By Travis Johnson
Wootton is presenting five lectures as part of Wootton Talks Shakespeare: From Silent to Sound: Shakespeare on Screen; Laurence Olivier: A Life in Shakespeare; Branagh, the Bard, and the Brits; Shakespeare: From Globe Theatre to World Cinema; and Shakespeare Goes to Hollywood. While each scratches a different itch in the story of Shakespeare’s journey to cinema, taken as a whole they are a complete rundown of the bard’s influence across the entire history and sweep of film.
Wootton, who, among countless other feathers in his cap, has served as director of the London Film Festival, and is currently CEO of Film London and The British Film Commission, is boundlessly enthusiastic about the lecture series. “I try and cover the whole waterfront of Shakespeare on film during those talks,” he says.
He holds a special place in his heart for the adaptations of Laurence Olivier, who brought Henry V to the screen in 1944, before directing and starring in Hamlet (1948) and Richard III (1955), going on to take the title role in Stuart Burge’s 1965 adaptation of Othello, and narrating Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 Romeo & Juliet. “He cracked the code,” Wootton enthuses. “and showed that you could make a really cinematic movie.”
Prior to Olivier’s work, filmmakers seemed baffled as to how to effectively marry the Bard’s writing with the possibilities inherent in cinema. “I think that people were terrified of the verse, and how to do the verse, and how to make it realistic and not off-putting for modern audiences. I think people were frightened by the period, by the setting, by the historical distance of Shakespeare.
“If you look at some of the films that were made in the 1930s,” he continues. “Romeo and Juliet by George Cukor or the Max Reinhardt A Midsummer Night’s Dream – it’s terribly stage-y and forced and formal. Olivier worked out a way to use theatrical stage performance and the real life power of cinema and cutting edge technology, being able to shoot on location with Technicolor cameras. I think that he really understood how to create something that conveyed what Shakespeare meant and was faithful to Shakespeare, but was also a real movie experience – action packed, exciting and funny. I think that was the big lesson. I don’t know how many filmmakers have said that watching Olivier’s films of Shakespeare inspired them to make adaptations of their own. I think Olivier had a profound effect on the way that people perceive Shakespeare on film.”
In ‘Shakespeare Goes to Hollywood’, Wootton traced how the American industry struggled with straight retellings of the plays, instead reworking Shakespeare’s plots and characters to their own purposes. “When they tried to do it in the 1930s they just absorbed him into the different genres of Hollywood movies and basically used him as a kind of DNA to prop up other kinds of films – Westerns and science fiction movies and thrillers. A lot of the Hollywood adaptations will surprise people – whilst people might be familiar with Kiss Me Kate being based on The Taming of the Shrew and West Side Story being based on Romeo and Juliet, they won’t necessarily know the Westerns – Broken Lance being based on King Lear or Yellow Sky being based on The Tempest. I think those will be surprising, and hopefully good introductions for people.
Meanwhile, ‘From the Globe Theatre to World Cinema’ looks at the huge and disparate number of film adaptations that have sprung from other cultures. “The diversity of work that’s been made in non-English language countries, from Kurosawa onwards, will suprise people. There have been Arabic versions of Shakespeare, there’s been this burst, in the last ten years, of Bollywood adaptations of Shakespeare, some of which are really terrific films, as well as Quebecois versions of Shakespeare in Canada. I think that, for some people, those films will be a real surprise, because people haven’t had the opportunity to see them. Hopefully this will encourage people to seek them out.”
One thing that becomes clear when talking to Wootton is that there seems to have never been a time when Shakespeare’s works were not being translated to the screen, and the modern moment is no exception. “In the not too distant past in the UK we’ve had the Coriolanus by Ralph Fiennes, and Macbeth, which are both going for a kind of authentic, gritty, quite violent experience, immersing you in the blood and guts of Shakespeare in every sense, and that contrasts with the artier versions coming out of America, Michael Almereyda (2001’s Hamlet with Ethan Hawke), Joss Whedon’s black and white version of Much Ado About Nothing, and actually a gangster version of Cymbeline that came out with Ethan Hawke (and director Almereyda again) just a couple of years ago.”
Pressed for his must-see Shakespeare movies, Wootton doesn’t hesitate. “You have to see one of the Oliviers – either Henry V or the 1948 Hamlet, which is the first British film ever to win Best Film at the Academy Awards. I think Orson Welles, who I haven’t mentioned yet, is a really important figure in the history of Shakespeare on film and his Chimes at Midnight is such a beautiful film. I mentioned Kurosawa, but there’s a now really beautiful restoration of Ran available on Blu-ray – his version of King Lear from 1985, which is just sensational. Those are just a few I’d point out that people should seek out.”
