Filming Shakespeare's plays : the adaptations of Laurence Olivier, Orson Welles, Peter Brook, and Akira Kurosawa

Davies begins his study with a comparison of theatrical and cinematic space showing that the dramatic resources of cinema are essentially spatial. Central chapters focus on Welles' Macbeth, Othello, and Chimes at Midnight; Olivier's Henry V, Hamlet, and Richard III; Brook's King Lear; and Kurosawa's Throne of Blood. Davies then discusses the dramatic problems the sources for these films pose for the film maker and he examines how these films influenced later theatrical stagings. The book concludes by exploring the demands that distinguish the work of a Shakespearean stage actor from his counterpart's in film. The temptation and the tendency to judge Shakespearean film in terms of some sort of theatrical achievement stems partly from that critical tendency to impose old criteria on new artistic fields, partly from the appearance on the screen of established stage actors in Shakespearean roles and partly from a persistent belief - which intelligent criticism has done little to shift - that cinema is really 'canned' and transportable theatre.