Chimes at Midnight from Stage to Screen: The Art of Adaptation

Summary

Most of the best Shakespeare films have a stage production in their background. Examples come readily to mind: Olivier had performed on stage all the plays he made into films; Kozintsev had directed both Hamlet and King Lear for the theatre before he made films of them. Zeffirelli’s film of Romeo and Juliet put the same accent on youth as had his Old Vic production; the Peter Brook/Paul Scofield film of King Lear was a revised edition of their stage version. Yet this theatrical lineage of the films has received remarkably little comment. In general, film commentators have tended to play down the ties between film and theatre (they are more inclined to see parallels with narrative literature) precisely because the two are so close, theatre came first, and the commentators are concerned to maintain the integrity of film as an independent art-form. That it is. Yet much can be learned from exploring the relations between the two forms of drama, as indeed Allardyce Nicoll, André Bazin, and Roger Manvell have already shown. They, however, have considered the subject in general terms and have not focused on particular films and the stage productions to which they were related, whether the plays were by Shakespeare or other playwrights. Admittedly, a prior stage production may not always be an asset for a film. Most critics have felt that, on film, Olivier’s portrayal of Othello would have been better if it had not so directly reflected his stage performance; what was bravura classic acting on the stage seems stagey on the screen.