Product Description

Film adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays are increasingly popular and now figure prominently in the study of his work and its reception. This Companion is a lively collection of critical and historical essays on the films adapted from, and inspired by, Shakespeare’s plays. Chapters have been revised and updated from the first edition to include the most recent films and scholarship. An international team of leading scholars discuss Shakespearean films from a variety of perspectives: as works of art in their own right; as products of the international movie industry; and as the work of particular directors from Laurence Olivier and Orson Welles to Franco Zeffirelli and Kenneth Branagh. They also consider specific issues such as the portrayal of Shakespeare’s women and the supernatural. The emphasis is on feature films for cinema, rather than television, with strong coverage of Hamlet, Richard III, Macbeth, King Lear and Romeo and Juliet.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #78619 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 364 pages

About the Author
Russell Jackson is Allardyce Nicoll Professor of Drama, Department of Drama and Theatre Arts at the University of Birmingham.

Customer Reviews

And no, Shakespeare wouldn't have been a scriptwriter...
The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film is a string of essays describing the problems involved in adapting what is essentially a thearical form to cinema. It's an academic work and so the writing is quite dry at times and because we have essays we have repetition - how many times you can write about Olivier's 'Richard III'?

There are three essays of note. 'Videos and its paradoxes' looks at the use of video as a study aid, and how the prouctions on show can colour the student's view of the play - so Anthony Hopkins characterisation of Othello in the BBC production is wildly different to Lawrence Fishburne's in the recent film - neither is necessarily correct, but the student might not make that connection.

'Filming Shakespeare;s history: three films of Richard III' offers the best and most honest review of Paccino's 'Looking for Richard' I've read, treating the film on its own merits and not as a version of the actual play. Finally, 'Flambiyant realist: Kenneth Branagh' again tries to re-dress the critical mauling his films have been subjected to - there really isn't anything like the four hour 'Hamlet'. The one disappointment is 'Shakespeare's cinematic offshoots' which looks at adaptations which are re-imaginings of the text. It's cursary, anodine and misses out 'In The Bleak Midwinter' and 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead'. Why?

You should buy this book!
This book was great! It really helped me with an essay as it dealt with all the major film productions of Shakespeare.