KING LEAR ON FILM

  • 1982 B.B.C. production, directed by Jonathan Miller (Michael Hordern as Lear).

  • 1983 Granada T.V. production, directed by Michael Elliot (Laurence Olivier as Lear)

  • 1971, directed by Peter Brook (Peter Scofield as Lear).

  • 1970, directed by Grigori Kozintsev (Yuri Yarvet as Lear), in Russian with English sub-titles.

  • 1985, directed by Akiro Kurosawa (Tatsuya Nakadai as King), Ran, an adapted version of Lear, in Japanese with English sub-titles.

All of the above are available at  the University College of Cape Breton (in library or email for info). Collectively, they provide a good sense of the possibilities of King Lear on film. If you are interested in a competent version sticking closely to the complete script, and shot inside a theatre with good television values, then probably the Miller B.B.B. production is best. I personally find the Olivier Lear inconsistent and tedious, but others disagree. As a film, the Kurosawa adaptation is superb. It won Academy Awards for best costumes as well as best foreign film, and the battle scenes are stunning. It is so gripping and slick that even with sub-titles this film might show students the enduring value of Lear. The Brook and Kozintsev films are technically interesting and (unlike the two British t.v. versions) provide powerful interpretations of Shakespeare’s script, but high-school students will find them heavy going. A complete Lear filmography can be found on the Rutger's University site.


Aside from Kuroswa’s Ran all of the films struggle with the fact that Lear was created for the stage -- a different medium. One strategy for exploring the way in which the Lear story can not only survive in a different medium, but can be transformed, might be to get students to watch two very different modern films. The Dresser, a 1983 (Peter Yates director and starring Albert Finney) film, is based on the dying days of the actor Donald Wolf it who was one of the great 20th century Lears. Although it represents Wolf Lear, the main point of interest is the way that Lear’s mad predicament is duplicated in the life of this actor. Francis Ford Coppola has said that his inspiration for making The Godfather III was King Lear, and despite the obvious distance (in character, feel and plot) from Lear, it makes an interesting project to get students to pursue the very real parallels in the two works. Aside from anything else, it provides an entertaining angle to watch the weakest film in the Godfather trilogy. (The Dresser is available in the UCCB library or email for info.   And, along with Godfather III, is also available in most local video stores.)

There are various studies of King Lear on film. The following are essential reading:
  • Lusardi & Schlueter. Reading Shakespeare in Performance: King Lear. Toronto: Fairleigh  Dickison University Press, 1991. A central concern of this book is to contrast the two t.v. versions under 6 themes. This approach could provide teachers with a structure for a whole series of classes on the play. Includes an appendix containing reviews of the Horden and Olivier versions.
  • Leggat, Alexander. Shakespeare in Performance: King Lear. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991. Contains an excellent bibliography on King Lear in performance. Includes good descriptions of John Gielgud and Harley Granville-Parker's 1940 stage production; Robin Phillips and Peter Ustinov's 1979 (Canadian) stage production; and Adrian Noble and Michael Gambon's 1982 stage production (in which Antony Sher played a memorable Fool).
  • Clay & Krempel. "Peter Brook's King Lear" in The Theatrical Image. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967, pp. 206-220.
  • Parker, R.B. "The Use of Mise-en-Scene in Three Films of King Lear" Shakespeare Quarterly, #3, 1986, pp. 75-90.
  • Miller, Jonathan. Subsequent Performances. London: Faber & Faber, 1986. This book contains a wonderful account of Miller's Lear starring Michael Hordern including an excellent aesthetic analysis of the difference between film and stage versions of a play.
  • Rosenberg, Marvin. The Masks of King Lear. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1972. This book concentrates on stage rather than film versions of Lear. Nevertheless, anyone interested in the performance of the play will find Rosenberg's work indispensable. It provides an exhaustive and judicious account of a multitude of pre-1970 productions.

A prime value of the King Lear films is that they introduce students to Shakespeare’s language in one of the most accessible ways. In many ways, young actors confronting Shakespeare on the stage are in the same position regarding language as students in Shakespeare classrooms. John Gielgud expressed very well the key issue: "I think that many young actors fail to understand what Shakespeare’s language has to offer them. Good verse— speaking is rather like swimming. If you surrender to the water it keeps you up, but if you fight you drown. The phrasing and rhythm and pace should support the speaker just as water does a swimmer, and should be handled with the same ease, skill and pace. Of course, even in the most colloquial modern speech, there is also a pattern which the actor has to find, and if this is presented with individual skill and personality, the text will carry with greater variety and significance. In some ways, perhaps, modern dialogue needs to be given even more color and tone than verse. In Shakespeare, provided you can control your breath and rhythm, the flow of the verse will help to sustain you, though you must be careful to keep control of the shape and not be tempted to put in too much expression" (Stage Directions, p.4). This essential message is expanded, detailed, and deepened in an excellent B.B.C. video, Using The Verse, made by the Royal Shakespeare Company under director and scholar John Barton (available in the University College of Cape Breton library).