I was looking back at all the Friday night movies that have been put up and realised that there was something missing, there was no Shakespeare.

To amend this error, this week’s film is the 1955 version of Shakespeare’s life of Richard III starrring Laurence Olivier as Richard, Duke of Gloucester, later to become Richard III, Ralph Richardson as the Duke of Buckingham and John Gielgud as the Duke of Clarence. Also the respected actress Clare Bloom shines in this version of the play as Lady Anne Neville, widow of the Prince of Wales.

The film is set in the time of the Wars of the Roses, when the aristocratic families of England fought over the right to be King. Richard, Duke of Gloucester, deformed and jealous of the powers and achievements of others, plots, schemes and murders his way up the political system. By way of the spreading of false rumour and by murder, Richard finally ascends to the throne. However, once he becomes King, Richard fails to look after those who have schemed with him and carried out his orders. Thus he breaks the promises he has made to those who assisted him in his ascent to the throne.

Towards the end, his scheming and dishonesty and treachery becomes too much for some nobles and there is a revolt against Richard’s rule, culminating in a huge battle at Bosworth Field. On the night before the battle, he dreams that he is alone and there is nobody fighting with him. Late in the day of the battle, he realises that many of those who are fighting with him are just ‘bought men’, and not people who are fighting for him because they believe in him or in his right to rule. He fights on almost alone against the forces of the Duke of Richmond, later to become Henry VII, but is killed and the new King Henry, from the House of Tudor, becomes monarch.

This play emphasises all the character faults of Richard and puts great emphasis on his treachery and murder. It needs to be said that because this play was written during the reign of Elizabeth I, it was politically safer to write Richard as a villain, in order to contrast him with the later House of Tudor to which Elizabeth belonged. There are some contemporary writers and scholars who say that Richard was bad, but not as bad as Shakespeare portrayed him. Although Wikipedia is not always the most accurate of sources, this entry gives a much more rounded portrayal of Richard III than Shakespeare’s play about him. Richard did make it easier for impecunious litigants at court to be represented and did help to reform the criminal bail system and make it more just.

This 1955 version of the play is filmed in sumptuous Technicolor with effective use of moving camera-work to change from scene to scene. Some of the fight scenes would probably be done differently today, and this is one aspect of the film which is indeed dated, but it must be remembered that this version was very much a filmic portrayal of a stage play, an environment where close-ups and cutaways are physically impossible without the sort of supplementary large suspended video screens that are available to the theatre directors of today.

I loved this film and it has inspired me to examine other film versions of Shakespeare’s plays. This version of the Richard III story is neither flat and staid, nor does it rely on gimmicks to move the action along.

Here’s this weeks Friday Night Movie.

Links

IMDB page on this version of Richard III

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049674/?ref_=nv_sr_2

Wiki page on Richard III which includes information on the discovery a few years back of Richard’s body and details of its planned reburial.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_III_of_England

If you wish to follow the film with the printed script, then here is one site that carries Shakespeare’s play scripts.

http://www.william-shakespeare.info/script-text-richard-iii.htm