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Description
The first Shakespeare film King John was made over a 100 years ago, yet to some people the very idea of putting Shakespeare's plays on to film seems a very suspect one. How can cinema possibly conv
...ey the richness and complexity and subtlety of Shakespeare's texts?
For some film directors though Shakespeare is the consumate script writer, a playwright whose work lends itself very powerfully and memorably to the big screen. In this programme we'll be looking at some of the notable achievements in the history of Shakespeare on film. Later in the programme we'll be talking to the Polish film makervRoman Polanski about the making of his Macbeth, and we'll also be looking at some scenes from Macbeth recorded in Arizona specially for this programme.
| 23 | 00:02:00,000 | 00:02:05,000 | ..moments in Macbeth's speeches, references to light and darkness. |
| 27 | 00:02:02,000 | 00:02:04,000 | they're strange and isolated and on a one way track collision course with… |
| 28 | 00:02:04,000 | 00:02:06,000 | ..their own private obscure tragedies, yes. |
| 24 | 00:02:06,000 | 00:02:08,000 | Sue Wiseman: But in a certain way they're extraordinarily powerful even though... |
| 29 | 00:02:07,000 | 00:02:11,000 | Stephen Regan: We do see some very striking uses of cinematic technique in the… |
| 25 | 00:02:09,000 | 00:02:13,000 | they're moralised in almost the same way as you find in a Western, |
| 30 | 00:02:11,000 | 00:02:14,000 | ..Orson Welles Macbeth, particularly the dissolves, the way in which… |
| 26 | 00:02:13,000 | 00:02:17,000 | and they were working on a Western set, in that very early… |
| 31 | 00:02:14,000 | 00:02:18,000 | ..certain images just turn into a very fluid state. |
| 27 | 00:02:17,000 | 00:02:21,000 | ..the beginning of the light and shade is when he's sitting talking to Banquo... |
| 32 | 00:02:19,000 | 00:02:23,000 | Sue Wiseman: Yes that's the area in which the film organises ambiguity as opposed to... |
| 28 | 00:02:21,000 | 00:02:24,000 | (Sue Wiseman) ..they're having their conference, he's at the front of the stage… |
| 33 | 00:02:24,000 | 00:02:27,000 | ..the black and white imagery which creates contrast. It seems to me that... |
| 29 | 00:02:24,000 | 00:02:28,000 | (Sue Wiseman) ..as it were, or the camera, and yet he's dark, whereas Banquo is light, |
| 34 | 00:02:28,000 | 00:02:32,000 | ..the hallucinatory quality of Macbeth's own life and the way his life is turning into… |
| 30 | 00:02:29,000 | 00:02:32,000 | (Sue Wiseman) and at the back, and the relationship between the black and white… |
| 35 | 00:02:32,000 | 00:02:36,000 | ..a phantasmagoria, is really beautifully conveyed by the dissolves, and there's… |
| 31 | 00:02:32,000 | 00:02:35,000 | (Sue Wiseman) ..as it were, all the way through, works in tension, |
| 36 | 00:02:36,000 | 00:02:42,000 | ..a wonderful moment when he's thinking about the murder of Banquo and Fleance, |
| 32 | 00:02:36,000 | 00:02:40,000 | (Sue Wiseman) ..but does work always so the lighter is the morally good quality and… |
| 33 | 00:02:40,000 | 00:02:42,000 | (Sue Wiseman) ..and it seemed extraordinary to get a richness out of that… |
| 34 | 00:02:42,000 | 00:02:46,000 | (Sue Wiseman) ..while working with a very simple as it were black and white morality. |
| 37 | 00:02:43,000 | 00:02:48,000 | and there's a tree branch and that dissolves into the murderer sitting on the tree branch, |
| 35 | 00:02:47,000 | 00:02:48,000 | (Sue Wiseman) It seems amazing. |
| 38 | 00:02:48,000 | 00:02:55,000 | and it creates a lovely kind of set of questions about what he is acting out, |
| 39 | 00:02:55,000 | 00:02:58,000 | and how far fantasy is motivating that in that point. |
| 40 | 00:02:59,000 | 00:03:03,000 | (Kiernan Ryan) Yeah, I think that' s a wonderful example of the way cinematic technique... |
| 41 | 00:03:03,000 | 00:03:07,000 | ..in this case the use of montage and dissolves, can really capture the use of that… |
| 42 | 00:03:08,000 | 00:03:11,000 | ..the pre-figurative use of that same technique in Shakespeare s own poetry… |
| 43 | 00:03:12,000 | 00:03:16,000 | ..which is notorious for the way it can slip and slide and slither from one idea, |
| 44 | 00:03:16,000 | 00:03:21,000 | one connotation or association or image to another within the space of a single line, |
| 45 | 00:03:21,000 | 00:03:24,000 | I think that's really marvellously caught, that's a terrific example I think of... |
| 46 | 00:03:25,000 | 00:03:31,000 | ..finding a cinematic equivalent for the poetic resonances of Shakespeare's language. |
| 47 | 00:03:32,000 | 00:03:47,000 | (dramatic film music) |
| 48 | 00:03:49,000 | 00:03:52,000 | (Stephen Regan) It's fascinating as well how through cinematic technique we see… |
| 49 | 00:03:53,000 | 00:03:56,000 | (Stephen Regan) ..a comment not just on Shakespeare's age, but on our own, |
| 50 | 00:03:56,000 | 00:04:01,000 | the way in which cinema seems to pre-figure so much of what is happening in our own time. |
| 51 | 00:04:02,000 | 00:04:08,000 | Not surprisingly the Orson Welles Macbeth drew on fears of fascism prevalent in the 1940s, |
| 52 | 00:04:08,000 | 00:04:12,000 | as much as on issues of kingship in Shakespeare's own time. |
| 53 | 00:04:13,000 | 00:04:17,000 | Roman Polanski was just a child when the Welles' Macbeth was being made, |
| 54 | 00:04:17,000 | 00:04:23,000 | but his version of Macbeth also seems to show us specifically 20th century power struggles. |
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