloyd Kaufman’s Tromeo and Juliet (1996) Last week, the bourgeoisie wet dream that is Carlo Carlei’s Romeo and Juliet so dismayed me that I decided the time had come to try Tromeo and Juliet. From time to time, I review films that may seem tangential to Shakespearean theatre, such as Strange Brew and Gnomeo and Juliet and Continue reading
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The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #66: Romeo and Juliet (2013)
66. Carlo Carlei’s Romeo and Juliet (2013) Why does Carlo Carlei’s Romeo and Juliet make me cranky? I think part of the problem is that David Tattersall’s camera is a little too enamored with the posh art direction of Gianpaolo Rifino and Armando Savoia. These Renaissance mansions of Verona make our best museums look like hovels, Continue reading
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The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #65: King of Texas (2002)
65. Ali Edel’s King of Texas [King Lear] (2002) Those fucking snobs who discuss Shakespeare’s plays pretend like he didn’t even write any westerns. I wonder why? Oh—right. So Patrick Stewart has performed King Lear on film once, but it was set in Texas, and didn’t use Shakespeare’s text, but was re-written into a nineteenth century Texas Continue reading
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The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #64: King Lear (1987)
64. Jean Luc Goddard’s King Lear (1987) In 1987, Jean Luc Goddard answered the question everyone was asking: what if Jean Luc Goddard was haunted by seagulls and made a meta-cinematic fever dream about the history of film, fine art, and literature that occasionally thought about (or thought about thinking about) a post-apocalyptic King Lear in Switzerland Continue reading
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The Rogues Guide to Shakespeare on Film #63: Edward II
63. Derek Jarman’s Edward II (1991) Edward II is a little-known tragedy by Shakespeare, obscure probably because Christopher Marlowe wrote it, if you want to be technical. Derek Jarman’s film of Edward II is dazzlingly stylish, refreshingly direct, and deliciously playful. This visionary film is set as a postmodern anachronism. Nearly all of England is imagined as a Continue reading
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The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #62: Hamlet (2009)
62. Gregory Doran’s Hamlet (2009) Gregory Doran’s 2009 film version of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 2008 run of Hamlet boasts a tremendous cast, with David Tennant as the Danish prince, Patrick Stewart as both his uncle and his father’s ghost, and Penny Downie as Gertrude. This is a re-staging of that production on film soundstages Continue reading
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The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #61: Shakespeare Behind Bars [The Tempest] (2005)
61. Hank Rogerson’s Shakespeare Behind Bars [The Tempest] (2005) In 1950’s The Liberal Imagination, Lionel Trilling made an extended version of the argument that the liberal arts (including the experience of literature) help extend the imaginative powers of the human condition, which is necessary if society was going to thrive. This theory seems to be supported Continue reading
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The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #60: King Lear (1983)
60. Michael Elliott’s King Lear (1983) As I suggested when I reviewed Kurosawa’s Ran, King Lear is an epic fucking bummer. It begins with a heartbreak that destroys a family, and then the plot degenerates until the very notion of integrity and decency and nobility, along with a kingdom, is destroyed. The essence of the Continue reading
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The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #59: Othello (1951)
59. Orson Welles’s Othello (1951) Orson Welles’s Othello opens with some weird music by Alberto Barbers and/or Angelo Francesco Lavagnino that splits the difference between a Modernist march and Gregorian chant during the funeral march of the Moor and Desdemona, with Iago brought along, caged in captivity, like some dolorous triumph. The tragic destinies are Continue reading
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