Italics are mine

More on "Richard III"

Today apparently marks the 530th anniversary of Richard III's death at the battle of Bosworth Field. I've already written about the movie with Sir Laurence Olivier elsewhere, so for today's post, I'll briefly comment on the two other movies related to the play: Looking for Richard (1996) with Al Pacino and NOW: In the Wings on a World Stage (2014) with Kevin Spacey, who played Buckingham in the Al Pacino movie when he was in his late 30s. 

Looking for Richard and NOW: In the Wings on a World Stage are very different movies that complement each other instead of competing with each other, for those people like me who are fascinated with the rise and fall of a devious king ready to do anything to attain power.

Looking for Richard is a documentary showing Al Pacino and his creative team in New York City while they rehearse a movie adaptation of certain scenes of Richard III, and those scenes in costume. The scenes in costume are stunningly well-shot with extraordinary actors, magnificent costumes, beautiful locations - including the Metropolitan Museum's Cloisters, which made me want to go there [I've been to the Met a lot but never the Cloisters location] and read a Shakespeare play at one of the cafe's tables in the gallery [Henry VI is next on my reading list, in case you're wondering]. Those scenes illuminated the text in ways my reading of the play and the Sir Laurence Olivier movie hadn't and made me wish Pacino had shot the whole play in movie version, but the appeal of his documentary also lies in the scenes where the actors, or scholars, discuss the play. For instance, I liked how he explains Lady Anne should be played by a very young actress, as young as possible to still understand the play, because she has to truly fall for "Richard's rap" in that scene near her slain husband's casket. In the end, he picked Winona Ryder, who was 25 at the time and looked a lot younger. 

NOW: In the Wings on a World Stage is a behind-the-scenes documentary of the world tour of Sam Mendes's production of the play with the Bridge Project Company. (It played to sold-out crowds at BAM in Brooklyn a few years ago). Kevin Spacey as Richard III wears the same military uniform Colonel Gaddafi, and the movie gives a good understanding of what the production looked like for people who know the play but were not able to see the production itself, or wonder what any modern production of Richard III could look like. There are scenes in various cities of the world where the production was shown. It was a bit easier to watch than Looking for Richard, but I found the Al Pacino movie deeper and giving me more insights into Shakespeare.

An interesting tidbit is that Richard III died at age 32, but in all three movies, including the one with Sir Laurence Olivier, he is played by older men: Sir Laurence Olivier was 48, Al Pacino 54 and Kevin Spacey 55 when their movies came out. This reminds me of Cleopatra in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, who is supposed to be a young woman when she seduces Mark Antony, but is now traditionally played by a more mature woman. There aren't enough good roles for actors and actresses who have outgrown the roles of jeunes premiers. 

Here is the YouTube trailer of Looking for Richard (not as good as the movie itself).

Enjoy!

And here is the YouTube trailer of NOW: In the Wings on a World Stage.

Movie reviews: "Cleopatra" (1963) vs "Antony and Cleopatra" (1972)

There are many important questions to ask oneself in life, and "should I watch Cleopatra (1963) with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, or Antony and Cleopatra (1972) with Charlton Heston and Hildegard Neil on Amazon Instant Video?" is not one of them. Yet, I have a soft spot for the Shakespeare tragedy, since it is the first Shakespeare play I ever saw, and on top of it I saw it in 2009 at the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, which has ended up playing an important part in my life, and it was also the first play I ever saw at PSF, I think. (I suppose American schoolchildren get to see Shakespeare plays in school shows, but I only came to the US when I was 22, and that was for graduate school in engineering, so I've had some catching-up to do.) The other reason is that there are few good roles for women past the age to play ingenues, and few good (leading) roles of queens. So, for the benefit of universal knowledge, I've watched both movies so that you don't have to.

The Charlton Heston movie is a faithful adaptation of Shakespeare's text and lasts about 2 1/2 hours. You can get the text of the play and follow along, most of the time. Because Cleopatra has become a theatre role for mature women, I was surprised to see her played by a much younger woman than Antony/Heston. I enjoyed the sets, the costumes and the supporting actors, especially Jane Lapotaire who played Charmian and has had a distinguished career in the theater. This was still the time where Hollywood productions could be lavish, and the movie will give students a good idea of what the play is about. Yet, it felt to me like a vanity project for Heston, who also directed the movie, following the well-publicized commercial failure of Cleopatra a decade earlier. 

As for Cleopatra, maybe I love kitsch too much but I loved, loved, loved that movie, although the Amazon Instant Video version is about 4 1/4 hours along, and that's supposedly after the director made cuts. Everything about that movie is outsized - you can understand why the studio ran into financial difficulties when you see Cleopatra's palace or her barge or the statue on which she is perched - and it truly is a treat to watch. The version in the movie theaters was drastically cut, so it should not come as much of a surprise that the movie has much better reviews on Amazon than it had in its days. That movie fills in the blanks in the scenes that we're only told about in Antony and Cleopatra, and also starts the action much earlier, at the meeting between Caesar and Cleopatra. It takes a long time for Antony/Richard Burton to appear in the movie, but even the part that comes before that, with Cleopatra bearing Caesar's son and coming to Rome and then Caesar being assassinated, was very much spellbinding. There again, the actors playing the supporting roles were excellent, especially Rex Harrison as Julius Caesar and Martin Landau as Rufio. And then of course there is the Burton/Taylor couple, as charismatic on screen that they were off, and both remarkable actors. They are more famous now for their movie of Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Cleopatra is obviously a very different kind of entertainment, but it was a lot of fun to watch.  

Here is the first scene of Antony and Cleopatra  (it's ok if that's the only thing you watch of that movie).

And here is the trailer to Cleopatra. (Watch it! Watch it! Don't let the 4 1/4 h running time scare you! I wish Hollywood still did movies like that today.)