Filming Shakespeare's Plays by Anthony Davies - 9780521399135

Filming Shakespeare's PlaysThe Adaptations of Laurence Olivier, Orson Welles, Peter Brook and Akira Kurosawa\nAuthor(s): Anthony Davies\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom\nImprint: Cambridge University Press\nISBN-13: 9780521399135, 978-0521399135\nSynopsis\nShakespeare's plays provide wonderfully challenging material for the film maker. While acknowledging that dramatic experiences for theatre and cinema audiences are significantly different, this book reveals some of the special qualities of cinema's dramatic language in the film adaptations of Shakespeare's plays by four directors - Laurence Olivier, Orson Welles, Peter Brook and Akira Kurosawa - each of whom has a distinctly different approach to a film representation. Davies begins his study with a comparison of theatrical and cinematic space showing that the dramatic resources of cinema are essentially spatial. The central chapters focus on Laurence Olivier's Henry V, Hamlet and Richard II.