Shakespeare Movies: Throne of Blood

Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood is a clever, deliberately paced, and broodingly shot adaptation of Macbeth set in feudal Japan.  The plot is quite true to the play, and where it deviates it does so creatively.  It's only fair to admit that I'm not a fan of this sort of movie.  I've tried watching Kurosawa's masterpiece, Seven Samurai, and was too bored to get through it.  For anyone familiar with the Macbeth story, however, Throne of Blood is entertaining enough, even in it's dull moments.  For example, when Washizu and Miki (the Macbeth and Banquo characters, respectively) ride their horses back and forth through the fog for what seems like an eternity, just to show us how lost they are, you've got to laugh.
While music abounds in a number of Shakespeare plays, it's absent from his Macbeth.  In Kurosawa's version, though, songs contribute effectively.  Some of the events are moved around a bit, and it works.  The hand-washing scene takes place only after the enemy troops have begun to approach the castle, for instance.  "Lady Macbeth" not only manages to retain her sanity a bit longer, but is much more logical throughout.  Instead of attacking her husband's manhood to move him to regicide, she builds a logical argument based on the fear that Miki will betray the prophecy to the Great Lord (the King Duncan character).  More examples are present, but I won't give them all away.
The ending is also quite different, and I'm not going to give that away, either, because it's really the big payoff.  If you're going to watch the film, you'll want to that to be a surprise.  Overall, it's a satisfying take on Macbeth.  Some of the introspective monologues are lacking, replaced by moody scenery and visual symbols that are not as effective, but are interesting in themselves.  Evil Spirit, Kurosawa's version of the witches, was my favorite part.  Now, I'm looking forward to jumping ahead in time and seeing another version of Macbeth.

Shakespeare Movies: A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1935

My exploration into the "deep cuts" of Shakespeare movies begins with Reinhardt and Dierterle's 1935 rendition of  A Midsummer Night's Dream.  I was impressed.  This is a beautifully designed and shot movie with wonderful special effects.  And it is very, very funny.  
When watching old movies, I find that it takes me a while to get used to the acting, or over-acting.  At nearly two and a half hours, A Midsummer Night's Dream allows time for that.  So, things that were annoying at the beginning, like Puck's spastic laughter, had become charming by the end.  A few scenes, especially the pre-dawn fairy round-up, could have been edited down significantly, but these scenes allowed the film-makers to indulge their whimsy, creating truly magical illusions of fairies floating on the mist or disappearing into the starry night sky.  Still, "brevity is the soul of wit."
It is impossible not to compare this movie to Michael Hoffman's 1999 A Midsummer Night's Dream, one of my absolute favorites.  As is typical, the acting in the more contemporary movie is much more subdued.  The actors in the 1935 movie often sound like they are reciting, not acting.  This is also typical, as the prevailing philosophy about Shakespearean acting has shifted over time to a more natural, less formal, style.  This is most evident, I think, in the character of Oberon, whose style follows his costume.  Making use of the black and white pallet, Reinhardt and Dierterele dress him up in a shiny black body suit and oversized crown of glittering sticks.  Hoffman, on the other hand, dressed Oberon down, way down, to almost nothing.  While overdressed Victory Jory nearly sings his lines, Rupert Everett speaks his lines effortlessly, almost sleepily.  
The performance of Helena is another study in contrasts.  Jean Muir, in Reinhardt and Diertle's movie, responds to Demetrius' rejection with helpless sobbing.  Calista Flockhart, however, is  highly entertaining in Hoffman's movie as a spiteful, obstinate mess of emotions (and hair), who makes the bicycle prop an integral part of her character.  Only Stanley Tucci as Puck uses it as well, and it helps his character even more.  After seeing the 14-year-old Mickey Rooney as Puck (pictured above), however, I have to say that a young Puck makes more sense.  The innocent, playful energy that Rooney brings to the part is electrifying, once you get used to it.  He steals the show.
In Hoffman's movie, Bottom is the center.  With additional brief action scenes, backstory, and exceptional acting by Kevin Kline, the character attains a nuanced, heroic quality.  While Kline grips your heart in his "Bottom's Dream" soliloquy, James Cagney laughs his way through it.  But that works, too.  It's a traditional take on the character, a sympathetic fool.  And while there's nothing wrong with that, Kline's performance is, in my opinion, transcendent.
Reinhardt and Dierterle's A Midsummer Night's Dream is worth watching, if for nothing else, for the cinematic artistry.  It's so impressive what these folks were able to do with film, real physical film.  It's both innovative for it's time and true to the original play.  It's exactly what it should be: comedy.

Shakespeare Movies

I love Shakespeare movies.  Live plays are even better.  And reading them is great, too, even reading about them.  It was the movies that got me hooked, though.  I watched Franco Zeffirelli's 1990 Hamlet with Mel Gibson and Glenn Close when I was a senior in high school.  But I didn't watch it at school, I watched it in my living room at home. I don't even remember why I chose to do that.  At school they made us watch two movies: first, Zeffirelli's 1968 Romeo and Juliet, which I thought was OK aside from Juliet's annoying voice; and, second, his 1967  Taming of the Shrew, which I hated.  (I'm sorry, but Elizabeth Taylor will never be more than the White Diamonds lady to me.)  This Hamlet movie was serious, though, and Elsinore felt like my living room at home: isolated and restricting.
Something else happened my senior year of high school: someone besides Franco Zeffirelli made a popular Shakespeare movie.  By casting Claire Danes as Juliet, Baz Luhrman ensured that my girlfriend, a huge My So-Called Life fan would have to see Romeo + Juliet.  We took our seats in the theater completely unprepared for what was about to happen.  They had guns, but they said "sword".  They spoke in iambic pentameter while blowing up gas stations.  Mercutio was a drag queen on ecstasy.  I had only vague notions of what a drag queen was and no idea about ecstasy at this point in my life.  It was different.  Really different.  And awesome.
In college, I had a fantastic Shakespeare professor who, in addition to taking me to my first two Shakespeare plays, introduced me to Kenneth Branagh's contemporary cinematic renaissance.  I clearly remember watching Henry V in her class, completely surprised by how much I liked it.  Today, one of the greatest pleasures I take in teaching high school is showing my students great Shakespeare movies.  Recently, I picked up Studying Shakespeare on Film by Maurice Hindle at a used book store.  Browsing it's pages got me feeling like I've limited myself by watching the same Shakespeare movies over and over again.  So, here's what I'm going to do: watch some more of them and blog about it.  To begin, let me disclose my current preferences by dividing up those films I've seen into three categories: Like, OK, and Don't Like.

Like
Branagh's Henry V (1989)
Zeffirelli's Hamlet (1990)
Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing (1993)
Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet (1996)
Hoffman's A Midsummer Night's Dream (1999)
Branagh's As You Like It (2006)

OK
Olivier's Hamlet (1948)
Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet (1968)
Burge's Julius Caesar (1970)
Radford's Merchant of Venice (2004)
Taymor's The Tempest (2010)

Don't Like
Zeffirelli's Taming of the Shrew (1967)
Branagh's Hamlet (1996)

After some research, I came up with the following list of films that I will watch in chronological order.

1. Reinhardt and Dierterle's A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935)
2. Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood (1957)
3. Roman Polanski's Macbeth (1971)
4. Oliver Parker's Othello (1995)
5. Trevor Nunn's Twelfth Night (1996)
6. Michael Almereyda's Hamlet (2000)

I realize that I am leaving out some important films, specifically the following:
1. The entire silent era
2. All films by Orson Welles
3. Kozintsev's Hamlet
4. Hall's A Midsummer Night's Dream

Perhaps one day I'll get around to those, but for the sake of time and not annoying my wife too much, I've got to draw the line somewhere.  Here we go.