Bibliography: Book to Film

Notes Section

Dear Reader,

Over the past year I have accumulated a number of original investigations of Shakespearian cinema. Ba= sed on varying degrees of relevance to my thesis project, some of this work has been incorporated into the body of my thesis, while much has also been abandoned in the early stages of writing. It occurred to me that this mater= ial might still have some academic value, and so I have included the ten most developed of these abandoned investigations in this notes section. Because = these notes remain rough and unedited, they should be considered as optional read= ing only and as entirely separate from the work intended to fulfill my academic requirement. Thank you very much for your understanding and I hope you find this work informative.

Sincerely,

Ethan Stone

1. Realism Versus Intelligibility

The film negative has an indexical relationship to the scene it captures. Film records reality, and is therefore anchored to realism. Yet this reality is inevitably only part of the original event, and this event is only recorded in order to form a fictional narrative. From th= is ironic point branch two opposing schools of film theory: one that emphasizes the artistic importance of realism in filmmaking, the other emphasizing the intelligibility of the films narrative. This theoretical debate over realism versus intelligibility is very important to the issue of fidelity in contemporary Shakespearian cinema. As the illusion of reality in filmmaking= can be destroyed when the speech and perspective seem out of alignment or out of sink (scale matching), so can the art of Shakespeare be lost when the langu= age and setting seem out of alignment or out of sink with, and thereby inaccess= ible to, contemporary culture and modern audiences. I think that the importance = of the notion of fidelity is to remind us to be conscious, both as artists and= as spectators, that Shakespeare did indeed exist, in a very specific time and place. While there are many timeless elements to his plays, the specificity= of time and setting can seam out of alignment with the modern world, and along with language, can create barriers between the audience and the bard. If on= e is able to separate the timeless elements of these plays from the time specific elements, barriers between our understandings can be broken down without destroying the more relevant elements of the plays.

The film, once created, exists independently of t= he filmmaker. When film is created, it becomes its own entity to be experience= d. Whether or not it is the original[1]<= /i>, it becomes its own unique and therefore original experience. Recording capt= ures a part of an experience, allowing its creator to manipulate and perfect it. Take for example Dr. Dre’s album, Chronic, which begins by telling the listener, “This should be played at high volume, preferably in a residential area.”[2] This call to action gives the audience the information it needs to hear sou= nd not as it was recorded, but as it was intended to be heard. Shakespeare left many clues about the way in which his plays should be experienced, and it is important for these clues to be considered when a filmmaker reinterprets his work.

In other cases, film production itself is manipul= ated in order to facilitate the successful adaptation. The point of all this is = that as an artist, the primary concern of the filmmaker is not the accurate translation of the text, but the accurate production of the interpretation = that exists in his or her mind. And perhaps “best possible” is a bet= ter phrase to use here.

2. Mechanical Reproduction

“We must expect great innovations to transform the entire technique of the arts, thereby affecting artistic invention itself and perhaps even bringing about an amazing change= in our very notion of art."—Paul Valery, Pieces sur l'art ("La Conquete de 1'ubiquite")

Director Michael Almeyreda&= #8217;s Hamlet is a great example of such innovations in art. His contemporary vers= ion of Shakespeare’s play successfully incorporates modern technology eve= n to the extent of a mechanical reproduction of Shakespeare’s play within a play scene. Instead of “catching the conscience of the King” wi= th a troupe of actors, Almeyreda’s Hamlet is an armature film maker who creates a digital media collage to that end. Other instances of film within film include the ghost of Hamlet appearing on the surveillance monitor, and the “to be or not to be&= #8221; speech spoken in front of a television set playing the Crow in a Blockbuster video. These are clearly deliberate choices, but are not so blatant that the film becomes too self reflective. Almeyreda is gutsy enough not just to translate Hamlet into modern times, but to use modern settings to draw out = new prallels. For example, he translates Denmark into New York, where we find t= he struggle of the amateur artist’s mechanical reproduction of the corpo= rate monster to be a metaphor for real world Hollywood.

3. “Dreamworks”

In Richard III, dreams are = an important recurrent motif, both prophetic and symbolic.

Stanley’s dream proph= esies Hasting’s death. And Clarence’s dream of being drowned at see by Richard does not just foreshadow his death, but also the means of his death= in which he is drowned in a wine barrel. In Loncraine’s Richard III , Clarence’s blood becomes the wine (symbolic of the blood of Christ) as his throat is slit by Richards goons as he baths. Richard’s dream is especially vivid because it is physically made of the same stuff as the character’s waking life, film. That is why Richard III’s nightm= are of the boar is so terrifying: we know almost immediately that it is a dream, but it exists in the same space as the real life boar that Richard had fed earlier in the film. He wakes up in a cold sweat and one of his minions hol= ds him in his arms like a mother. He is a despicable villain. But having been physically inside his dreams to the extent that we are into the movie, we k= now that this is one of those rare moments where he is not acting. He is genuin= ely scared, and we know this because we have been scared. Dreams, it seams, can come closer to actual reality than reality itself.

4. Values

Henry IV is an interesting = case study of family values. In Henry IV, Prince Harry is caught between conflic= ting roles as both a rebellious youth under the direction of the decadent Sir Jo= hn Falstaff and as the Prince and son to King Henry IV. Although these parental figures generally represent opposites, King Henry took the crown unjustly f= rom Richard II, and so we see that he is also an immoral figure. In director Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho, Scott Favor (Prince Harry) and his friend Mike Waters come from opposite backgrounds in terms of family values, but they both seam to question the values of their parent and peers. They f= ind themselves on overlapping journeys to discover their own values and sense of purpose. To me, this film suggests that true values must be formed by experience and that the example of others should not be directly assimilated but rather used as a mirror to oneself.

5. Brotherhood

The “we band of brothers” speech and the subsequent battle tells a lot about the importance of camaraderie and moral in a conflict. Though fighting against impossible odds, the band of brothers one the day because they had re4ason = t o be brave. Or did they? The king’s speech is the greatest battle speec= h of all time. Yet he is only there to speak it because of the corrupt church who prompted him to wage an unjustified war against the French. If only Bush had studied in college. One line of this speech and he’d be a hero5. Romeo & Juliet: Bad Luck: Romeo and Juliet seem married to bad luck from the moment they meet each other. Coming from rival families, their love is doom= ed but they seem fated to love each other. Romeo does all he can to love his e= nemy for the sake of his love of Juliet, but bad luck returns in the fatal quarr= el between his beloved Mercutio and Tybalt in which Tybalt is slain. He seems = to have no choice but to avenge his friend, and to Romeo, his subsequent banishment is worse luck than death. And finally, even death comes unluckily upon these star crossed lovers. Baz Luhrman’s Romeo + Juliet takes bad luck further than Shakespeare through a focus on timing and with the help of the more intimate physical perspective a lens can bring to a screen than a = play can bring to a theatre audience. Romeo misses the delivery man with Friar L= awrence’s letter that would have united him with Juliet only a moment too late. But i= t is the final scene in which bad luck becomes agonizing. As in the original pla= y, Juliet

awakes only a moment after Romeo ta= kes the poison. But in the film, the subtlest details under a zoom lens make the moment more longer. We see Juliet’s hand stirring and Romeo kisses he= r. We see her begin to smile, not realizing that Romeo is taking the poison. H= er first sound causes a reaction in Romeos throat in which he swallows the poi= son and seals his fate. Everything is so close, it’s as if moments overla= p. Yet they still miss each other by the tiniest imaginable increment of time, realizing their bad luck a moment before death and yet a moment too late to stop it. An interesting side note is that Mercutio is the one character who chooses not to blame fate and luck. Instead, his dying words are “a plague on both your houses”, clearly indicating that he blames these characters, and not his fate of luck, for his untimely death,

6. Prophesy, Destiny, & Experience

It’s interesting how = any movie, especially a movie that prophesies and then enacts a series of order= ed events such as Kurosawa’s Thr= one of Blood, would remain suspenseful upon repeated viewings. You know what is going to happen. Yet we find ourselves caught up again and again in the suspense of fateful moment for which we already know the outcome. When we h= ave emotions for a certain character, we will certain things to happen to them = in spite of the knowledge that our hopes are futile because we know their cert= ain fate. Prophecy is the driving motif of Macbeth. The question is whether or = not prophesy is self fulfilling. Does Macbeth bend his fate to his will, or is = he completely at the mercy of his fate? I think that most every example can be used in support of either argument, so I think the argument is not worth ma= king here. But it is important to consider. Perhaps it is this question that kee= ps Macbeth so fascinating even after repeated viewings. The movie is the same every time, yet it can feel different every time when one keeps the mind op= en to this important question.

Can a film become an event,= unique in every encounter? It seems that for Shakespearian film adaptations, this = is becoming a possibility. Take for another example the Vampire and Werewolf f= ilm, Underworld. This may seem irrel= evant to Shakespeare, but the creators of this film say they drew directly from Robert Wise and Jerome Robbin’s film adaptation of West Side Story, which = can be traced back from the original Broadway musical to The Fantastics, the English translation of Edmond Rostand’= ;s Les Romanesques, based upon William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Julie= t, based upon Ovid's Latin retelling in the Metamorphoses, going back to Greek Mythology with Pyramus and Thisbe and beyond. Keepi= ng this lineage idea in mind, note the work of Gus Van Sant, whose film My Own Private Idaho is a new performance of Welles’ Chimes= at Midnight, itself a new performance of Shakespeare’s Henry IV, roo= ted in history itself. Here we are rediscovering the play in a different time on the screen, as one might do by seeing different performances of a play. Fil= m can be different the second time w= e see it if indeed the second viewing of = Henry IV is Chimes at Midnight, a= nd the second viewing of Chimes at Midnigh= t is My Own Private Idaho. Not on= ly do we find a new experience from the constant outpouring of adaptation, this n= ew experience can change or complicate our experience of the original. Theoretically, any film that has been put into digital format can live on forever. It is difficult to imagine what sort of mediums will replace the audiovisual experience of film, but it is not likely that the genre of Shakespearian film will ever be forgotten. Perhaps in time, the individual production will be recognized, not as a subordinate to the literature it adapts, but as a component to a long chain of art history.

7. Regicide

Regicide is an essential th= eme to Hamlet, Richard III, Macbeth. I find that these plays suggest something very interesting: that it not worth killing a king to become a king, but it is w= orth killing a king to avenge a King. In each of these plays, someone commits regicide in order to become king, only to live out their remaining days on earth in misery. One can never rest easy when one has stolen the crown beca= use there will always be someone who knows that it has been stolen. The power of the crown comes not from the crown itself, but from the legitimacy of its bearer. It is only Richmond, in overthrowing Richard III, who seams worthy = of the crown out of all the plays characters. But then again, Queen Elizabeth = was a descendant from Richmond (King Henry VII), so he didn’t have much choice on how he spun this. I suppose regicide is regicide, homicide is homicide, and no matter what the motive, one still ends up with blood on th= eir hands.

8. Laughter

Julie Taymor’s Titus = stylizes two related instances of extreme laughter. The clown has just presented Titus’s hand and the head’s of his two sons, and Titus begins to laugh. His laughter, though not hysterical, is very extreme because this se= ams to be the most inappropriate moment to laugh. Marcus asks Titus “Why = does thou laugh? It fits not with this hour.” And Titus responds, “W= hy, I have not another tear to shed....” Anthony Hopkins earns this moment respectful pause…Indeed, I had nearly cried with him at the crossroads when he had first wept for these sons whose heads are now before him, and f= or his poor daughter, who stands next to him. I had gritted my teeth as Aaron = cut off his hand, and now finally, all his woes are before him a second time. D= oes Titus laugh because he is overwhelmed? I think not. Titus laughs because it= is his best move. He has already mourned and suffered, and to continue to mourn would only bring further misery on him. To laugh at such a moment is his greatest possible show of life and power, to defy an enemy whose greatest j= oy comes from killing Titus’s spirit. At the plays end, Aaron tells Lusc= ious that “I played the cheater for thy father's hand, and when I had it, = drew myself apart and almost broke my heart with extreme laughter.” The on= ly way for Titus to defeat such a foe turns out, as it turns out, is to turn t= he joke around and laugh back, which he does in the dinning room, gleefully watching Tamora eat her “own increase”. And what a touch of gen= ius for this character to be Dr. Hannibal Lecter, bringing all the emotions from this other award winning film into the scene.

9. Bodies

In Greenaway’s Prospero’s Books, nude bodie= s are everywhere. We discussed at the dinner party what these bodies represent, a= nd I think we finished our converstion with more questions than answers. I have toyed with the idea that these bodies represent an ironic state of freedom = that can be related to the story of Adam and Eve. I have considered that the spi= rits are all naked because that is how God’s, nymphs, and spitis have traditionally been represented (takes for example the Greek’s depicti= on of naked God’s). I think it is hard to say what is being suggested by= the bodies, but the film certainly does seem to deal with human form. In fact, = man of Prospero’s books are related to anatomy, the inner workings of the mind, etc. Perhaps the bodies are related to this study.

Bodies in Kurosawa’s = Throne of Blood seemed to me to create an additional layer to the story of Macbeth. The original play certainly concluded with a body count high enough to crea= te the piles we see in Throne of Blood. But the interesting thing is that we s= ee the piles of bodies in the forest by the witch in the beginning of the film. The assumption is that these are the dead soldiers from the war that has ju= st been waged. But their various stages of decomposition suggest otherwise. It seams that the witch has been an ever present force of evil, and that Macbe= th is just the next of an unending line of bodies that are doomed to join the wit= ches pile for their inability to see beyond their destiny.

10. On Looking for Richard<= /i>
As I checked a dozen books = out of the Princeton library to begin my thesis, the security guard who checked me through the counter asked me “Why are so many people still into Shakespeare?” I began with a typical response about how Shakespeare i= s a peerless genius whose timeless plays are rich in both poetry and in their explorations of human nature, etc. “But as wonderful as the plays are= to read,” I concluded, “America is probably more into his movies.” While the box office proves America’s devotion to Shakespearian film adaptations, it is interesting to discover that many American actors have considerable anxiety over performing Shakepeare on scr= een. In 1996, Al Pacino produced a documentary style film adaptation of Richard III called Looking for Richard, addressing this issue. Categorizing this production is difficult, as it is more concerned with getting in touch and getting comfortable with Shakespeare than about performing and producing his play. This production is not just a film; it is “a film about a film”[3], an “Adaptation concerned with the process of adaptation itself[4], cataloguing “abiding obstacles to the appreciation, interpretation, a= nd production of Shakespeare” and suggesting “methods for overcomi= ng such obstacles”[5] Through interviews with Shakespeare scholars and work with actors including John Gielgud, Derek Jacobi and Kenneth Branagh, this explorative production spends considerable time addressing the notion that American Shakespeare is inferior to the original.

This production notes the “barriers between an American ‘us’ –represented and guided by Pacino-and Shakespeare.” Pacino and his co-producer Michael Hadge and James Bulliet discuss who should be the director. Pacino seems af= raid to take on this responsibility, a fear which he acts out as we suddenly find him behind a curtain of a New York theatre. “This is my entrance,R= 21; he tells the camera dejectedly, and passes through the curtain. Alone on st= age he, acknowledges his one man audience, who happens to be Shakespeare himsel= f, with a single word, “Fuck!”&nb= sp; The opening credits roll to interviews with Europeans on the street who a= sk questions like “What the fuck do you know abut Shakespeare?” and “Will you do the play with your American accent?” Shakespeare is embedded in American culture yet most Americans find his work intimidating. Why?

“F. = Murray Abraham notes the trap many American readers (including actors) fall into of approaching Shakespeare too reverentially; Derek Jacobi agrees observing th= at American actors are often “inhibited” by self-consciousness attitudes over their abilities to perform the plays; John Gielgud ascribes = the difficulties to a lack of familiarity with Shakespeare’s age, he impl= ies, with English culture more generally.” (44 Shakespeare in the Cinema)<= /p>

“The goal is to ̶= 0;shake off their sense of inferiority as Americans” and to “make Shakespeare more accessible, revealing the ‘feeling’ behind its words; and interviews with ordinary people are juxtaposed with rehearsals a= nd final performances. After an exhausting death scene, Pacino, playing Richar= d, clearly looks as though he has discovered something; but the feeling of enormous reward is undermined by the figure of Shakespeare, sitting alone in the audience, silently shaking his head” (112 Interpreting Shakespear= e on Screen)

Pacino’s Looking for Richard opens with lines borrowed from The Tempest. A narrator reads Prospero’s “Our revels now are ended,” (4.1.148-56) speec= h in which Prospero tells Ferdinand about the spirit actors that have entertained them and will now disappear. The line “And like this insubstantial pageant faded / Leave not a rack behind” (155-56) is updated to “Leave not a wisp behind.” This substitution is based on the editors note found in many modern publications of the play that explain that “rack” in this context means “a wisp of cloud”. This serves as subtle signal to th= ose familiar with Shakespeare’s plays that this film is intended to make Shakespeare more accessible. To help the audience understand the play, Looking for Richard provides an exploration of “linguistic shifts, historical background, and cultural contexts that so often keep Shakespeare remote from audiences and actors in= the United States.” (43 Shakespeare in the Cinema)