criterionforum.org

When I first saw the National Theatre of Great Britain's film version of Othello starring Olivier in the sixties, I was overwhelmed. It was one of the greatest acting tour de forces I had ever seen. The killing of Desdemona is almost unbearable to watch.

The film is confined to the stage production a la the later BBC productions. I did get a Region 2 DVD by British Home Entertainment a few years ago and it is a great anamorphic restoration. For me this is the jewel of the upcoming collection. I have reservations about Branagh's Hamlet even though the Hollywood Misummer Night's Dream will be nice to have.

The film reviews of Othello were mixed including Pauline Kael's review concentrating on Olivier's makeup. Alas.

rgross wrote:The film is confined to the stage production a la the later BBC productions.

I think you mean the ITV adaptations of Trevor Nunn's Royal Shakespeare Company productions (Antony and Cleopatra, 1974; The Comedy of Errors, 1978; Macbeth, 1979) - the BBC Television Shakespeare productions (which is what I assume you're referring to) were conceived from the outset for television.

MichaelB wrote:

rgross wrote:The film is confined to the stage production a la the later BBC productions.

I think you mean the ITV adaptations of Trevor Nunn's Royal Shakespeare Company productions (Antony and Cleopatra, 1974; The Comedy of Errors, 1978; Macbeth, 1979) - the BBC Television Shakespeare productions (which is what I assume you're referring to) were conceived from the outset for television.

You are correct. What I was trying to indicate was that the BBC series productions were not conceived as movies and many took place on studio or abstract sets. But I just didn't express that clearly. The parallel to the ITV adaptations is more apt.

So still no announcement for HD and BD??

I'm getting the tingling sensation that Warner is going to make us buy the SD, then double dip us with the HD and BD editions.

This is what the computer industry used to call the FUD factor -- apply fear, uncertainty, and doubt to end users to so they will spend money on the latest product just to alleviate those negative feelings...

FEAR that if you don't buy the SD you will just wait and wait while others enjoy their discs.

UNCERTAINTY and DOUBT about the actual release date of the HD/BD, which may be months, years away...

All negative thoughts will be alleviated by purchasing the SD.

Is that kid Kenneth Anger, on the back cover?

Lino wrote:Is that kid Kenneth Anger, on the back cover?

It's kid Mickey Rooney.

Brrrrr, that guy never fails to give me the creeps no matter his age...

Ok, found it.

According to a Borders' employee at DVDTalk, they have an exclusive 28 page book/journal of the behind the scenes with the Hamlet releease.

I can't find any reviews for this new set and I really want to know how the Midsummer disc looks like. Anyone bought it yet?

I really, honestly can't find any reviews for this set! What's the deal?! No one's into Shakespeare anymore?!

(oh, that was a rhetorical question, of course, so no wise-cracking, please)

Yeah, for a disc that has been one of the most requested releases of the DVD era, it sure is quiet out there.

I guess a lot of reviewers are still ploughing through it at the moment! After all a four hour Shakespeare film can be a little intimidating.

I don't know if I should admit to this - I have a feeling I'm committing artistic heresy akin to Rosenbaum dissing Bergman - but Hamlet is one of my least favourite Shakespeare plays, at least in plot terms. The ghost messenger feels clunky and if there is the suggestion that this is a figment of Hamlet's imagination then Shakespeare undermines it by making the apparition appear to other characters as well. I also don't understand why someone would go to all the trouble to set up an elaborate play to catch his father's killer out and then ruin it by jumping up after every line to say "Ha! Yes this is just what you (pointing finger at stepfather) did to my dad!", when just sitting back and letting the killer slip up in his own reactions would have been better. It might be a sign of Hamlet's own madness but that is usually the point I lose all sympathy with the character as he proceeds to shoot himself in the foot in front of everyone (not to mention the way he treats Ophelia just as badly as Ophelia's father does! No wonder she goes and jumps in the lake!)

Where the play really succeeds though is in the use of language - this must be the most quotable of all Shakespeare's plays ("Get thee to a nunnery", "To be or not to be", "Neither a borrower nor a lender be","Something is rotten in the state of Denmark","Alas, poor Yorick") and that, along with the action climax, just about saves it! ( , but then who am I to judge!)

Personally I much prefer King Lear, where the crazy decision to split the kingdom up and retire is pushed through early on and the rest of the play deals with the consequences - similar to Hamlet though without the supernatural push to start the plot. Or Othello for tackling a tragedy from the point of view of the person manipulating the situation. Or Titus Andronicus for its dissection of violence in all its forms. And finally Macbeth for tackling the supernatural and the psychological effects of that encounter in a much more compelling way.

However I'm very impressed with Branagh's version of Hamlet, simply for having the guts to make such an enormously long film. He certainly manages to add the bombast to the character, even if there are times, such as in the middle of the massive soliloquy before the intermission, where he seems to be droning a little at the end of sentences, getting through the text rather than adding feeling to it. I could have done without some of the celebrity cameos - Jack Lemmon at the beginning is difficult to get past - but I could see that they were there to both make the film more acceptable to the investors and to make minor characters memorable to the audience, even if that leads to Gerard Depardieu only getting to say variations on "Aye, my lord"! Ken Dodd as Yorick was inspired though! I wish they'd shown him using a tickling stick on the young Hamlet in the flashback, although that might have been thought to be too silly!

Well, the folks at Playbill haven't wasted their time. No tech talk, but at least they're not daunted by sitting through a massive Shakespeare box.

Here's a review for you Lino.

Video:
The video standouts of the collection, naturally, are the newest films, the spectacular and colorful "Hamlet" and "Othello." But it's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" I'm concentrating on, so let me assure you it looks great, too, for a 1935, black-and-white film in a standard, 1.33:1 screen size. It is beautifully clean and free of age marks of any kind, with good B&W contrasts and reasonably decent definition.

Thank you! Much appreciated!

Interesting review! I'm much pleased to see that the Reinhardt is 143 min., as the only version I saw so far was a German dub of just about 110 min. (imdb reports that there was a truncated version running 117 min., so the 110 min is PAL speed-up, apparently). Does anyone know who cut the film down and why it was done? I'm still waiting for my box to arrive, but am now even more intrigued to finally get this film (and the Branagh, of course).

DVD Talk review.

Tonight - Tuesday, Aug. 21, 9pm on HBO - Kenneth Branagh's production of Shakespeare's AS YOU LIKE IT starring Kevin Kline, Bryce Dallas Howard, Romola Garai and Janet McTeer. Re-set in 19th-century Japan

Belmondo wrote:Tonight - Tuesday, Aug. 21, 9pm on HBO - Kenneth Branagh's production of Shakespeare's AS YOU LIKE IT starring Kevin Kline, Bryce Dallas Howard, Romola Garai and Janet McTeer. Re-set in 19th-century Japan

I hope Bryce has gotten better as Rosalind than she was at the Public in 2003, where she was truly awful.

Can someone comment on how Branagh's Hamlet compares with the complete Hamlet included in the BBC Shakespeare edition?

Here´s another review of Midsummer Night´s Dream, by Glenn Erickson. Interesting how according to n.1, "commentator Scott McQueen [sic] refutes Anger's claim several times in the commentary, although never mentioning him by name." That would seem an odd, random thing for Anger to have lied about all these years, not that he´s normal by any stretch. I haven´t bought the DVD yet, so I´m left wondering what his source is for this -- although I´ll enjoy the film equally either way

I received the box yesterday and started, unsurprisingly for me, by re-watching "A Midsummer Night's Dream". Let me first simply confirm everything said in the various reviews about the transfer. It's simply stunning. Hardly a scratch, with wonderful luminosity, perfect contrast, no compression artefacts I was aware of, and nicely rendered grain. Sharpness varies slightly, but I suppose that's in the original materials (as it's more blurred in scenes which obviously rely on heavy superimpositions). I have rarely seen any other film of that age that looked so good. Bravo, Warners! This transfer would have been a jewel in the Criterion Collection, too. It's great to see that other companies now also manage to make great discs.

And I need hardly say how unbelievably great that film is. Watching this full version (and for the first time in the original language) altered my former experiences with it. I had never realised how musical it actually is. Everything seems to be driven by Mendelssohn/Korngold's score, and it is amazing to see how often the characters lapse into sing-song when reading their lines, quite apart from all the songs and ballet scenes in themselves. Seeing the Athens scenes and the stylized interiors, always on the verge of transforming into a fairy palace, especially at the end, I wondered of what this constantly but somewhat not quite clearly reminded me. And what popped to my mind was Powell and Pressburger's "Tales of Hoffmann", especially Act II.
With that in the back of your mind, would it be possible to call "A Midsummer Night's Dream" a first example of what Powell would call "composed film", in the sense of a total unity of the arts, of text, ballet, music and visuals? Does anyone know whether Powell's ideas and practice were indeed influenced by Reinhardt's film? He only very briefly mentions Reinhardt in his autobiography, and not in connection with his own films.

Secondly, what precisely was the role of Dieterle? I only realised now that Dieterle has a co-director's credit. Is that a Dieterle film rather than a Reinhardt film in terms of the visuals, then? It would have made sense to have Dieterle do the 'filmic' work, as Reinhardt's last film as a director was 20 years earlier.

Damn, Mickey Rooney is not only still alive, but he still appears in films! That's quite disturbing. 307 performances, according to the IMDb. Satanic pact, surely.

Edit: He actually played the devil in a film he co-directed called, The Private Lives of Adam and Eve. I have always found Rooney exceptionally annoying and the idea of him, at fifteen playing Puck terrifies me! I can sort of picture it, but then I have to lie down for a few minutes.

A first review of the forthcoming "As you like it" disc. Can hardly wait...

Watched the Midsummer disc the other day and it never ceases to amaze me the wealth and sheer quantity of truly amazing movies that came out from the 30's. God, what a decade!

The Warner disc is also lovingly produced and I was startled to find that all of the extras (with the sole exception of the newly recorded commentary) were actually culled from the time the movie was made. Featurettes, actor presentations, I mean, all sorts of marketing devices were put to work in advertising this movie. We haven't really made such significant progress since then, folks.