Paul Scofield has always excelled in Shakespeare. To see him as Lear is to see nobility turn to pauperdom; pride to a frenzy of madness; manhood to senility, in the course of a unique dramatic experience. Directed by Peter Brook and backed by a skillful cast, his mastery and maturity are seen at their most stunning level. This performance, and this direction, must surely count as one of the classics in the history of great Shakespearean drama on film.
viewer's comments:
- Exceptional
Peter Brook's film is a very bleak and barbaric interpretation of King Lear. He does a great job directing and whilst some of his experimentation doesn't pay off (such as very strange zooming with Kent at the beginning), when it does pay off it is fantastic (such as Lear's monologues)
- a very powerful interpretation
Ah, now for my 100th review, chalked up after roughly four years of semi-regular sly-winking IMDB usury... What better for the "occasion" than a controversial adaptation of perhaps William Shakespeare's finest tragedy?
I watched this as part of my degree work on Shakespeare; I decided to focus on Shakespeare films, tracked down as many as I could and watched a good few. This was the first I viewed, and can I emphasize how contrasting a view of "Lear" it is as compared to Kurosawa's "Ran"? Whereas that film is wilfully expansive and an epic, if not a history, Brook's "King Lear" is a pared down, Beckettian film visualization of the play. There are very few backgrounds, characters' faces frame so many shots, creating a claustrophobic focus. The interiors that there are are bleak, barren, less than inviting places; there is no sense of a royal grandeur (unlike "Ran") from which Lear falls.
Lear himself is played as an unfeeling, almost robotically callous chap early on, with Scofield delivering the lines in a very restrained, unexpressive way. This is far from the passionate, headstrong character of most performances. He is a husk of a man, and a dulling bully of a monarch, shown by the naturalistic, unbalanced violence he displays when in Goneril's castle. The feeling of Lear, later on in the play as genuinely a "fond" as well as "foolish" man, is downplayed deliberately. Again, the delivery of Shakespeare's poetry is muted. He comes across as perhaps too restrained and passionless in the later stages. The shift from power to impotence is however excellently conveyed during the storm scene, as first we see a shot of Lear from below, which then shifts quickly to one from a bird eye's view
Director: Peter Brook
Writers: Peter Brook, William Shakespeare (play)
Credited cast:
Cyril Cusack ... Albany
Susan Engel ... Regan
Tom Fleming ... Kent
Anne-Lise Gabold ... Cordelia
Ian Hogg ... Edmund
Søren Elung Jensen ... Duke of Burgundy
Robert Langdon Lloyd ... Edgar (as Robert Lloyd)
Jack MacGowran ... Fool
Patrick Magee ... Cornwall
Paul Scofield ... King Lear
Barry Stanton ... Oswald
Alan Webb ... Gloucester
Irene Worth ... Goneril
Country:UK | Denmark
Language:English
Release Date:4 February 1971 (Denmark)
Also Known As:O vasilias Lear
Runtime:137 min
Sound Mix:Mono
Color:Black and White
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