Shakespeare Films in the Making: Vision, Production and Reception

SHAKESPEARE FILMS IN THE MAKING Shakespeare Films in the Making examines the production and reception of five feature-...

Author: Russell Jackson

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SHAKESPEARE FILMS IN THE MAKING

Shakespeare Films in the Making examines the production and reception of five feature-length Shakespeare films from the twentieth century, focusing on the ways in which they articulate visions of their Shakespearean originals, of the fictional worlds in which the films are set, and of the filmmakers’ own society. Two of the films – Warner Bros.’s 1935 A Midsummer Night’s Dream and MGM’s 1936 Romeo and Juliet – were products of the Hollywood system and reflect the studios’ desire to enhance their status with ‘prestige pictures’. Laurence Oliver’s 1944 Henry V was part of Britain’s cultural war effort and embodies visions of the medieval past and ideal leadership. The story of its production and reception – on both sides of the Atlantic – shows that it was also a significant contribution to the campaign to assert the British film industry’s response to the dominance of Hollywood. The Romeo and Juliet films of Renato Castellani (1954) and Franco Zeffirelli (1968) expressed visions of Renaissance Italy that contrast – in differing ways – with MGM’s film. This book offers readings of these significant and influential films that are informed by an understanding of the processes of film production and are supported by extensive archival research, including studio documents, script revisions, publicity materials and reviews. R U S S E L L J A C K S O N is Allardyce Nicoll Professor of Drama at the University of Birmingham. He has published widely on subjects in theatre history and Shakespearean performance, and is the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film (second edition, 2007). Over the past twenty years he has worked as text adviser on many theatre, radio and film productions, including all of Kenneth Branagh’s Shakespeare films.

SHAKESPEARE FILMS IN THE MAKING Vision, Production and Reception

RUSSELL JACKSON

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Saõ Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521815475 # Russell Jackson 2007 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2007 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Jackson, Russell, 1949– Shakespeare films in the making: preparation, production and reception / by Russell Jackson. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-521-81547-5 1. Shakespeare, William, 1564–1616 – Film and video adaptations. 2. English drama – Film and video adaptations. 3. Film adaptations – History and criticism. I. Title. PR 3093.J33 2007 791.430 6–dc22 2007009044 ISBN

978-0-521-81547-5 hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

‘Mr Stahr’s Projection Room’ was a miniature picture theatre with four rows of overstuffed chairs. In front of the front row ran a long table with dim lamps, buzzers and telephones . . . Here Stahr sat at two-thirty and again at six-thirty watching the lengths of film taken during the day. There was often a savage intensity about the occasion – he was dealing with faits accomplis – the net result of months of buying, planning, writing and rewriting, casting, constructing, lighting, rehearsing and shooting – the fruit alike of brilliant hunches or counsels of despair, of lethargy, conspiracy and sweat. At this point the tortuous manoeuvre was staged and in suspension – these were reports from the battle-line . . . Dreams hung in fragments at the far end of the room, suffered analysis, passed – to be dreamed in crowds, or else discarded. F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Love of the Last Tycoon, ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli (New York: Scribner’s, 2003), pp. 52; 56.

‘Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits, and Are melted into air, into thin air; And like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve; And like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a wrack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.’ (William Shakespeare, The Tempest, IV.i.147–58)

Contents

Acknowledgements List of illustrations Abbreviations

page viii x xii

Introduction: ‘Such stuff as dreams are made on’

1

1 Max Reinhardt’s recurring Dream: Hollywood, 1935

12

2 Historical-pastoral: Laurence Olivier’s Henry V, 1944

70

3 Visions of Renaissance Italy: 1. ‘More Stars than there are in Heaven’: MGM’s Romeo and Juliet, 1936 2. Realism and romance: Renato Castellani’s Giulietta e Romeo, 1954 3. Shakespeare’s ‘Dream of Italy’ and the generation gap: Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet, 1968

127

Appendix: Unpublished script materials Filmography Notes Bibliography Index

222 228 231 258 269

vii

128 161 191

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to curators and staff at the following collections for their considerate and expert assistance during research for this book: Billy Rose Theater Collection and Jerome Robbins Dance Division of New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Lincoln Center, New York; Birmingham Shakespeare Library; British Film Institute; Department of Cinema and Television, University of Southern California, Los Angeles; Donnell Media Center, New York Public Library; Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC; Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Los Angeles; Shakespeare Centre Library, Stratford-upon-Avon; Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham; Warner Bros. Archives, University of Southern California, Los Angeles; Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, Madison, Wisconsin. I owe particular debts of gratitude to Kenneth Branagh, Susan Brock, Ned Comstock, Haden Guest, Dorinda Hartmann, Mike Jensen, Christine Karatnytsky, Patricia Lennox, Jeremy Megraw, Barbara Miller, Janet Moat, Niky Rathbone, Linda Rosenberg, Elena RossiSnook, Patricia Tatspaugh, Bob Taylor, Olwen Terriss, Sylvia Tompkins and Betsy Walsh. Leonard Whiting, the most effective and influential of the screen Romeos, has been generous with his time in answering queries, and in giving me access to his copy of the shooting script for the 1968 Romeo and Juliet. Michael Hoffmann kindly answered my queries regarding his film of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Patricia Lennox has shared in the viewing and research, and I owe much to her keen eye and wise suggestions. In an earlier form, parts of chapters 1 and 2 have figured in papers given at conferences of the Deutsche Shakespeare Gesellschaft and the Socie´te´ Française Shakespeare, and at a conference hosted by the Universite´ PaulVale´ry, Montpellier, and have appeared in volumes of the conference proceedings. Chapter 1 includes material from an article on the scripts viii

Acknowledgements

ix

of the 1935 A Midsummer Night’s Dream published in Shakespeare Bulletin. I am especially grateful to my colleagues for their generous support during periods of study leave from the University of Birmingham, and to the Folger Shakespeare Library and the British Academy for grants that have facilitated research in the United States. The Barry Jackson Fund of the Department of Drama and Theatre Arts at the University of Birmingham has contributed support in obtaining illustrations. R. J., March 2007

Illustrations

1. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1935. Publicity still showing (L to R) William Dieterle, Max Reinhardt and the studio’s head of design, Anton Grot, examining a model of the set for Theseus’s palace. page 24 2. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1935. The capture of the Fairy. Nini Theilade and the dancers, with Oberon (Victor Jory) and the Indian Prince (Sheila Brown) on the chariot in the background: a posed production still which represents part of Theilade’s dance accurately. 40 3. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1935. Max Reinhardt’s (and William Dieterle’s) chiaroscuro effect for the craftsmen’s discussion of Pyramus and Thisbe in Quince’s workshop. Production still showing (L to R) Frank McHugh (Quince, seated), Hugh Herbert (Snout), Arthur Treacher (Epilogue), James Cagney (Bottom), Dewey Robinson (Snug) and Otis Harlan (Starveling). 49 4. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1935. The Bergamask: production still showing the continuation of the dance, not included in the film. 58 5. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1935. Advertising material from the press book. 61 6. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1935. ‘The Production as an Attraction’: page from the press book with advice for publicising the film. 62 7. Henry V, 1944. The ‘frames’ of the film. 92 8. Henry V, 1944. Laurence Olivier as the Elizabethan actor: publicity still posed in front of the model of London Bridge. 96 9. Henry V, 1944. The shipboard scene at Southampton, following the first transition to ‘medieval’ settings. 98 x

List of illustrations 10. Henry V, 1944. The French court receives Exeter as ambassador. Harcourt Williams enthroned as the king, with Max Adrian as the Dauphin to his left. 11. Henry V, 1944. Henry and Katherine in the ‘wooing’ scene: publicity still posed in front of pieces of background set. 12. Henry V, 1944. ‘What’s Henry V doing in New York?’: advertisement from the Observer, 10 August 1947. 13. Romeo and Juliet, 1936. Benvolio (Reginald Denny) and Mercutio (John Barrymore) – and sleeping dog. Mercutio is waving a flaglike fan given to him by the courtesans: production still. 14. Romeo and Juliet, 1936. Juliet (Norma Shearer) and her attendants at the dance: production still. 15. Romeo and Juliet, 1936. The pavane: production still. 16. Romeo and Juliet, 1936. Romeo (Leslie Howard) and Juliet (Norma Shearer) in the balcony scene: production still. 17. Romeo and Juliet, 1936. Publicity still showing the lovers as if in a Renaissance devotional painting. 18. Romeo and Juliet, 1954. Juliet (Susan Shentall) in determined mood, in front of the Annunciation fresco in Friar Laurence’s cell: production still. 19. Romeo and Juliet, 1954. Romeo (Laurence Harvey) and Juliet (Susan Shentall) at the grating: production still. 20. Romeo and Juliet, 1954. The lovers kept apart by architecture in the balcony scene: production still. 21. Romeo and Juliet, 1968. Franco Zeffirelli directing Olivia Hussey (Juliet) and Leonard Whiting (Romeo). 22. Romeo and Juliet, 1968. Gold dust in the air: production still showing Olivia Hussey (Juliet) during the first phase of the Moresca.

xi

100 105 123

134 141 142 148 155

166 175 182 196

203

Illustrations are reproduced by courtesy of the Birmingham Shakespeare Library (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17); Getty Images (8, 9, 11, 21); the New York Public Library, Astor, Lennox and Tilden Foundations: Billy Rose Theater Collection (18, 19, 20); and Photofest (1, 10, 22).

Abbreviations

References to Shakespeare’s plays are to Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, general eds., The Complete Works, 2nd edn, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005). Unless otherwise credited, translations are my own. The following abbreviations are used for archives and research collections: AMPAS BFI BSL Folger NYPL USC WBA/USC WCFTR

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Margaret Herrick Library, Los Angeles British Film Institute Birmingham Shakespeare Library The Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC New York Public Library, Performing Arts Collection, Lincoln Center Department of Cinema and Television, University of Southern California, Los Angeles Warner Bros. Archives, University of Southern California, Los Angeles Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, Madison, Wisconsin

xii


This book is about the making of movie dreams from Shakespeare’s plays, the processes by which filmmakers conduct the two-way traffic between dreaming and what we take for reality. It draws more extensively than previous studies of the films in question on draft scripts and other archival sources. It also assesses the significance of the works for their makers (both corporate and individual) and the audiences of their own time. Specific scenes and sequences are discussed in detail, together with particular aspects of the ‘world’ created in each film which help to define the vision it imparts of the play, of Shakespeare and of the cinema itself. The organisation is partly chronological: the book begins with the 1935 A Midsummer Night’s Dream, followed by Laurence Olivier’s 1944 Henry V; then the final chapter brings together three Romeo and Juliet films, from 1936, 1954 and 1968, grouped together because they offer distinctive versions – and visions – of Renaissance Italy, and because on the basis of the same dramatic text they also articulate different notions of what constitutes a ‘Shakespeare Film’. Three of the films – A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Henry V and Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 Romeo and Juliet – have influenced subsequent versions, inspiring either emulation or avoidance of their approaches and methods. Traces of Max Reinhardt’s Dream can be found in Michael Hoffmann’s 1999 version, and Kenneth Branagh’s 1989 Henry V is in some ways a respectful dialogue with its predecessor. Alongside Baz Luhrmann’s William Shakespeare’s Romeo þ Juliet (1996), with its frenetic MTV-style editing and flamboyant mise-en-sce`ne, Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet now figures as a ‘straight’ version of the play – a paradoxical fate for a movie which addressed the youth culture of its own time and in some sequences mimicked the rapid cutting and cine´ma-verite´ camerawork of the New Wave. (Nino Rota’s song from the score has even become a cliche´d cue signifying romantic wistfulness, employed for a long time by BBC Radio One to introduce listeners’ love stories.) None of the films discussed uses the more aggressively innovative techniques of the avant-garde of its time, still less the ‘intensified continuity’ and faster 1

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Shakespeare Films in the Making

pace that characterise such recent works as Luhrmann’s Romeo or Julie Taymor’s Titus (1999) or the self-conscious references to the modern media in Luhrmann’s film and the Hamlet of Michael Almereyda (1999).1 Influences sometimes flow in unexpected channels, quite apart from the small group of Shakespeare Films. As they reviewed dozens of older films and animations, Disney’s animators may well have looked to Reinhardt for inspiration in the forest scenes of the studio’s first feature-length animation, Snow White (1937), and the 1935 film seems more akin to the sinister setting of Neil Jordan’s The Company of Wolves (1984) than to the relatively unthreatening woodland in Michael Hoffmann’s 1999 version of the Shakespeare play. Angela Carter, on whose stories Jordan’s film is based, pays her own homage to Reinhardt with the fictionalised Hollywood A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the novel Wise Children (1991), and the making of the 1935 Dream is the basis of Ken Ludwig’s witty play, Shakespeare in Hollywood (2005). The battlefield in Olivier’s Henry V, with its gay pavilions, fluttering pennants and green meadow, may be present in the climactic conflict of The Chronicles of Narnia (2005), where the newly appointed general, Peter, sits like Olivier’s Henry on horseback (in Peter’s case, unicornback) in shining armour with his sword raised, waiting for the moment to signal the attack. Andrew Adamson’s film begins with the gloom and danger of wartime London before bringing the children as evacuees to the mysterious old house where they will find refuge and, in due course, access to a brighter and more picturesque world. The same movement, I will suggest, occurred for audiences, if not for the play’s characters, in Olivier’s 1944 film. Even if there is no direct or conscious influence, the narrative structures of fantasy and the raw ingredients of its imagery are so potently articulated in these older films as to be at least shared if not emulated by their successors. Only the 1935 A Midsummer Night’s Dream deals in the strict sense of the word with dreaming, and none of the other Shakespeare Films discussed here moves into the area of fantasy, making the viewer share the characters’ disorientation or delusion in the manner of such expressionist classics as The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1920) – a style whose legacy can be traced in many horror films, film noir thrillers of the 1940s, and (among Shakespearean subjects) Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet (1948), Orson Welles’s Macbeth (1949) and Othello (1952), Derek Jarman’s The Tempest (1980) and Julie Taymor’s Titus. However, in more general terms all the films may be said to participate in the relationship between movies and dreams – or rather, between the experience of watching a film and that of dreaming – which has long been the subject of critical debate and the


3

source of theoretical speculation. Even though he does not refer specifically to dreams, Erwin Panofsky identifies two of the key elements of reorientation that films may be said to share with them in his seminal essay ‘Style and Medium in the Motion Pictures’ (1934): the ‘dynamization of space’ and ‘spatialization of time’.2 Even when films do not engage in the overt distortions of vision and time of stylised or professedly ‘visionary’ works, we can identify foreshortenings of time and space in even the most determinedly realist films. The compressions of time and space expressed by montage sequences in ‘classical’ Hollywood movies are often equivalent in technique and effect to those of experimental films. In his recent study The Power of Movies: How Screen and Mind Interact (2005), Colin McGinn explores the dream/film analogy in terms of the ontology of moviegoing rather than as an argument rooted in psychoanalytic theory. Among other richly suggestive propositions, he argues that a film ‘is really a dream as it aspires to be’, a line of thought that coincides with a distinction made by Stanley Cavell in The World Viewed: ‘Most dreams are boring narratives . . . their skimpy surface out of all proportion with their riddle interest and their effect on the dreamer. To speak of film adventures or glamours or comedies as dreams is a dream of dreams: it doesn’t capture the wish behind the dream, but merely the wish to have interesting dreams.’3 Citing The Wizard of Oz (1939) and Jean Cocteau’s La Belle et la Beˆte (1946), McGinn develops his analysis of ‘this dreamlike meshing of the visual and the emotional’, but the proposition is held to be true of films in general rather than restricted to fantasy films: ‘The right blend of realism and fantasy also maximizes the dreamlike character of a film, thus inducing that blissful state of dream immersion. A film must be rooted in reality, but it must also depart from reality and enter the realm of the imagination.’4 The nature or degree of an audience’s assent to the world placed before them in a movie prompts Leo Braudy to argue that ‘the mixture of meaning and matter’ in films has an especial fascination for the ‘religiously oriented director’ – whether Bergman or Bun˜uel – because belief can only have a qualified part to play ‘when everything is there’, and consequently ‘Coleridge’s concept of the willing suspension of disbelief is irrelevant to film because the problem is not to believe in something that you normally do not. . . . If there is any problem, it is extricating yourself from the cinematic illusion that is so much more believable than your normal life – Coleridge in reverse.’5 Of the films made from A Midsummer Night’s Dream since Reinhardt’s, that directed by Adrian Noble (1996) deals most directly in the ways and means of the dreamer. In it a little boy in striped pyjamas leaves the safety of a ‘real’ but in fact stylised bedroom (the

4


toys are all antiques, a nostalgic flea market of childhood) and follows a mysterious creature (Puck) along alarming corridors and through mysterious doors – but the shifts in point of view and manipulations of space and time seem devoid of content. At times an audience surrogate of a kind absent in Reinhardt’s film and at others an object of their detached gaze, Noble’s little interloper is himself too patently a nostalgic dream-figure to negotiate effectively between the mundane and the magical. Perhaps the audience needs less help than Noble, somewhat patronisingly, is offering it? Whatever account we give of the audience’s experience, whether we emphasise their psychic development or the formations of ideology or (as in theories of the ‘gaze’) the confluence of the two, the element of fantasy indulged and induced is brought into question.6 Like ‘magic’ – a word often invoked colloquially and in academic discourse in relation to movies – as a metaphor for the experience of films, dreaming has a potency equivalent to that of the dream/theatre metaphor in Shakespeare’s time and since, and is available to a comparable degree for reflections on life and illusion. From theoretical study to the output of the studios’ publicity departments, the dream metaphor has been worked at relentlessly. It is the basis of one of the rueful epithets – half cynical, half admiring – attached to Hollywood, the ‘Dream Factory’. It can be a proud boast of idealism, exemplified now by the company name ‘Dream Works’. Among the disenchanted and hostile, it can be the basis for bitter reproach. One of the persistent paradoxes of the Hollywood phenomenon is the relationship between the seemingly contradictory elements of ‘dream’ and ‘factory’, not merely on the level of anxiety about the manipulation of the audience’s consciousness, but in terms of the extent to which the industry’s employees have been autonomous agents. Can an industry dream? Should we think in terms of the ‘genius of the system’ and locate the vision of pictures in the artistic sensibility of a producer or director supported by and responding to the facilities and imperatives of a studio?7 In the case of the two Hollywood films discussed in the present work, I will argue that the ‘vision’ – attributable to different agents in each case – is as much a realisation of the studio’s selfimage as of the play’s potential or the director’s or producer’s art – or, for that matter, the imaginings of an Elizabethan playwright. A major element of the ‘system’ – whether in Hollywood or elsewhere – is stars, even when (as in the casting of Zeffirelli’s young Romeo and Juliet) they are notable by their absence. Film stars share with familiar actors in any dramatic medium the paradox of being simultaneously themselves and the fictional characters they play, but they are also projections of otherwise inexpressible desires and ambitions harboured by their admirers. In arguments


5

concerning the ‘gaze’ (male or otherwise), a key element is the complex relationship between the audience’s reception of them and the stars as representations of gender identity and fulfilment. Stars are a focus for pleasures and anxieties concerning public and private spheres, the real and the unreal and the concept of the individual.8 Filmmakers have avoided the employment of stars for aesthetic reasons (as is the case with Italian neo-realist cinema) or in order to prevent the diversion of attention from more important matters. Stars can delight an audience by demonstrating their ability to disguise themselves, but can also give pleasure by being unmistakably themselves. ‘Sean Connery,’ the advertising insisted, ‘is James Bond.’ Something significant and valuable about the confirmation of identity lurks in the spectator’s enjoyment of such ‘doubles’, and several kinds of vicarious pleasure are being given and taken at once. Most of the films discussed in the following chapters have ceased to afford as much of this pleasure as they once did – the MGM stars are less potent than they were in 1936 – but in at least one case, that of Olivier, the actor’s status as a signifier of cultural authenticity is arguably stronger now than it was when his performances in other movie roles (including Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights and Maxim de Winter in Rebecca, in 1939 and 1940 respectively, and Darcy in the 1940 MGM version of Pride and Prejudice) were more vivid than his Shakespearean work for cinemagoers on both sides of the Atlantic. Shakespeare Films form a minor element of the total output of the movie industry, but attract attention not merely on account of their qualities as films, or their usefulness in opening up questions regarding the plays, but because of their ambiguous status as cultural objects. They are ‘dreams’ in a sense different from that we might attach (as McGinn and others have done) to the medium in general. As cultural products they exist on the borders between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture; engender anxiety concerning their potential influence on impressionable audiences; and can seem to exemplify conflicts between commercialism and a less trammelled, more innocent realm of ideas and artistic expression. Shakespeare Films have been seen as representing an aspect of globalisation on the one hand and – though this argument is less likely to be heard nowadays – the shortcomings of popular culture on the other. In the contemporary critical responses from the 1930s to the 1960s analysed here, the discourses of gender, nationality and authenticity figure largely, together with those of movie stardom and achievement. Sometimes Shakespeare Films have been presented as the fulfilment of a dream, either of the medium’s capabilities or even of the playwright’s fancies, unfulfilled by his own inadequate theatres. Many Shakespeare Films have effectively returned to the staging

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methods and ambitions of Victorian pictorial theatre, ‘realising’ the dramatist’s dreams with a fullness of realistic detail he could not envisage in performance. Again, the line of influence is sinuous rather than direct: Reinhardt’s and Hoffmann’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream films, some sixty years apart, have more in common with the lavish scenography of late Victorian theatre than the more radical versions of Peter Hall (1968) and Adrian Noble, but Hoffmann’s fairies owe more than Reinhardt’s to the work of such nineteenth-century artists as J. W. Waterhouse and Gustave Moreau and the illustrations of Arthur Rackham.9 In this respect at least, Reinhardt’s imaginings are more radical than the later director’s. There is also a connection between the terms of the films’ reception and the element of dreaming within them. In addition to the visions as and when they occur in the films and ideal images of society and behaviour, these films articulate dreams (to speak more figuratively) of the theatre and of film itself. This is not simply nostalgia for a lost age of artistic excellence located in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Each film has generated a cluster of metanarratives, often carefully cultivated and publicised by its makers. One of this study’s aims is to shed light on the ways in which these dreams intersect in and around the films. Of prime importance in this undertaking is an understanding of the relationship between the processes of making these visions appear and the experiences of watching them: the progress from script ideas through production to exhibition and reception. Both ‘process’ and ‘experience’ are here in the plural, because I hope to capture the shifting nature of these entities, varied by the changing circumstances of the production itself and of the audiences for which the films were created. We who see them in the twentyfirst century are not the cinemagoers of their own time (from the 1930s to the 1960s) and it is rare for us to be able to view these films by way of the exact medium (celluloid prints projected on a cinema screen) for which they were designed.10 Even if we leave aside for the moment the issue of who ‘we’ may be, and beg important questions about the status of ‘the film itself’ as a joint product of the audience and what is put on the screen, we can identify major differences of experience, both of life in general and of the media in particular, that distinguish us from our equivalents in earlier decades. Film production can be divided into four phases: development, preparation, principal photography and post-production. To these we can add promotion (also known as ‘exploitation’) and distribution. All produce paper trails more or less specific in kind to the activity in question: script drafts, internal memos, plans and budgets, conference notes, daily production reports, music scores, cutting notes, preview responses, publicity materials


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and – in the final phase – the responses of critics, the trade press and audiences.11 For most films, only a few elements of this paper trail are likely to be available. Few filmmakers have documented their own work as obsessively as Stanley Kubrick, voluminous selections from whose massive personal archive were published in 2005.12 For films that can be documented more fully from surviving and available studio archives – such as the 1935 A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the 1936 Romeo and Juliet – the record is still unlikely to be anywhere near complete. The processes of filmmaking generate paperwork in proportion to the number of decisions taken, which during some phases of production can amount to scores of major and minor questions every day. However, we may only know (or think we know) what a director decided and why because someone who was present overheard or recalls their involvement in an exchange. An example from personal experience of one sequence in Branagh’s Hamlet will illustrate the point. Because I was on set, I know that the director took the advice of the camera operator, Martin Kenzie, in having Polonius close the gates of the chapel before beginning his interrogation of Ophelia (I.iii). I also know that earlier in the shooting a change in the weather at Blenheim prompted the removal of the second half of this scene (from line 57 of the text onwards) into the chapel from the location outside the palace where it begins, and that earlier the same morning the windy conditions had been responsible for the first part of the conversation between Laertes and Ophelia being shot looking towards the palace building rather than away from it and across the park – the wind kept blowing away the sheets of plastic and the foam that provided the background ‘snow’. We can pursue the history of the sequence even further back: the shooting script shows that this sequence was originally to be located on a path leading towards a jetty, from which Laertes was to set off by boat, presumably joining a bigger vessel further downstream on the river represented here by the lake at Blenheim, and that subsequently Polonius would take Ophelia into a boathouse to question her.13 The last of these statements can be verified from the script itself, and the decision to play the scene without the jetty, boat or boathouse can possibly be documented from memoranda, but the decision to change the direction of shooting may not be, unless it is reflected in the daily reports of the first assistant and the notes taken by the continuity supervisor. Decisions of this kind, documented only when the information has a material consequence (ordering equipment, delivering personnel to the set, and so on), are the common currency of the daily activities of filming. Most of the deliberations that lead to changes of direction at one stage or another of the filmmaking process are lost to posterity. Units exist, after all, to make movies,

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not to form archives. For the historian, a consequence of this is that hearsay, properly regarded as treacherous evidence, is often all that is available. Stories in the trade papers – such as the Hollywood Reporter – may be part of a company strategy, and gossip may or may not have been planted or created either to attract or to deflect attention.14 This is hardly surprising, given the enormous sums of money involved in large-scale productions, but on occasion (and notoriously during the heyday of the Hollywood studios) producers have contrived to conceal events ranging from major criminal activities to the mere presence of discontent within a unit. On a less melodramatic level, we can rarely document the kind of decisions discussed above. Warner Bros. memo forms carried the reminder ‘VERBAL MESSAGES CAUSE MISUNDERSTANDING AND DELAYS. (Please put them in writing).’ Thanks to this policy, and to the preservation of a large part of the script materials and other production documentation for this company’s films from the mid-1930s onwards, we have insight into many of the major decisions and a good many of the day-to-day activities behind the finished product.15 However, it is difficult to form an impression as to what proportion of the paperwork has survived in the archives for a given film. In some cases we can trace changes up to and including the screenplay as it is taken on to the studio floor on the first day of shooting, but even then ‘Final’ or ‘Complete’ stamped on a copy indicates the point reached in the schedule rather than a guarantee of authority. It is the ‘Final’ script that will be the basis of the ‘final’ budget – the costing made before filming begins for setconstruction, costume design and other craft departments, and the estimates of labour, location and other costs. By the time principal photography has taken its course, there will usually have been many changes, and more will follow in the editing suite. Others may be implemented when the film is distributed, and it is likely to be adapted for showing in different national markets. In each case I have taken account of whatever shifts in the films’ content and emphasis I have been able to identify, and also of complications in the textuality of what we often too complacently regard as ‘the finished film’. In the case of Welles’s films, including his Macbeth (1949) and Othello, the troubled relationship between the director and his financiers and distributors has been thoroughly (if not always conclusively) explored, and ‘restored’ versions of some films have been made available.16 None of the films discussed in these chapters has the complex and contested textual history of the Welles oeuvre, but the surviving documents of their script development and production reveal choices and circumstances that bear on the interpretation of the original play, the working methods of the directors and producers, and the relationship of these factors to the films’ reception.


9

Some further examples from Branagh’s 1996 ‘full-length’ Hamlet illustrate the possible (or probable) distance between drafts, ‘final’ shooting script and completed film, and the extent to which the vision may develop as work continues. In the case of this Hamlet, the changes are especially interesting because many concern ‘visions’ within the film, and the specific elements of its visual storytelling that move decisively into the area of dream and imagination. These are the flashbacks and illustrations, many of which survive in the completed film, and a number of special effects that were either modified or not executed. Some of the included flashbacks have proved controversial, not least those showing Hamlet’s relationship with Ophelia as unequivocally sexual. Other scripted but not filmed flashbacks would have included Claudius and Gertrude making love (p. 48, sc. 43) to accompany Hamlet’s ‘O villain, villain, smiling damne`d villain’ (I.v.106); Hamlet’s visit to Ophelia’s closet, as described by her in II.i; and the capture of Hamlet by the pirates (p. 167, sc. 126). None of these reached the filming stage, but they remained in the script until then. The decision to omit the suicide of Ophelia, also scripted (p. 174, sc. 130), was taken in rehearsal when it became clear that it would be better to remain with Gertrude for the speech. As for the lovemaking of Claudius and Gertrude, it would have complemented a more violent and perverse illustration (p. 45, scs. 39–40) in which Old Hamlet was watched through a two-way mirror by Claudius while the latter made love (‘roughly from behind’) to the queen. This notion had been left behind by the time rehearsals began, and various less overtly sexual situations were considered before the indoor game of curling, accompanied by significant looks, was decided on.17 These elements would have contributed to the sense of a court that is like a thin layer of decorum over madness and passion, but may well have been too arresting and sensational. In some cases they also raise the awkward question of who is ‘having’ the flashback – a character or the all-knowing camera. (If the former, the consequences must be unravelled.) Many of the special effects originally envisaged would have enhanced the film’s ‘gothic’ element. These included a book illustration suddenly coming to life and then ‘morphing’ into ‘a black sinister carriage’ in a transition to the scene between Laertes and Ophelia (I.ii–iii: p. 28, sc. 24). A major script alteration in the first scene was made at a late stage, after at least one rough assembly of the film. Horatio, Barnardo and Marcellus would have seen the Ghost, and in a vertiginous crane shot (as in the completed version) we would have seen them from the Ghost’s point of view, but we would not have seen the Ghost (p. 11, sc. 18). The strategy would have kept the image of the Ghost for Hamlet’s first encounter with it

10


in the woods (p. 42, sc. 38), at the moment when (in the words of the script) ‘a huge hand lifts him up by the neck and sends him crashing into tree where it holds him, strung up against the bark. We Cut for the first time to the Darth Vader-like visor and hear the rasping noise of a voice that sounds in agony.’ The figure of the Ghost, in his romantic and anachronistic armour, is established in the opening moments of the film by the image of the statue. In the draft and shooting scripts, Hamlet’s father, ‘a Lancelot in silver majesty’, would have been seen with Old Fortinbras in single combat with ‘heavy broadswords’ as one of a series of flashbacks illustrating Horatio’s description (I.i.79–94). None of this was filmed, and only the ‘modern’ part of this sequence (pp. 8–10, scs. 12–15) was retained, showing Young Fortinbras insisting on a military expedition to reclaim the lost territory. In general, the Ghost’s appearances as originally scripted were accompanied by more violence and ‘magic’. The purgatory from which he was temporarily released would have been shown more explicitly, with such effects as arms reaching up out of the earth to grab at him, and he would have entered Gertrude’s bedroom with ‘his rotting face further decayed’ and a great blast of air that would send Hamlet reeling, and then sit by the window (p. 135, sc. 101). All these instances of choices refine or qualify but do not vitiate the ‘vision’ of the play articulated in the finished product. For better or worse, they correspond to aspects of the film which have been welcomed or disliked by its critics. All were decisions of artistic judgement, but in filmmaking that judgement may well include considerations of finance and the use of resources as well as aesthetic strategy. The critical discussion of films can hardly be circumscribed by reference to the maker’s intentions, but such intentions are in themselves of historical interest, because they reflect the circumstances – ultimately social and economic as well as aesthetic – of film production. The potency of films as dreamlike experiences is not diminished by a sense of the cooperative nature of the work that produces them. We can examine at least some of the choices not made, and in particular the imagined visions, documented by script drafts, that the filmmakers chose (or for one reason or another were obliged) not to effect. Each of the films discussed in the following chapters raises the issue of authorship, which will be considered with reference to the individual films. The accounts given here are in terms of the ‘dream’ represented by each film, the particular circumstances of the different films, and the wider issues of cultural authority invoked by the playwright’s name and status. One example: the 1935 A Midsummer Night’s Dream celebrates


11

the principal director, the play’s author and, at the same time, Warner Bros. It is, I will argue, a dream of cinema, in which personal authorship is at once celebrated, accommodated and subsumed. In the commercial world in which these ‘dreams’ are made, credit for authorship is hotly and often legally contested, and has real financial consequences. In the narratives that cluster around each film, to a degree created by the publicity departments, the agency of an individual is often an important element. In 1944 it mattered that Olivier should be credited as director, adaptor and actor for Henry V, but the responsibility for the visions of Renaissance Italy offered by the three Romeo and Juliet films was construed differently in each case: the studio’s (or the producer’s) in 1936, and the director’s in Zeffirelli’s 1968 version. Of these three films, Renato Castellani’s 1954 Romeo and Juliet was presented to the public with the least emphasis on agency, either of an individual or a corporate body, though, as we will see, this Italian film became part of the continuing saga of the British film industry’s fortunes.

*** Three caveats. Firstly, although this study seeks to qualify assumptions about the audience for the films by citing evidence of their contemporary reception, I have often adopted the scriptwriting convention by which ‘we’ represents the imagined viewer. In moving between the scriptwriters’ work and the finished product, this ‘we’ is simply what Dogberry might call ‘the eftest way’ of indicating what is seen. The reader should also be warned that I have not given detailed accounts of the films’ treatment of their original text, though I have summarised the principal alterations made by the screenwriters and draw attention in the notes to studies that analyse the scripts from this point of view: my main concern has been with what is shown and how it is organised. Finally, a consequence of my emphasis on the films in production and in their own time is a relative lack of attention paid to their ‘afterlife’, and in particular to the stimulating and varied discussion of them in the past three decades. In many instances the evidence adduced here from script and archive material confirms or modifies the perceptions of other critics, and I have attempted to give some indication of this. Although a properly comprehensive dialogue with them is not within the scope of the present book, I wish to acknowledge here the stimulus and challenge offered by colleagues whose writing I return to again and again and to apologise to them for failing to note many points on which they have anticipated or influenced my arguments.

CHAPTER

1

Max Reinhardt’s recurring Dream: Hollywood, 1935

In the first three decades of the twentieth century, the Austrian-born Max Reinhardt was one of the most respected and internationally influential European theatre directors, renowned for productions that embraced popular and ‘classical’ repertoire, encompassing spectacle on a grand scale and intimate, ‘chamber’ theatre. He was regarded as the principal exponent of Stimmungstheater (the theatre of atmosphere) and he was habitually identified as a ‘magician’. Reinhardt’s dealings as a director with A Midsummer Night’s Dream began in Berlin at the Neues Theater in 1905 and ended in the United States three decades later, with the film he co-directed for Warner Bros. with William Dieterle. In the course of those years he had staged the play more than a dozen times, in many kinds of space indoors and out, from the Boboli Gardens in Florence to the Hollywood Bowl.1 He often returned to plays, reworking them for new theatres and audiences, but like The Miracle, Faust and Jedermann, this was a play that Reinhardt obsessively revisited throughout his career. Lady Diana Cooper, who played both the erring nun and the Madonna in revivals of The Miracle (sometimes both on the same night), observed that he was ‘too rich in invention to tolerate satisfaction’.2 By 1930 Reinhardt’s productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream had reached a total of 427 performances in Berlin and Vienna alone, not counting the numerous tours.3 Making ‘these visions’ appear in the theatre was a vital part of his vision of the theatre. In a speech delivered in Vienna in 1928 he admitted that in his whole life he had done nothing other than ‘realise his dreams’, not always completely, but ‘when dreams are so powerfully alive that they bring other people under their spell and are able to secure them to dream with you, the result is that magical truthfulness, which for me is the theatre’.4 At a banquet given by the Berlin Press Association in 1930 to celebrate twenty-five years as director of the Deutsches Theater, Reinhardt claimed to be ‘an old frontiersman on the wavering line between reality and dreams’ 12


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who had spent his whole life ‘on this narrow frontier path smuggling goods backwards and forwards across it’. Reflecting on the loss of his brother Edmund, the self-effacing manager who had kept his theatres afloat, Reinhardt added that the heart could cope with such experiences only ‘if we do not become altogether sober between the sleep we come from and the sleep we are going into, and when we are conscious of the dreamlike quality of everything that is reality’.5 In 1936, when their work on the film was complete, he sent a characteristically florid telegram to his co-director Dieterle thanking him for introducing his former teacher into the world of films, in order to create a production of a play ‘that, as you know, I have been dreaming, always in new forms, for a lifetime’ so that it might ‘be brought to bloom on this youngest and – in the spirit of the times – strongest branch of the theatre’.6 As Gary Jay Williams observes in his account of the performance history of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, ‘a high degree of theatrical sophistication often [sat] side by side with showmanship and sentimentality’ in Reinhardt’s productions.7 Such a combination would fit in with the film industry in its more self-consciously ‘artistic’ moments. In Hollywood Reinhardt would be dealing with other kinds of dreamer. Harry Warner, head of Warner Bros.’s studio, once defended himself with characteristic directness when stockholders complained about the effect on their profits of cuts in film budgets: ‘Listen, a picture, all it is is an expensive dream. Well, it’s just as easy to dream for $700,000 as for $1.5 million.’8 Warner Bros. acquired a reputation for films like Gold Diggers of 1933 that acknowledged the existence of the Depression, but cannily went on to celebrate the ability of talent and enterprise to realise dreams – often of showbusiness success. In the big numbers the ‘stage’ on which shows are supposedly performed is expanded beyond the capabilities of any theatre and seen from angles possible only for a mobile camera. By 1934 the studio had the financial and technical resources for fantasy on Reinhardt’s scale, and the ‘genius’ of its particular ‘system’ encompassed its own brand of metatheatre within film. The company was ready for a Reinhardt/ Shakespeare Dream.9 In the first decade of the twentieth century, Reinhardt’s greatest international success was The Miracle, a colourful combination of piety, spectacle and stage trickery, with its living statue, fire effects and decorously abandoned orgy, performed to music by Engelbert Humperdinck. Being mimed and danced rather than spoken drama, it was as readily exportable as a silent film, and was staged in Berlin and London before the First World War, with revivals in the 1920s and 1930s. In the 1911 production the

14


arena of the Olympia exhibition site in London was transformed into a cathedral, providing a ‘total theatre’ experience: the audience became more like a congregation. If Reinhardt felt any shame about its populist religiosity, he never admitted it. For him, such entertainments fulfilled a ‘higher’ theatrical aim if they succeeded in transforming the theatre into a place of communal feeling, a mass shared experience of the kind that he often appealed to by invoking the ancient Greek dramatic festivals. Reinhardt’s faithful dramaturg Arthur Kahane recalled in 1928 the cafe´ conversation twenty-six years earlier in which, after a comprehensive survey of every aspect of the theatre he wished to create, the director envisaged both an intimate theatre and alongside it an amphitheatre in which the curtain and the scenery would disappear and in which the audience itself, ‘having become a community, drawn into it, would itself be part of the action of the play’.10 Reinhardt’s critics regarded him as a romantic purveyor of atmosphere and glamour with no regard for analysis. Nothing could be further from the spirit of the ‘new sobriety’ (the neue Sachlichkeit) of the 1920s than the kind of production the Berlin critic Herbert Ihering described, in which Reinhardt saw a classic play as the pretext for atmosphere and aesthetic effect, ‘an ecstatic production, leading towards a result firmly established in advance, an elaborate theatre of charm’. His fellow critic Walter Kerr, refusing to be intoxicated, had remarked acidulously as early as 1905 that Reinhardt seemed to be making shows that called for the new resources of the cinema.11 The emphasis on atmosphere, which his enemies considered a betrayal of the intellectual and literary dimensions of the drama, influenced the nascent German film industry. Many films grouped together loosely as examples of ‘German expressionism’ were in fact atmospheric in the Reinhardt manner: his influence can be traced in design, direction and mood in the work of directors as diverse as Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau and Fritz Lang. From the expressive handling of crowds in such stage spectacles as Oedipus (1911), a line can be traced through Lang’s Metropolis (1927) to Dieterle’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) and beyond. The stage forest of Reinhardt’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream productions, itself influenced by the work of such artists as Arnold Bo¨cklin, is reflected in the mysterious landscapes of Lang’s Siegfried (1924), which themselves seem to be present in Anton Grot’s sets for the 1935 Dream film. When Quasimodo looks down on the two converging columns of thieves, marching in diagonal lines across the square in front of the cathedral, what he and the audience see is a Reinhardtesque crowd.12 The mists and chiaroscuro effects of Murnau’s Faust (1926), in which Dieterle had appeared as an actor, the


15

fogbound London streets in G. W. Pabst’s Die Bu¨chse der Pandora (1926) and the shadowy city of Lang’s M (1931) share a preoccupation with atmosphere that typified Reinhardt’s more sombre productions. They also share that other dimension of ‘atmosphere’, which Scott Eyman has identified in Murnau’s work as a distinctive Reinhardt characteristic, ‘an underlying emotional or psychological texture to accompany the narrative flow, which is all the stronger for never being overtly stated’.13 A film version of The Miracle played in New York in 1913, accompanied by Humperdinck’s music. A stage setting represented the façade of a cathedral, and after a chorus of nuns had filed through the auditorium and on to the stage, disappearing into the wings on either side of the set, the massive doors slid off to reveal the cinema screen.14 However, Reinhardt’s own ventures into film made no great impression: two films, Venezianische Nacht and Der Insel der Seligen (both 1913) had not led to involvement in the resurgence of the German film industry at the end of the First World War. There had been overtures, though. Shortly after the war, when the Hollywood mogul Adolph Zukor was in Berlin, he approached Reinhardt with a view to filming Paradise Lost. Neither of them had read the work at the time, and when the director got round to reading it and proposed a treatment, the studio head turned it down.15 A Max Reinhardt Film Company was founded later, but no films were made. In Hollywood in the mid-1920s for The Miracle in its second career, he was still being sized up by the film industry. As early as 1923, the newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst hoped to have Marion Davies star as the nun in a film of the play and offered Reinhardt $100,000 to direct it. Meanwhile, United Artists proposed a film with Lilian Gish on another religious subject, the life of Therese von Konnersreuth, a young Bavarian woman with the stigmata. In 1927 Reinhardt returned to Hollywood in pursuit of this project. Europe’s most prominent director of popular religious theatre was thought especially appropriate for similar themes in the motion picture industry. One press report even claimed that Zukor had contracted him to direct Ben Hur. On 26 January 1927 the New York Telegraph reported another bid to film The Miracle: ‘United Artists Sign Reinhardt. Impresario To Lend His Talents To Production of ‘‘The Miracle’’ And Other Spectacles’. Nothing came of any of these proposals.16 Personal contacts as well as his influence on the cinema meant that this was by no means alien territory to Reinhardt. Many emigre´s in Hollywood, including Dieterle and Ernst Lubitsch, had been employed by him in one capacity or another, and he had many contacts. He declared his intentions at the annual luncheon of the National Board of Review in January 1928.

16


He was ‘preparing for [his] transition from the old world of the theatre into the new world of the motion picture’: Perhaps I should call it an excursion rather than a transition, for I do not intend to abandon the theatre to which I have devoted my life . . . But the theatre has lost its festival aspect, its kinship with the play-instinct, its quality of being always a unique, spontaneous creation of the moment. This momentary element of the theatre has in fact become one of the worst signs of its failure. And yet this unique, ultimate ecstasy which binds player and spectator in a dionysic [sic] union is one of the primal elements of the art of the drama.17

Reinhardt reflected that the cinema had now the capacity to reach millions, not least because it possessed the power ‘to speak to all just because it is bound to no speech’, and compared its all-embracing capacity to that of Shakespeare, who ‘created an entire world, but . . . also created it for the entire world’. Reinhardt’s view of the Elizabethan theatre was that it satisfied ‘the most spiritual as well as the most primitive tastes’. This was a judicious line to take. Reinhardt was wooed by Hollywood on account of his prestige in ‘high’ European culture, and at the same time he had always been anxious to combine showmanship with the staging of the classics. He was also keeping every option open. His son Gottfried, already a producer with MGM, sums up the relationship succinctly: ‘Reinhardt made box-office with art. Hollywood made box-office with or without art.’18 As it happened, since the early 1920s making money had become increasingly difficult, and it was only by means of extensive tours at home and abroad and commissions from other managements that Reinhardt was able to remain solvent. Dieterle describes him as an ‘inspired spendthrift’ and explains that the society that could afford to be extravagant had disappeared with the war.19 From the mid-1920s he had largely withdrawn from the Berlin theatre operations, and his dignified official move to Austria in 1933, when he publicly ‘bequeathed’ his Berlin theatres to the German people, was also part of a continuing process. When he returned to Hollywood in 1934, he was not a lone artistic idealist up against the studio system. Gottfried remarked that Reinhardt had been head of his own equivalent of a studio, controlling at the height of his power a diverse range of theatres in Berlin and a series of touring companies.20 Reinhardt had been an iconic figure in the ‘New Theatre’ movement of the 1900s and 1920s, a representative of the new directors’ theatre famous for his ability to control and shape the work of others to realise his visions. Quite apart from the theatre specialists’ celebration of the aesthetic impact of his work, Reinhardt was cast as a heroic figure by the press. When The Miracle was staged in New York at the Century Theatre in 1924, it was the


17

scale of the enterprise (with its new designs by Norman Bel Geddes) that thrilled. ‘DIRECTOR CONTROLS ALL ELEMENTS’ was a subheading in the New York Times review, which made much of his having worked with twenty-two assistants for seven weeks, ‘directing his battalions from a scaffold like a ship’s bridge, set in the midst of the auditorium’ and surrounded by aides with megaphones.21 After his departure from Germany in 1933, and with the effective exclusion of Jewish artists from Austria after the Nazi annexation, Reinhardt shared the fate of many German-speaking actors and writers. There were commissions for operas, operettas and some plays, but he was not fluent in English and the market for productions of the German theatre classics in any language was limited. In 1933 Reinhardt had originally proposed a theatre festival in Hollywood, to include A Midsummer Night’s Dream, plus a new play, Lysistrata, and two works by Mozart. In the event, he made arrangements for a series of productions of the Shakespeare play at different locations in California. Contracts were signed in early 1934 for three sets of performances, at the Hollywood Bowl (17–21 September 1934), the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House (1–5 October) and the Greek Theatre, Berkeley (13 and 15 October).22 Each venue had its own characteristics, and in the case of Berkeley, Reinhardt used more than one location on the campus and was able to bring the play to a conclusion with a torchlight procession to the amphitheatre. The ‘Greek Theatre’ was effectively a return to the ideas of his original 1905 staging, which placed the final scene in just such a location. The performances at the Hollywood Bowl represented a continuation (but not necessarily culmination) of his engagement with the play and provided an all-important entreé to Hollywood. THE VISION BEHIND THE DREAM

Through its various incarnations, and despite the different collaborators, casts and performance spaces, one can speak confidently of a ‘concept’ of the play as directed by Reinhardt. By the time it reached Hollywood, some elements remained constant through all the permutations, while others that had been accumulated were used only when particular circumstances required them. The first Berlin staging, with designs by Gustav Knina and Erwin Walser, had opened at the Neues Theater on 31 January 1905, and subsequently transferred to the Deutsches Theater: it achieved 205 performances in 1905–06 and was revived in every season until 1912–13. It was given again at the Deutsches Theater in the 1913–14 season with new designs, and also at the Volksbu¨hne and (in 1922–3 and 1923–4) in the

18


vast arena of the Grosses Schauspielhaus – where it was described as ‘after the production by Max Reinhardt’. The play had also been restaged in more stylised versions in 1913 for the Ku¨nstlertheater in Munich and at the Theater in der Josefstadt in Vienna in 1924–5. The production seen in New York in 1927 as part of a Max Reinhardt season had a new set along similar lines. Other performances included outdoor productions at Headington Hill Hall in Oxford (for the Oxford University Dramatic Society) and in the Boboli Gardens in Florence, both in 1933. In 1913, surveying three versions of the play, two in Berlin and the most recent on the stark shallow stage in Munich, the critic Siegfried Jacobsohn recalled the overpowering effect of the first production’s ‘triad’ of sound, light and colour and the reality of the magic forest: ‘Voices of primeval origin sounded from the deep. Fireflies glowed here and there. Bushes rustled, there was the smell of moss, branches creaked, and the forest seemed limitless.’ The more austere Munich staging achieved the same effect of a spirit world, but to his mind the second Berlin production, though effectively designed, did not better either of its predecessors.23 In his 1921 book on Reinhardt, Jacobsohn returned to the topic, and insisted in defiance of the hostile critics who denied him an artistic personality and inspiration that the director was a visionary: ‘the world of this Midsummer Night’s Dream – it did not exist before Reinhardt created it, before he saw it’.24 One major element of continuity in the various productions was the importance of the forest, even though the means used to represent it varied widely, from the massive papier-maˆche´ tree trunks disappearing up into the flies in the 1905 version and the more impressionistic forest created by Ernst Stern in the Deutsches Theater revival, to stylised cloths in Vienna and New York, the park in Florence and genuine woodland in Oxford. The forest was always alive, peopled with hyperactive fairies, often diminutive and sometimes grotesque, frequently mischievous and never conceived according to nineteenth-century balletic conventions. In the 1905 production translucent curtains or gauzes (Schleier) effected transitions from one part of the wood to another, and represented shifting atmospheric changes, fogs and mist. Vapour was also employed, after the manner of Richard Wagner’s use of steam at Bayreuth. Heinz Herald, the critic (and Reinhardt acolyte) wrote: In the beginning was the wood. With the exception of the short overture of the opening scene and the big wedding finale, it is the setting for the whole play. It is its nurse, its native soil; from it everything flows, in it everyone is hidden, runs away, is mixed up, discovered, reconciled . . . It breathes, it is alive. It seems without beginning or end. It is inexhaustible, without visible limits and yet, to sum up, it somehow represents every wood.25


19

The scent of moss – mentioned in the essay by Jacobsohn quoted above – became one of the production’s trademarks, but he was not the only critic to point out that the atmosphere of the play did not depend on the preternatural realism of the early stagings. In Munich there were four bare trees in profile along the edge of the stage, with a curtain stretched behind them as background and a green cloth for the forest floor. ‘Despite this,’ claimed Max Epstein, ‘Reinhardt created the fairytale agility and elfin ease of the whole.’ It was, as Simon Williams points out, ‘a world infused by the sense of play’. There were still those who refused to be impressed: Karl Kraus, an implacable enemy, summed it all up as ‘Real grass – actors cardboard’.26 The promptbook for the production at the Neues Theater shows an astonishing amount and variety of fairy activity, and includes the direction that ‘the whole wood laughs’.27 The carefully devised range of sound effects was much admired: in Die Schaubu¨hne Felix Poppenberg commented that ‘the scenic orchestration of Shakespeare’s fairytale poetry’ was close to that achieved by Wagner with his orchestra in the ‘Forest Murmurs’ in Siegfried. ‘As a consequence, the audience has the genuine Midsummer Night’s illusion of being born under a lucky star, in tune with all the sounds of nature and able to understand them.’28 Herald observed in 1915 that even when Reinhardt used the techniques of naturalism, his principal aim was the symbolic meaning of the scenery.29 The virtuoso use of lighting in such mysterious settings was soon established as one of the director’s trademarks. Even in his more stylised revivals and the open-air versions, Reinhardt’s ultimate aim was to make the audience participants in a communal experience, if not a rite. Brooks Atkinson’s account of the 1927 New York production reflects this: ‘Broadly speaking, what Dr Reinhardt does is to wrench a space the size of the Century Theatre completely out of New York City into a symphonic pageant in imaginative beauty, unrelated to anything in our everyday lives.’30 In the 1925 Vienna production, Reinhardt enhanced the play’s Dionysian and pantheistic dimension by animating the forest. Dancers were disguised as shrubs, a ‘living’ birch tree bowed its branches over Titania and the sleeping Bottom, and Oberon now appeared in a fantastic costume that made him half human, half plant. Both the animated birch and the ‘plantlike’ Oberon were to appear in the 1935 film: Max Reé designed the costumes for both versions.31 Puck was variously played by several different artists, with diverse talents: first Gertrud Eysoldt in 1905, and subsequently both men and women, including (in New York) the dancer Vladimir Sokolov. The common factors, however differently inflected, were rapidity of movement and mischief. With the female actors, femininity was supposed to be disguised,

20


and Eysoldt, with her shock of hair, legs firmly planted in a boyish stride, and pelts wreathed about her all-over tights was a desexed faun, a forest creature who was an ‘earth spirit,’ a symbol of natural forces beyond rationalism. However, for some critics Eysoldt was still too feminine and sophisticated, and Ernst Stern, who was later to redesign the production, found her ‘a wraith of a girl instead of a broth of a boy’ and decided there and then to wage war on the wearing of tights by women who should appear barelegged.32 The earliest surviving draft of the film script specifies the qualities Reinhardt wanted: ‘this wood-spirit has something of the human about him mingled with the faun-like or colt-like quality of his slim, leggy body; his small tail; his pointed ears’ (p. 112).33 Mickey Rooney, who played the part in Hollywood on stage and film, seemed to satisfy Reinhardt’s demands. A New York journalist quoted the director as insisting that ‘Puck was an evil fairy, not a cute little boy . . . He was malicious rather than mischievous, that people who did not know the play well often had a wrong interpretation of the role.’ Rooney helped Reinhardt to show Puck as ‘a shrill-voiced, vindictive, high-spirited boy’.34 Oberon, conceived as a king of shadows and equipped with an appropriate following, made his first appearance in the 1905 production as if riding on a white stag. With the Vienna production, as has been noted, his kinship with the forest’s vegetation became more pronounced. Less attention seems to have been paid to Titania, characterised as an ethereal, quintessentially and conventionally ‘feminine’ being, with none of the menace and equivocal glamour of Oberon. In the case of the ‘craftsmen’ (always referred to thus respectfully in the film scripts – probably translating ‘Handwerker’), Reinhardt’s touch seems less sure: he put a lot of faith in the simple fun of clumsy men falling over, tripped by the invisible hands of fairies in the forest, and of exaggerated panic when their rehearsal is commandeered and Bottom ‘translated’.35 As for the lovers, by the later stage productions Reinhardt had begun to treat their awakening as a more or less mimed performance of uncontrollable laughter, the ‘Lachquartett’, with a few explanatory exclamations, a course eventually followed in the film. The film’s opening and closing ‘Athenian’ scenes feature costumes and decor that resemble a baroque version of the ancient world, as if from some come´die-ballet by Lully, and the Indian Prince (thus named throughout the script, and played by a little girl, Sheila Brown, not, as he liked to claim, by the 1960s underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger) looks like the little black pageboy in Der Rosenkavalier, which Reinhardt directed in its premiere at Dresden in 1911.36 Since the Vienna version, Reinhardt’s


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A Midsummer Night’s Dreams had included this baroque or rococo element. It was consistent with Reinhardt’s delight in fanciful, dreamlike combinations of periods, and his readiness to ‘quote’ one period’s interpretation of another. Leopoldskron, his home near Vienna, forfeited when the Nazis seized power, was a fine baroque palace. Reinhardt’s film opens in a baroque Athens with the finale of Mendelssohn’s Third Symphony (the ‘Scottish’) turned into a Handelian chorus. Theseus has a platoon of little black servants at his disposal, all dressed for the high rococo, but once he has changed out of his armour he wears modified Elizabethan clothes. The most elaborate ‘baroque’ version of the play was that performed at Salzburg in 1927, with extravagant costumes by Ernest de Weerth.37 The distinction between the costuming of the mortals and the forest’s inhabitants, who seemed in contrast to be a part of their environment and able to melt into it at will, was a consistent feature of the stage productions. Like the marriage of forest sounds with Mendelssohn’s score and the mysterious shifting of time and place, it was carried over into the film. As Gu¨nther Ru¨hle observes, Reinhardt’s original 1905 staging had brought mobility and fluidity to the picture-frame theatre.38 The film was so conceived as to achieve the same effect within the frame of the cinema screen. At the Hollywood Bowl the acoustic shell was removed, and a bridge was constructed across the car park to the hillside behind, which was set with transplanted trees and shrubs. A zigzag path wound down from the top, to provide scope for long entrances and exits and to create the impression of a ‘limitless’ forest. Puck’s first entrance was made by Rooney running down the hill with a blazing torch in his hand, and the opening and concluding scenes included the obligatory torchlight processions, familiar from Florence and Oxford. As in those performances, the onset of day in the forest was heralded by an elaborate dance sequence accompanied by Mendelssohn’s Nocturne, and at its climax First Fairy Nini Theilade’s hands were seen in a spotlight, fluttering like the wings of a butterfly as she was carried off into the darkness.39 It was estimated that 150,000 spectators saw the ten performances. For the Hollywood Bowl and other open-air venues, A Midsummer Night’s Dream had costumes designed in broader outlines, to be effective on a huge stage at some distance from many of the audience, and to ‘read’ under different kinds of lighting. Nevertheless, a degree of pictorial subtlety was achieved. A report in the Vienna Neue Freie Presse (9 October 1934) describes the Bowl as ‘a hill with a landscape as if painted by Corot: a real lawn, with genuine ancient, silver green trees and a lake surrounded by real reeds’.40 As Dennis Kennedy observes, in his open-air versions ‘Reinhardt was exploiting the


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natural environment in an extravagant, cinematic manner’, effectively anticipating the film.41 One might add that he was turning the natural environments into theatre, effecting a kind of exchange (or confusion) of the real and the unreal that reflected the element of the uncanny in his productions of the play, and the dark magic that the cinema would allow him to explore even more fully. ‘I’M

GOING TO SEE THIS REINHARDT, TONIGHT!’

By Dieterle’s account, it was he who suggested a film of the play, a suggestion Reinhardt leaped at. Samuel Goldwyn had introduced Reinhardt to Jack L. Warner, who was keen to employ Olivia de Havilland (she played Hermia as a last-minute substitute in the Hollywood Bowl performances) and was attracted by the opportunity for a prestige project – one that was not an unknown quantity.42 A charmingly fictionalised account of the process, scripted for a radio broadcast advertising the film, has Warner and his Associate Executive in Charge of Production, Hal Wallis, emerging from the premiere of the Hollywood Bowl production – on 17 September – fired with enthusiasm for its director. Wallis is uncertain that he can be persuaded – ‘Look at the studios that have already tried!’ Undeterred, Warner insists: WARNER:

We haven’t tried yet. I heard he doesn’t think much of pictures. W A R N E R : That was years ago. Maybe he’s changed his mind. W A L L I S : It would be something different. Shakespeare on the Screen! W A R N E R : Different! Midsummer Night’s Dream might be the greatest sensation since we gave talking pictures to the screen. I’m going to see this Reinhardt, tonight!43 WALLIS:

In fact, Reinhardt had been working on a script since August, and by September 25 Wallis was already enquiring about the availability of the preferred choices for cameraman. Whatever the real circumstances may have been, the commitment was made on 26 September, when Warner Bros. contracted with Reinhardt to direct a film of the play for a personal fee of $75,000 with an option for two further projects.44 Dieterle, who had acted in two of Reinhardt’s productions of the play, would assist him, and the modus operandi evolved whereby Reinhardt would work with the actors on a scene before Dieterle stepped in to stage it for the camera.45 Henry Blanke, a German immigrant often assigned to ‘quality’ projects, was to be production supervisor, so that Reinhardt would have two German-speaking colleagues. Hollywood Reporter bulletins on the film’s


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progress indicated that Dieterle had been confirmed as co-director by 1 October and that casting of the principal roles was completed by the end of November. Luckily, a fire at the studio in the first days of December did not affect the sets being built for the forest and the palace, and by early December it looked as though everything was ready.46 Reinhardt’s wishlist for the Hollywood Bowl production had been famously starry: Charlie Chaplin as Bottom, Greta Garbo as Titania, W. C. Fields as Flute/Thisbe, John Barrymore as Oberon, Joan Crawford as Hermia, Myrna Loy as Helena, Clark Gable as Demetrius, Gary Cooper as Lysander, Wallace Beery as Snug/Lion, Walter Huston as Theseus and (last but not least) Fred Astaire as Puck.47 Drawn up before he reached California, the list at least reflects Reinhardt’s acquaintance with current American films, and also his understandable desire to pitch a proposal as high as possible and see what happened. The eventual cast for the open-air production was not on this level (Rooney was still at an early stage in his career) but the lists of ‘possibles’ for the film could credibly aim as high. Notes in the Warner archive – including one literally on the back of an envelope – include Fields (as Moonshine), Betty (sic) Davis or Madeleine Carroll as Titania, Kay Francis as Hippolyta and (in another list) Katharine Hepburn as Titania; Frederic March, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and the opera star Lawrence Tibbett for Oberon; Fields again (this time as Bottom); and Buster Keaton as Flute or Snout. The casting took some time to settle down. Bryan Aherne and Laurence Olivier figure in yet another note as possible Oberons. Dick Powell, famous for his appearances in musicals and one of the favourite recording artists of the period, was an early choice as Lysander. In one remarkable difference of opinion (on which, luckily, he backed down), Wallis favoured a familiar, plump character-actor for Bottom, writing to Blanke on 1 November: The more I think of it the more sold I become on GUY KIBBEE to play the part of BOTTOM. CAGNEY is a far-fetched idea and so far in mentioning it to any number of people – all of them familiar with the play – none of them can visualize CAGNEY in it. KIBBEE is the popular conception of the part and I think we should decide on him for it.’48

The casting of Cagney was not finalised for at least another month. After some consideration of other luminaries, including Leonide Massine and Harold Kreuzberg, the choreographer settled on was Bronislava Nijinska, who was to be paid $9,000. Nini Theilade, the Danish dancer who had appeared in Florence and Oxford and at the Hollywood Bowl as First Fairy, repeated the role and shared in the choreography. One of

1. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1935. Publicity still showing (L to R) William Dieterle, Max Reinhardt and the studio’s head of design, Anton Grot, examining a model of the set for Theseus’s palace.


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the most important decisions was that expressed in the telegram of 19 October in which Warner offered $8,000 to the composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold, for whom the undertaking marked the beginning of an illustrious career as a composer of film scores: it may also have saved his life, by initiating the connection that later allowed him and his family to escape from Europe.49 Ernest Haller was assigned as cinematographer (in the event he was soon replaced by Hal Mohr.) The costumes were designed by Max Reé, a Danish-born artist who had worked on Reinhardt’s productions in Europe and at the Hollywood Bowl and was already established in films. The studio’s scenic department, headed by Grot, took its usual responsibility for sets (see Figure 1). Reinhardt insisted on rehearsing the play fully with the cast, in groups and individually in his office, while Nijinska worked with the dancers; rehearsals were held for fifty ‘girls’ and fifty children, and the calls for filming the ‘Nocturne’ included forty-eight ‘girls’, forty or fifty children, ten dwarves and twenty-eight or thirty-three men.50 Nijinska may have been difficult to work with, and was rumoured not get on with Korngold, but there is no evidence for Theilade’s suggestion in an interview taped in 1995 that she was sacked: the daily reports note her last working day as 5 January, when the unit ‘finished Nocturne’ – in other words, she had fulfilled her obligations.51 Cagney described how ‘Reinhardt, so used to broad gestures, made some of the actors do things that were, I thought, ridiculous for the screen. We used to stand back, watching him, and say ‘‘Somebody ought to tell him.’’’ Dieterle observes that he was reluctant to interfere with Reinhardt’s characteristically romantic style – that was, after all, essential to the presence of his signature on the film.52 The elements of Reinhardt’s vision of the play, which was what Warner Bros. was buying, included the ‘romantic’ style, and there would have to be some degree of compromise. It was helped by the cast’s respect and affection for the ‘Herr Professor’. Cagney was won over by the moment when Reinhardt looked at him and exclaimed, ‘Ein guter Schauspieler!’ (a good actor). ‘He was a really nice man. No temperament at all with Reinhardt.’ The ‘Final’ shooting script was distributed on 6 December, though as usual adjustments – some of them major – continued after that date and during principal photography. By the original schedule filming would have begun on 12 December, but this was put back to 19 December, on account of a legal action in which Reinhardt was involved.53 There was a further delay when rushes showed that the forest set was too dark on film. On 20 December 1934 Wallis warned Dieterle that Haller’s shots in the forest were too dark: ‘let’s not bend over backwards to be artistic now

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and spoil it all’. Mohr was called in to replace Haller on 22 December.54 Mohr describes how he had a crew work overnight to paint the meticulously assembled forest, rigging lights at one side of the huge sound-stage to show where moonlight would hit the set, and having those areas sprayed with aluminium paint. The ‘shadow’ areas were then painted with orange shellac. He also sprayed rubber solution ‘cobwebs’ over the foliage and finally sprinkled the still-wet compound with glittering ‘casket flitters’, making the whole set look (in his words) like a Christmas card to the naked eye. The result was immediately obvious when test shots were seen: Warner reported to Wallis: ‘I just saw the first day’s stuff of Hal Mohr’s, and it was a 100% improvement over the other stuff.’55 Shooting resumed on 27 December and the final day of photography was 12 March 1935. The studio had allotted forty-eight days for the picture, but the overrun (including time lost at the beginning) effectively doubled the number. By 6 February it was over budget by $30,000 and William Koenig, the studio’s general manager, was demanding economies: ‘Want everybody eliminated from the staff that you possibly can get along without as soon as you get out of the palace.’ For the outside world, studios always made a virtue of extravagance. A news item prepared by the publicity department, probably some time in April, claimed that the editor, Ralph Dawson, was confronted by 85 miles of developed film, to be reduced, via a rough cut of 21,000 feet, to a final cut of 11–12,000 feet. The final cut, for the New York premiere, appears to have settled at two hours and twelve minutes. A shorter version was prepared for the second leg of the film’s distribution, ‘at popular prices’.56 ENTERING THE DREAM

Typescript drafts and the film’s shooting script give an unusual degree of insight into the shaping of the film, particularly regarding its introduction of the audience into the film’s world and then into the world of the fairies. The layers of illusion, including a sense of the ‘Shakespearean’ which is firmly located as a dimension of imagination as much as of cultural authority, are evident in the opening credits, and are negotiated skilfully at each turn in the narrative. In rearranging the play’s events, Reinhardt and his collaborators were careful not to keep three groups of characters – lovers, fairies and workmen – away from the screen for too long.57 The overall effect in the forest scenes is of movement (or smuggling, as Reinhardt had described it) across the border between ‘reality’ and ‘the dreamlike’. The process also involved negotiation, between what the


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studio’s technicians and artists could do, and what could be afforded. Reinhardt may have known (and Dieterle certainly would have) that some effects proposed in the script drafts would have the status of bids rather than requirements. Fred Jackman’s special effects unit could rise to any challenge, but ultimately the budget would decide what did get done. By the late summer of 1934, Reinhardt had produced a detailed scenario, much as for theatre productions he prepared the elaborately worked-out promptbooks (Regiebu¨cher). A typescript draft in English and German, with manuscript notes by Reinhardt, reflects this preparatory phase, and revised pages are dated ‘8/11/1934’ (i.e. 11 August 1934). A summary ‘treatment’ was produced in both languages. Warner Bros. assigned two scriptwriters, Charles Kenyon and Mary McCall, Jr., to prepare a script, which must have predated that of 11 August but seems not to have survived. There is evidence of a later ‘polish’ by McCall, who reported on the revisions between 24 October and 3 November, insisting (among other points) that the integrity of the verse be adhered to: ‘The whole couplet must be preserved, or stricken out – but don’t leave the rhymes hanging in mid-air, or our audience will go cuckoo waiting for the other shoe to drop.’ An undated memo also points out the importance of allowing some moments to establish the reconciliation of Theseus and Hippolyta, which were provided for in an earlier draft but subsequently missed out.58 The studio considered employing an eminent English or American ‘literary man’ to render obscure parts of the play ‘more colloquial’, but it seems not to have pursued the idea.59 Meanwhile, an unusually long (296-page) script was produced, incorporating many instructions on acting and even of emphases in dialogue of the kind Reinhardt would have kept in a Regiebuch.60 It refers to ‘Prof. Korngold’ and incorporates full versions of the longer dance sequences, and is therefore likely to have been prepared for the directors’ use alongside rather than instead of drafts of the less explicit shooting script distributed to actors and other personnel. On 25 November Blanke sent McCall the ‘revised temporary’ script and on 4 December Blanke reported to Wallis that he, Dieterle and the ‘dialogue director’ Stanley Logan were dictating final changes. The ‘Final’ would be ready by 5 or 6 December. A draft dated 26 November, owned by James Cagney, is now in the Folger Shakespeare Library. The ‘Final’ shooting script of 6 December, referred to in this chapter as the ‘shooting script’, was the version used when filming began. From these documents we can arrive at a sense of the major shifts in thinking about the film, although as usual the shooting script was not followed to the letter. Nevertheless, with the exception of some important

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episodes and some aspects of character, action and effects, a great deal of Reinhardt’s early work survives in the completed film. The earlier drafts consistently call for more (and in some cases more complex) trick effects than are seen in the film, but there is little in them to suggest the duration or complexity of the first major dance sequence, the ‘scherzo’ from Mendelssohn’s score. The second long sequence (the ‘Nocturne’) is more fully represented, but again without anticipating details of staging and choreography. The earliest description of this sequence is a typewritten summary by Reinhardt in the Warner Bros. Archive at the University of Southern California, subsequently incorporated in the long 296-page script.61 Significant divergences – some of the paths not followed – will be noted in discussing the film itself, but it will be useful to outline first the major differences between the substantive versions of the script. Common to all the pre-production drafts, including the shooting script, are episodes at the opening of the film, which would show the conquest of the Amazons by Theseus and his army, the looting of Hippolyta’s palace, and the return of the Athenian ships, preceded by a messenger pigeon. The workmen are established as toiling in their respective crafts, and Bottom has a wife, whom the first draft characterises as ‘a virago of a woman, with a face like a Fury’. The lovers’ relationships are elaborated and the conflicts between the rivals are set up before the play (or the finished film) has Egeus bring them to Theseus for arbitration. The magic effects in the forest are more complex, but correspond broadly (and in some details) to those filmed. Some tinting is indicated, and one shot (not involving actors) is specified as being in colour. Bottom encounters his wife when he returns to Athens, but with different consequences in the first draft and the subsequent versions: the episodes concerning her are altogether absent in the film. (Bottom’s wife is seen early in Michael Hoffmann’s 1999 film, but the director did not know about Reinhardt’s unrealised intentions – he arrived independently at the conviction that the character would help to fill out the characterisation of the weaver.)62 In all the scripts the workmen get to perform their ‘Bergamask’ dance and are rewarded for their work. (As will be discussed below, there is some evidence that this and other sequences were shot but not used.) The drafts differ in their treatment of the opening credits and the film’s finale, though the opening has the more significant variations. The completed opening sequence provides the audience’s point of entry, establishing the scope of what is to come and skilfully managing responses. After an ‘Overture’ adapted from Mendelssohn’s, the film begins with the opening credits, revealed against a background of the crescent moon and its full shadow in the night sky, with the silhouette of a tree to the left of the


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screen – an image seen again in the film when the fairies have emerged from the mist, swirled round a huge tree and ‘taken off’ by running up into the sky. The titles succeed each other by rippling into view as if written on the surface of water – each dissolving again to make way for the next. The evanescence this conveys is as if in counterpoint to the verbal statements made. The first three chords of the ‘Overture’ accompany the following lines as they appear one after another until they fill the screen: Warner Brothers Have the Honor to Present A Max Reinhardt Production

Then, on the fourth chord, and occupying the full screen: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

This is followed by the author’s name, in lettering resembling handwriting: by William Shakespeare

Five actors are then listed, with their names stepped in single lines from top left to bottom right, the first three in larger letters: ‘with / James Cagney / Joe E. Brown / Dick Powell / Mickey Rooney / Victor Jory’. These dissolve to be replaced by ‘Directed by / MAX REINHARDT / and / WILLIAM DIETERLE’. Credits for the music (Mendelssohn) and its arranger (Korngold) are followed by more production credits, then a rolling cast of characters which begins with the forte statement of Mendelssohn’s ‘Oberon’ theme. The ‘mechanicals’ theme, with its ‘hee-hawing’ notes, is synchronised with the appearance of their names on the screen, to be replaced as the names of the fairy characters appear on screen with a return to the scurrying musical figures associated with them. With another fortissimo passage we move in on a ‘Proclamation’ pinned to a door panel, and are allowed a full minute to take in the message. The whole sequence, from the opening credits, takes about three and a half minutes. Had the shooting script been followed fully, the film would have taken a good deal longer to reach this point.63 Reinhardt envisaged a good deal of the ‘back story’ that no stage production could ever have offered, but this would not have been merely information. The envisaged opening would have broached ideas about the film’s relation to its Elizabethan progenitor, set up a mood of playfulness and then moved into melodrama qualified by fanciful details. Sexual conflict and Eros would have been invoked in ways that would have been consistent with the completed film, but would have taken it further. A key factor in all Reinhardt’s work with the play, related

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to the negotiation between reality and ‘dream’, was the thrilling and disturbing tension between darker and lighter aspects of human nature and imagination, with a particular sense of the erotic dimension of both these sets of apparent opposites. The shooting script opens with the beginning of Mendelssohn’s ‘Overture’, and fades in on a ‘beautiful meadow on a starry night.’ Cupid is discovered sitting in a tree: he shoots at a small flower with his bow and arrow, and we see the arrow strike. The scene dissolves to a title, ‘Warner Brothers/ Present/ A Midsummer Night’s Dream/ by . . .’ Cupid now weaves a ribbon through the branches of the tree, and ‘when he reaches the word ‘‘by’’ he flings the remaining length of ribbon curling into the air’. This forms itself into a baroque frame round the ‘original Shakespearian folio’, with the playwright’s (posthumous) ‘authentic signature’ on its cover. The pages are turned by the wind, revealing a page with the castlist, then other leaves with further credits. Finally, a gust sweeps the pages away, and a montage sequence begins, showing the war between the Athenians and the Amazons. Reinhardt’s August 1934 draft had a different version, without the Folio, and featuring Puck – changed in manuscript to Cupid, so as to avoid revealing him so early in the film. Puck would be discovered sitting ‘on an ancient oak, playing with a Jack o’ Lantern. Out of this Jack o’ Lantern appears a diminutive WARNER BROS. TRADEMARK which increases in size as it comes forward to CAMERA. As it sweeps forward it reveals: THE CHIEF ELF and his assistants, placing small branches together to form the words: WARNER BROTHERS / PRESENT / A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM.’64 The shooting script lists elements of the montage, which it promises can be ‘worked out in such a manner that it will be effective, but inexpensive, without a great number of soldiers, Amazons, or sets’. The list has nineteen items. Theseus’s ship arrives in a storm at the ‘Amazon Castle’ and we see Hippolyta ‘with a large wild dog at her side, sternly watching the approaching ship’. The alarm is given and preparations are made for battle. Women are arming themselves with bows and arrows, while the invaders, including Lysander and Demetrius, are battering at the door. (In the August 1934 draft there are scenes of looting and Demetrius shields Theseus from an arrow.) Hippolyta, despite the entreaties of an older Amazon, engages Theseus in single combat. Their movements are specified: 1. Theseus’s shield flat upon the shield of Hippolyta, pressing it back. 2. Hippolyta’s knee bending, interlocking with Theseus’s leg. 3. Theseus’s shoulder pressing Hippolyta’s shoulder down.


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4. Heads of the oldest Amazons, shot against night sky – Flames, singing the war Hymn. 5. Hippolyta’s head and shoulders going back. 6. Theseus’s arm across Hippolyta’s shoulder, knocks the helmet from her head. – Hippolyta’s long hair falls about her shoulders. 7. Hippolyta’s head bends back. Theseus’s head comes into the picture – triumphantly. These images of sexual contest and intimacy, ending in conquest, are followed by a dissolve to a sail being raised – ‘AFTER THE STORM CLEAR SKY (QUIETNESS)’ – and a distant background view of the castle, ‘flames of battle still rising from it’. Theseus now addresses the first words of Shakespeare’s I.i to his captive: Hippolyta, I woo’d you with my sword, And won your love doing thee injuries, But I will wed you in another key, With pomp, with triumph, and with revelling.65

In a shot establishing Demetrius and Lysander on shipboard, we see a pigeon being dispatched to Athens (by Demetrius). It is shown in ‘airplane shots’, heading for the Athenian coast and arriving, then being delivered to Philostrate, who reads the parchment attached to it. The script moves to a public place in Athens, where a herald blows his trumpet as a proclamation is hung on a wall. The craftsmen are established in a series of shots in which they hurry from their respective shops to learn the contents, and in scene 43 (‘PUBLIC SQUARE. GROUP SHOT OF THE CROWD’) we finally see and read the proclamation. Peter Quince, quicker than the others at understanding what is written, rushes off to his carpenter’s shop, and is seen writing ‘Cast for the wedding play of Theseus and Hippolyta’ in a printed copy. Next to ‘Pyramus’ Quince writes Bottom’s name. Now we go to Bottom’s house, and scene 48 shows his reaction to the news. (The script indicates ‘direct musical recording’ here: taking the music ‘live’ from the filming.) Bottom hurries in from the outside, singing his little ditty (the song he later sings in the forest), crosses and drags a chest from underneath the bed. He opens the chest and kneeling before it begins rummaging through it. Several articles pertaining to the weaver’s trade lie on top. Such as: bobbins, a bolt of cloth. These he pushes aside, dragging from the bottom of the chest a somewhat ancient mask. He rises, and smiling proudly puts on the mask – then begins to posture and strut round the room. His wife appears in the doorway of an inner room. She is a virago

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of a woman, with a face like a Fury. She stands glaring at Bottom until he becomes conscious of her presence. He quickly removes the mask and keeping his back to her slips over to his loom and SINGS HIS DITTY again – now in a different mood, and begins to work frantically.

The following close shot on the loom suggests that a time lapse was to be shown by Bottom’s progress on a carpet, but the next shot (50) is omitted, which indicates that this was abandoned. According to the August draft, it would have been part of a scheme to show that the pigeon’s arrival signalled the start of work on a triumphal arch, and the time would have been shown by a slow-motion shot of a vine ‘winding its way up the trunk of a tree’ which would in turn dissolve into a shot of a completed pillar. Instead, the shooting script moves immediately to observe the workers preparing various items for the wedding (including Starveling working on the bride’s robe), then the script moves into the scene of Theseus’s triumphant arrival with his prisoner, more or less as in the completed film.66 For reasons of economy, this long sequence, even in the shooting script’s shorter version, fell out of the film, though elements of it (including the first appearance of Bottom’s wife) seem to have been shot. The vinewreathed tree that becomes a classical pillar would have been consistent with one of the film’s dichotomies – Athenian civilisation versus nature – and would also have anticipated (like Cupid’s ribbon) the repeated motifs of sinuous movement that occur in the fairies’ dancing. In the draft with the ‘Cupid’ opening, a direction specifies that ‘A Statue of Athene’ is ‘prominent’ in a shot of the Arch of Triumph. There would also – in both drafts – have been an early announcement of the magic of the film itself, more striking perhaps than the dissolving water effects of the final version’s opening credits.67 On 20 November 1934 Wallis had sent a memo to Koenig with the estimate that a revised budget, eliminating the first eight pages of the script (the Amazons) would bring the total cost of the picture to $459,000; on 21 November Wallis specified that the cutting of the first eight pages would save ‘about $28,000’. There seems to have been a failure of communication, because on 15 January 1935 Wallis had to write to Jackman forbidding further work on the ‘prologue’ – Wallis may have been keeping this economy up his sleeve, knowing the sequence would not be made but not informing the whole unit.68 The completed film’s briefer introductory sequence moves directly from the credits to the ‘Proclamation’, which is held for a full minute then followed by fanfares played by two ranks of heralds who announce the first scene: a long shot establishes the crowd welcoming the arrival in Athens of Theseus and Hippolyta. After a succession of single shots in medium


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close-up of Theseus and his somewhat recalcitrant captive/bride, and the duke’s promise of ‘pomp . . . triumph . . . and revelling’, they move with their train towards a dais. The four lovers are established, the men among the returning warrior’s entourage, the women among the crowd. Our first glimpse of Hermia reveals the ‘Elizabethan’ nature of the costuming. The men’s helmets and breastplates are more Roman than Ancient Greek and the overall effect is one of extravagance and exotic eclecticism. Two of the soldiers jostle each other comically to catch a glimpse of their sweethearts. They will turn out to be Lysander (Dick Powell) and Demetrius (Ross Alexander), for whom decorum clearly takes second place to love. The ducal party moves to the dais, where a close-up shows Hippolyta smiling enigmatically (cynically?) as her captor is crowned with a laurel, and the chorus begins: ‘Theseus be blest, for making of this peace’, presently modulating into a setting of lines from Hymen’s solemn blessing in the final scene of As You Like It (‘Then is there peace in heaven . . .’). Semi-choruses of women, men and boys are followed by passages featuring solo voices, including Powell’s distinctive tenor, as the shots break down into specific close-ups on the lovers and establish their relationships and Egeus’s desire to restrain Hermia’s enthusiasm. The music is from the finale of Mendelssohn’s Third Symphony, and when Shakespeare’s words run out the chorus repeats ‘Trumpets and Fifes / Make Dance the Sun’ until they reach a reprise of ‘Theseus be blest’. The repeated musical phrases are used with ever greater enthusiasm by the lovers, who sing with comic vehemence, and after a shot of the female chorus we cut to the group of workmen. As befits one of the studio’s most popular stars, Joe E. Brown (Flute) is featured prominently in the foreground, munching sunflower seeds – his trademark through the film – as Peter Quince attempts to control their choral efforts. Hermia manages to make her way through the throng to Lysander, and her father’s attempt to restrain her is prevented by Philostrate, who makes them stand back to let Theseus and Hippolyta pass. Theseus gives Philostrate his instruction to ‘Stir up the Athenian youth . . .’ and his chariot departs in a cloud of dust as the first strains of the Wedding March are sounded. The whole sequence, beginning after our sight of the proclamation, has taken some six minutes and forty seconds of screen time. Demetrius is seen standing alone, annoyed by the sight of Hermia placing a laurel on Lysander’s helmet. Helena approaches Demetrius, hoping to do the same, but to her chagrin he ignores her as Egeus comes up and points out Hermia, urging him to take action. She, meanwhile, is receiving gifts from Lysander – part of the Amazonian booty that would have been established in the discarded opening sequences of the film.

34


After the opening lines of the confrontation between the two suitors and Hermia’s father, we cut to a medium close-up of the sobbing, discarded Helena, and then to the little group of workmen, clustered round Quince: ‘Here is the scroll . . .’ Bottom, like some of the others, seems to find the whole business funny, and they have to be entreated to silence and secrecy by their leader. At this point in the shooting script and – with varying details – in the earlier drafts, the film moves to a sequence in which Bottom’s conflict with his wife is developed. The players’ parts are already being distributed by Quince; he ‘is about to hand the scroll to Bottom, [when] Bottom’s wife appears and drags him away from the craftsmen’ (p. 15A, sc. 68A). After a sequence of scenes dealing with the lovers’ plight and the plan to escape from Athens, Bottom would have been seen sneaking out of his house to join his friends at their rehearsal, using the window rather than the door, which his wife would have locked (p. 19, scs. 75–7). The situation would be repeated when Bottom found himself locked in (and the window barred) and had to escape through the cellar to go to the forest (p. 26, sc. 80). We fade out from the huddle of workmen and in on Hippolyta, now in a black dress with an extravagantly wide farthingale, and a high blackbordered ruff. She is leaning against a barley-sugar twisted pillar on a terrace with a cloudy sky in the background. Theseus enters in the background and hesitates for a moment as though he has been looking for her. When he touches her she recoils, but then relents and holds out her hand to him. Her response to his regret that the moon ‘lingers [his] desires’ is at first equivocal, and she places the flat of her hand against his chest as if restraining him, but he takes her insistence that ‘four days will quickly steep themselves in night’ as reassuring, and she seems to contemplate the changing of the moon with rapt anticipation. She closes her eyes and lowers her head on ‘our solemnities’ and he kisses her hand passionately – at which point a fanfare announces the arrival of Egeus. In the ensuing sequence Theseus is amused by the vehemence of Hermia’s protest ‘So is Lysander’, but nothing shows us Hippolyta’s response. After Theseus’s statement of the law’s provisions, Hermia begins, ‘So will I . . .’ but breaks off and runs off to a part of the hall away from the dais, whither she is pursued by Lysander. At this point in the shooting script, we find out what Hippolyta thinks of all this. Theseus has delivered his ultimatum to Hermia, who runs off ‘hysterically’ pursued by Lysander. ‘Hippolyta suddenly bursts out laughing and Theseus looks at her wonderingly’, but she answers his ‘What cheer my love?’ by continuing to laugh, and we cut to a corridor (in the film, the side of the hall) where Lysander


35

catches up with Hermia. Hippolyta, who began the sequence in a melancholic state of mind (the shooting script identifies the look in her eyes as ‘homesickness’) seems to have been cheered up. Unfortunately, the final cut of the film leaves her neutral at best. As ‘Spring’ from the Songs Without Words (Op. 62, no. 6) begins under the dialogue, Lysander comes skipping round the corner, and comforts Hermia with the observation that ‘the course of true love never did run smooth’ before proposing that they should steal away from Athens. With his assurance ‘There, gentle Hermia, may I marry you. / And to that place the sharp Athenian law may not pursue us’ (I.ii.162–3) the couple are closely framed in a two-shot that favours Lysander’s lines and places Hermia with her back to the camera in his arms and receiving his comfort. As she turns her face to profile, a cut to a reverse angle over his shoulder shows her leaning against a pillar and looking up at him, a radiant smile expressing her ecstatic anticipation (‘We will starve our sight . . .’). This allows the pair an unabashedly ‘romantic’ moment that is musically supported and unqualified by comedy, until their passionate embrace is disturbed by the appearance behind them of Egeus and Demetrius. Egeus drags Hermia away and Demetrius, arms akimbo, confronts his rival, who makes a show of straightening his clothes, flinging his cloak over his shoulder so that it flicks Demetrius’s nose and singing the musical theme in a display of comic and insulting nonchalance. One oddity of the completed film is the omission of Helena from this sequence of the lovers’ plans. We are left to assume that somehow or other she has found out, told Demetrius, and then followed the others into the woods. The shooting script and the intermediate drafts have a brief scene in which she sits at her mirror reflecting on her lack of success in love (I.ii.226ff: ‘How happy some . . .’) to illustrate Lysander’s accusation that Demetrius ‘made love to Nedar’s daughter, Helena’ (p. 17, sc. 71). The workmen’s meeting is followed with a scene in which Lysander serenades Hermia, and Helena thinks the music is for her. The happy lovers then begin to make their escape, encounter Helena and tell her of their plans. She resolves to inform Demetrius and go to the woods herself (pp. 87–8, scs. 81–8). The scenes seem to have been shot but not used.69 The earliest draft is more elaborate still, and introduces ‘an elderly friend’ for Helena to confide in and (perhaps for the first time in the play’s history) Nedar himself.70 As well as fleshing out the lovers, the sequence would also have included at least one shot of the moon. Together with the earliest planned version of the arrival of Theseus and Hippolyta, which (like some of Reinhardt’s open-air performances) would have been by torchlight, this

36


would have given a sense of ‘magic’ light both in the town and in the forest. As it happens, the chiaroscuro of Quince’s shop has something of this effect. Reinhardt’s early stage productions made similar use of the workmen’s lanterns, beginning the scene in darkness with a single light, as if from a lamp, at the front of the stage (in the prompter’s box) and introducing more as the players arrived, each with his lantern.71 As has been noted, the opening sequence shows Theseus arriving at the harbour of his ‘classical’ Athens to be greeted by a Handelian chorus. In the grandiose architecturally and musically assertive world created for these ‘harbour’ and ‘palace’ scenes, Hippolyta’s recalcitrance is emphasised not only by the actress’s expression but also by her costume: she wears a severe but clinging chainmail helmet and tunic and (visible in one shot only) leggings, and the sinuous snakelike ornament that embraces her suggests a ‘natural’ dimension that Theseus has yet to subdue. Her second costume is less martial, but it is a severe black mourning dress whose severity is qualified by its ornate cut and (again) a snakelike ornament that now defines the upper edge of her bodice. That Theseus is not as austere and controlling as he might at first have seemed is suggested by the barley-sugar twisted columns of the terrace where his ensuing conversation with her takes place, and by the rich ‘Elizabethan’ costume he now wears. This is the point at which the struggle for her assent seems to be almost won (before the pair disappear for a good hour) and it also indicates a baroque as well as a classical side to him, more fanciful and indulgent. His own ‘translation’ into an urbane lover has already begun. By this point the film has established one of its key elements: the tension between natural, spontaneous behaviour in the woods and the formal, regimented organisation of mortal society. This opposition is complicated by blurring distinctions and the crossing of boundaries. In this the lovers and the workmen offer in their different ways an element of commonplace ordinariness that is modified by passion, magic and – in the workmen’s case – an attempt at art. PALACE AND FOREST: DEFINING THE

‘NATURAL’

As the film proceeds, choreography plays a major part in establishing and also confusing these distinctions between ‘natural’ and constrained mentality. Attributed to Nijinska but with elements by Theilade, the film’s dance episodes celebrate the spontaneous, natural spirit of Titania’s train. This includes children of both sexes, but her ‘grown-up’ fairies are all female. Most of the children have bare torsos and wear furlike trunks, and


37

the more adult fairies are in light-coloured sequinned leotards that reveal the shape of their bodies underneath their long cellophane tresses. Devising costumes that would satisfy the Production Code was not easy, and in the circumstances it is remarkable how revealing they are.72 The dancers’ feet are bare and their movements evoke the loose-limbed, seemingly spontaneous self-expression associated with such modern dancers as Isadora Duncan and her followers. There is little or no use of the language of classical ballet on the one hand or conventional show-dancing on the other: when they run on tip-toe there is no suggestion of their being en pointe, and the composition and filming of their groupings is invariably fluid and unregimented, with no self-consciously tricky camera positioning. There are none of the geometric patterns, parade-ground manoeuvres and mechanisation of the female body associated with Busby Berkeley. Titania in particular has body language characterised by impulsive, swooping movements, tilting her head and extending her arms, open for an embrace, as she sways as if in affectionate longing for the Indian Prince and then for his replacement, Bottom. As she repeatedly circles, sways and dips, her long hair emphasises the fluidity of her movements. The fairies are initially seen, appropriately choreographed, for a twominute sequence after Puck’s first appearance, culminating in the First Fairy’s flight down to his side, but the first major continuous dance episode begins here and lasts approximately five minutes and thirty seconds, if we include the shots illustrating Puck’s narrative about the Indian Prince, and regard Oberon’s ‘Ill met by moonlight’ as its conclusion. The fairies are first encountered as they emerge by trick photography from swirling mist, when their movements as a group are choreographed as an extension of the mist, seen from above as they rise from it, circling in a graceful sinuous pattern on the ground: in production documents this is referred to inelegantly as the ‘Fog Dance’. They are then superimposed in a series of three screen-filling shots on the image of a giant oak tree as they spiral round it as if for take-off into the night sky. The First Fairy is seen as a tiny figure alighting on a flower, making chirruping sounds which attract Puck’s attention, before flying down towards Puck as she sings ‘Over hill over dale / Thorough bush thorough briar’. Episodes establishing the Indian Prince and showing Titania’s descent down a moonbeam attended by gracefully swaying fairies (superimposed to give the effect of transition into the visible world) include recurrent motifs of swift lateral movement and flight, culminating in a shot of Titania, accompanied by the Prince, running joyfully downhill towards a grove of swaying birch trees (dancers in dappled tights waving ‘branches’) before coming to rest in a group that

38


is also circular. At this point Puck announces Oberon’s arrival, causing consternation among the fairies. In contrast with Titania and her train, Oberon seems to come from a world of ‘darkness visible’. His tight-fitting costume is black, with glittering sequins that emphasis its blackness, and his attendants are bare-footed, bald-headed, swarthy, bat-winged and exclusively male. When he first appears the shooting script notes that ‘A little light falls upon Oberon’s face, crown and robe. They shine, but shine blackly like black jet – almost as coal would shine. Oberon is mounted on his black horse’ (p. 32, sc. 119). As he rides in, his attendants cluster round him flapping their wings menacingly as he lunges forward in an attempt to seize the Indian Prince. For all this, the Fairy King is a figure of nature: his headdress has twisted outgrowths that suggest both twigs wound with cobwebs and staglike antlers, and his followers, though disturbing, are dancers with handsome, almost fully revealed bodies, unmistakably human for all their batlike appendages. Both groups of fairies, male and female, wear costumes that reveal the body and enhance the sensual effect of near-nakedness, in contrast to the elaborately ornamented and built-up clothes of the aristocratic humans and the commonplace, untailored shirts and breeches of the workmen. Given the brevity of the film’s (and indeed the play’s) opportunities for registering the modulations in the relationship between Titania and Oberon, it is worth examining in detail the manner in which Reinhardt and Dieterle construct the most significant of these moments, Oberon’s awakening of Titania, the play’s IV.i.70–8. The outlines are meticulously laid out, marking Titania’s passage from anxiety and revulsion to wholehearted admiration and trust of her consort. The prelude to this scene is the ‘Nocturne’, the long and in some respects equivocal dance representing the arrival of dawn, and in particular the film’s most unequivocally erotic sequence, the ‘capture’ of the First Fairy. On one level the logic of the major dance sequences as ‘bookending’ the forest episodes is simple: as the fairies were summoned into visibility by the onset of darkness and the rising of the moon, so now the return of day calls for them to disappear, ‘following after night’s shade’. In the words of Reinhardt’s synopsis of the ‘Nocturne’, distributed on 10 December and followed carefully by Nijinska, as ‘the moonlight grows pale and cold’ we see ‘the transparent creatures of the night, urgently hastening in closepacked throng to the deep shadows of the forest’. The shooting script refers to the culminating episode as ‘Theilade’s big dance, ‘‘Flight to the Moonlight’’’. Korngold’s arrangement of Mendelssohn’s ‘Nocturne’ is darkened by being transposed down a semitone to E flat major, and balances the


39

scherzo used for the first sustained dance episode.73 Before we arrive at the ‘Flight to the Moonlight’, there is a general exodus of night creatures. According to the longest version of the script (p. 80D, sc. 232), in this sequence the First Fairy ‘now symbolizes all dreaming’ and ‘cannot tear herself away from her playing’, and Oberon’s elves represent the inexorable advance of the ‘all-covering shadows’. The effect is powerful, but seems inconsistent with the need of the fairies (night creatures) to pursue the darkness that is their element: it may be that an ambiguity in the play, the ‘fierce vexation’ as well as beneficent effect of dreaming, has worked against narrative logic. The manner in which the ‘flight’ is represented is far from straightforward and involves the herding together of all the other immortals under the vast cloak that spreads out from Oberon’s shoulders. Although the interest of Oberon’s men in the Titania fairies seems benign, the overtones of sexual conquest are strong, and in one disturbing close-up the camera pans in along a line of strange, hollow-cheeked bald-headed figures. In Reinhardt’s synopsis of the sequence, they are described as ‘file[s] of dark elves and night spirits, with white ecstatic dream-faces’. The synopsis makes it clear that Oberon’s dark cloak offers protection to ‘tardy creatures light and dark’, as well as to ‘birds . . . and other feathered folk’, though it is not clear why birds should hide when day approaches. Oberon’s agency may be for the good, but the fact that the ‘sports’ of the creatures ‘break up’ suggests an end to pleasure and lightheartedness. The First Fairy is bathing in a waterfall and Puck alerts her to the arrival of Oberon’s men, whom she flees. She is finally captured by one of them, who partners her in a pas de deux which seems to intimate her sexual submission (see Figure 2). The decisive moment is a shot in which her head, occupying most of the left-hand side of the frame, first turns slowly towards her captor then, eyes closed, tilts down and away. Then, in the film’s only obvious slow-motion shot, he raises her to a position where, her hands fluttering like a bird’s wings, she can be carried off into the dark. Reinhardt’s synopsis, following Theilade’s established routine, describes it carefully. The most significant phrase is the final one – the First Fairy is ‘swallowed up in dreamless darkness’. The conflicting elements of this extraordinary sequence are aptly summed up in Jack J. Jorgens’s description: ‘an epiphany of idyll and nightmare’.74 What follows is the film’s most intricately composed sequences of intimate interaction between characters: its filmic strategies repay detailed examination. It is, effectively, the emotional crux of the erotic relationships among the principals. After the First Fairy’s hands have disappeared, the starry sky is replaced in a cross-fade by a billowing semi-transparent veil

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2. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1935. The capture of the Fairy. Nini Theilade and the dancers, with Oberon (Victor Jory) and the Indian Prince (Sheila Brown) on the chariot in the background: a posed production still which represents part of Theilade’s dance accurately.

which at first fills the screen before being pulled off to the left as if it has been wound round the figures of the prostrate Titania and Bottom, with Oberon kneeling voyeuristically beside them. The shot includes all three partners to the erotic triangle, fairy king and queen and transformed weaver, in a medium close-up. Oberon’s speech ‘Be as thou wast wont to be . . .’ (IV.i.70ff) is intoned in tempo with the music, no doubt one of the occasions when Korngold ‘conducted’ the actors from off-camera. (‘Dian’s’ becomes ‘Dee-ann’s’, perhaps in accord with the German pronunciation.)75 The music’s final chord accompanies the transition to a shot from Oberon’s point of view in which Titania’s head lies against Bottom’s, forming an inverted V with the apex at the top centre of the screen. In silence she raises herself, blinks, passes her hand over her eyes and looks up towards Oberon, whom the next shot shows looking down at her in a close-up that occupies the centre-left of the screen. After her ‘My Oberon’, a reverse on Titania accompanies ‘what visions have I seen’ and as she slowly comes to consciousness the nature of her ‘visions’ comes back to


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her: ‘Methought – I was enamoured of – an ass’ – the last two words spoken with a gesture of alarm as she arrives at the realisation. Oberon’s amused ‘There lies your love’ (a medium shot) is followed by her slow turn to see the ass’s head, at which she springs up and shelters against Oberon, her head on his breast. Now they are united in a medium two-shot, sustained for ‘How came these things to pass’ until a close-up of Bottom’s head prompts her to hide her face in her hands (a close-up) for ‘How mine eyes do loathe his visage now.’ Oberon’s hands enter the frame from the left and (in a transition to another two-shot) we see him gently remove her hands from her face and bow his head towards her; she looks up into his face, then follows his gaze down towards the off-screen Bottom; she looks back at Oberon, and smiles at him, before turning away suddenly. A succeeding two-shot shows her looking away, again towards where Bottom is lying. ‘Come my queen, take hands with me,’ is spoken soothingly as Oberon takes her hands again and gently pulls her to him, placing his arm round her protectively. Titania allows herself to be drawn, but when she turns her face up towards him, she still does not smile. At this point, as she turns her head, the music again reaches a ‘final’ chord, and Puck cuts in with ‘Fairy King, attend and mark . . .’ Titania is still not fully reconciled with Oberon, a turning point which Reinhardt saves for one of the script’s key words. After Oberon has instructed Puck to take the head from ‘the Athenian swain’ (a long shot including Puck in his tree on the right and Oberon with Titania in the centre), Oberon and Titania are again seen together. This time, as Oberon puts his arm round Titania, explaining that the night’s events have been no more than ‘the fierce vexation of a dream’, on the final word she raises her head to look up at him. He assures her that they ‘the globe can compass soon / Swifter than the wandering moon’ and by now she has turned her face towards him in affection and admiration, with her left hand spread across his chest in a conventional lover’s embrace: the edge of the screen is ‘veiled’ by what seems to be a glittering bush at the left, on his side of the shot only. In a close-up from beside his shoulder, the camera sharing his angle of vision though not quite his exact point of view, Titania’s ‘Come my lord, and in our flight . . .’ is spoken with great affection and an expression of adoration as she asks Oberon to tell her how she was found ‘with these mortals on the ground’. They fly off together as Puck drops down from the tree to begin his work with Bottom’s head. The importance of the First Fairy to the Oberon/Titania relationship is considerable, if indirect. Theilade’s dancing has more technical precision and elevation than that of Anita Louise as Titania. Both fly on occasion with the


42

conventional aid of invisible wires, but Titania, once she has materialised at the foot of her moonbeam, for the most part trips gracefully along the ground, attended by her similarly agile train. The fairy queen’s costume, with her long cellophane tresses and sparkling leotard, is not as appropriate to flight as that of the First Fairy, whose legs and arms are freer and who wears a close-fitting helmet with tiny horns and winglike appendages and flutters ‘wings’ of a thin gauzy material. (When first seen, this Art Deco figure looks like a butterfly.) Titania’s flying moments – when she escapes from Oberon with the Indian Prince in her arms, when she and Oberon leave the forest and when they arrive in the palace – are sudden and are not connected with a general disposition to being airborne, whereas Theilade, a classically trained dancer who had modified her technique with new methods, always seems to have just alighted and to be about to take off again. In this she represents a greater physical freedom than Louise can achieve, a dimension of the feminised nature of Titania’s realm here associated with fully-grown womanhood and which complements the innocence of the predominantly female child fairies. (Apart from the gnome musicians and the chamberlain who ushers Titania and Bottom to their marriage bed, there are no miniature adults in this version of the fairy world.) By juxtaposing Titania’s return to ‘my Oberon’ with the conquest of the First Fairy, the film brings the two together at a strategic moment. ‘HOW

MANY FIREFLIES?’

–

OPTICAL EFFECTS

AND MOVIE MAGIC

In its special effects Reinhardt’s film is much more elaborate than any of its successors, including the version by Hoffmann, whose sound-stage forest, grotesque creatures and twinkling fireflies reflect its influence. The 1935 film is full of strange devices, challenging the special effects department and sometimes exasperating the studio’s executives. On 14 December 1934 Wallis wrote to Blanke asking, ‘How many fireflies do they plan on making?’ In the book he published in 1973, Gottfried Reinhardt claims that in respect of achieving the magical effect of the play, the film was a compromise and only partly a Reinhardt work. He insists that his father ‘would never have tolerated in the theatre the optical effects that Dieterle aimed for’, and complains that the atmosphere of the film slid perilously close to kitsch.76 In view of the detailed proposals included in the August 1934 draft, and the strong connections with earlier productions, this seems odd. Was Reinhardt being exceptionally diplomatic in the telegram thanking and congratulating Dieterle? No evidence suggests that he shared his son’s opinion.


43

The optical effects and trick shots are of two kinds, the most remarkable being those that directly affect the audience’s vision – quite literally, by masking or modifying the action on the screen. Others are technical devices to produce the impression of flight or simpler illusions. In an interview many years later, Mohr recalled how he placed wire frames, sprayed with the rubber ‘cobweb’ solution and sprinkled with more ‘casket flitters’ before the camera, and used a disc of glass ‘with an interlaced pattern, which gave an overall diffusion’ in front of the lens, to produce the ‘radiating stars’. He could clear a space for the actors’ faces on the wire frames. Wallis was worried that the effect might be overdone, and wrote to Dieterle and Blanke: I feel that you are using too much of that gauze with the sparklers in front of the camera. It was all right for a while and to be used occasionally, but we are getting too much of it and it is getting too heavy. I don’t mind using it around the edges of the screen, but let’s don’t have it cover the entire lens, as it makes the whole thing too fussy.77

Although on a first viewing it may seem that the forest scenes are pervaded generally by effects of stars, veils, mists and soft-focus effects, these are in fact strategically placed. Broadly speaking, the forest glitters and shimmers only when Oberon or Titania is present, and the effects associated with them are differentiated. The film enters the forest by way of a series of shots that at first include ‘natural’ sky – a shot of high trees, and another of deer silhouetted against the sky – and then shifts into a mode that reads as artificial. When Puck, who has materialised from a heap of leaves, looks up, we see what he sees: a stylised rendering of the night sky, framed by trees and displaying a crescent moon. In a sequence already discussed in detail (above, p. 37), Titania’s fairies first materialise from mist that spreads across a piece of open ground, and their subsequent circling of the oak tree leads them to run through the sky. The First Fairy appears, landing on a daisy as if she materialises in miniature form. As she lands by Puck, and during their conversation, the surrounding bushes seem to sparkle as if in response to the sequins on her costume, and the screen is masked off at the edges in what reads as soft focus but is probably produced by a smeared or painted glass. (The focus remains sharper on Puck than on the fairy.) In the sequence illustrating Puck’s narration about the Indian Prince, the screen remains free of optical effects, which do not occur again until Titania appears, floating down a shaft of moonlight followed by fairies bringing with them her gossamerlike cloak. This effect appears to be superimposed on a matte painting of the forest, so that she and her fairies are semi-transparent. At times – such as when she picks up

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the Indian Prince – there is a ‘soft’ effect round Titania, and when we see her embracing the boy and hear Puck’s warning of Oberon’s approach, the fairies around her and the woods behind them are in soft focus. As Oberon rides out of the wood, accompanied by his henchmen, the screen acquires a sheen of sharply crystalline ‘stars’, and as he approaches Titania these remain in his portion of the screen, leaving Titania clear but surrounded by a mist of light. When we see her respond to him in medium shot, the screen is suffused from below by shafts of light slanting upwards on either side from below, leaving her image clear in the centre. Reaction shots of Puck are without any optical overlay, establishing that these effects in their respective forms are associated with the fairy king and queen. This distinction is maintained from now on, and whenever Oberon appears the glittering stars produced by him, either by optical devices or by light reflected off his costume, are predominantly crystalline in form. Titania’s glittering costume and long blonde tresses are complemented by twinkling ‘stars’ in her bower and, occasionally, by corresponding overlays, and by soft focus round the edges of the screen. Her spider’s-web wedding veil, which serves her and Bottom as a counterpane, glitters but is not ‘sharp’ at any point. The forest remains for the most part neutral between the rival monarchs, though when Titania approaches Bottom after his transformation glitter appears in the trees and bushes behind the couple. When Oberon appears with others, mortal or fairy, his glitter is – so to speak – his personal property, even if at times it takes over the screen. When he leans into shot to put the flower’s juice on the sleeping Titania, his crystalline stars remain on his side of the screen; when he is in shot with Puck, the latter remains clear; when he overhears Demetrius and Helena, the stars remain with him and his tree stump and do not stray to the humans. The extraordinary blackness of Oberon’s costume has been noted already (above, p. 38). In a black-and-white film, it is achieved by making his body reflect light, and his costume is made of shiny material dotted with sequins. (A close-fitting suit of woven metallic material, it resembles the ‘light’ version worn by Hippolyta in the opening scene.) By way of contrast, Titania is covered in strands of cellophane that wave in response to her sinuous movements, and the excess of light that the soft focus and the glittering material produce appears to be emitted by her; she has a long shimmering train – at least in her first scene. Oberon’s cloak is at its grandest in the ‘Nocturne’, where it billows out behind him for several yards. After the first scene, their mortal equivalents, Theseus and Hippolyta, wear costumes that ornament and encrust the body, with built-on swags, broad shoulders, panniers and puffed-out breeches. The immortals wear


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costumes that fit close to the body, suggesting a franker acceptance (or celebration) of the erotic. Oberon has a sinister chariot, while Theseus has a military chariot and a triumphal car at his disposal, the latter more like a carnival float and fanciful rather than magical or threatening. When they are in the forest, the craftsmen do not appear at all unusual: whether at home or away, their appearance is prosaic and unelaborated. By contrast, the lovers, in their baroque dresses and doublets of silk and satin, are far more glamorous, even at their most bedraggled. (Unlike the lovers in many recent stage productions, and in both recent films, they emerge from their dream with their costumes more or less unscathed.) They are not lit evenly, but accented from the side and behind, as if by moonlight from above, which lends them a slightly unreal quality, with hair and the edges of their clothing acquiring an ‘aura’. The effect is even stronger with Puck, whose head and arms are surrounded by this light and who also on occasion (for example, when he is leading Demetrius and Lysander through the fog) wears body make-up that glistens. Puck dematerialises by a process of superimposition, in which he gradually becomes transparent and then disappears to reveal a shot of the sky (this time ‘real’ rather than painted) and the advancing dawn. The technique is used sparingly in the film: apart from this instance, we see it at Titania’s first appearance and Puck’s later reappearance in the palace, and when the gnome orchestra materialises in a tree as the Indian Prince looks on. Some of the effects called for in the shooting script and the drafts either go beyond what was achievable, or may have seemed excessive. A direction (p. 31) for Titania’s first appearance seems to call for technology that would not be available for a few more decades: ‘the moonlight pours out on the ground like molten silver – shaping itself into Titania’. After Puck’s ‘On the ground, sleep sound’: ‘All the animal and bird life of the forest begin laughing, according to its kind. (This may be done with the cries of the real animals and birds). At the same time the heads of the water nymphs appear from the water as they join the merriment’ (p. 76, sc. 224). Similarly, the first draft includes a direction (after Bottom has been led to Titania’s bower) which seems to illustrate Titania’s reference to the moon’s ‘watery eye’ – ‘and when she weeps, weeps every little flower, / Lamenting some enforced chastity’ (III.i.190–1): ‘The wood with its different faces is laughing and crying. Some of the trees laughing, and leaves and some of the beautiful flowers crying’ (p. 62, sc. 196). This would have been easier in animation of the kind exemplified by the forest in Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), released two years later and

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conceivably influenced by Reinhardt’s forest. A later scene, when Bottom awakes, calls for a ‘laughing dove’.78 Some of the flying effects envisaged in the drafts are more sophisticated than those executed. A notable example is the ‘moonpath’, which is first encountered when Titania has defied Oberon. The August 1934 version reads: She begins to run and suddenly is no longer running but flying, with her court about her – moving up the moonpath as if it were a road of light. Oberon gives chase on his dark horse. Dark spirits materializing out of the blackness follow him. It is as if the moonlight were Titania’s natural element, but Oberon being a creature of shadow is incapable of swift movement on the white moon path. With a burst of laughter like tiny bells, Titania and her followers disappear in the moonlight. (p. 35)

In the same draft, when Bottom is being transformed back into wholly human shape: Puck stands watching the transformation with interest, until suddenly his tail begins to shrivel and smoke as the approaching sun ray strikes it. Puck emits a yell of terror and slapping frantically at the smoking tail he runs off. FOLLOW HIM WITH CAMERA as he runs, trying to avoid the sun ray, which is now extending so rapidly that Puck can’t lose it. Smoke from his tail increases. He springs into the air, catches a tree branch and swings on it. The smoke from his tail becomes denser. The density increases until Puck becomes a mere shadow, then even the shadow disappears. Then the smoke cloud thins and disintegrates in the air until we see the branch again empty. (p. 83)

In the film Puck disappears by means of the fading out of a superimposed image. Puck riding off on a branch to seek the flower, the flight of the fairies who rescue the Indian Prince from a tree and Oberon and Titania leaving the forest are also less impressive than the draft scripts anticipate. In the shooting script, as in the August 1934 draft, ‘Titania and Oberon are dancing towards the sun ray. As they dance further from the CAMERA and closer to the sun they grow dimmer and dimmer, until at last the ray grows brighter, they are completely absorbed by it’ (p. 83, sc. 237). Jackman’s notes show that his department did begin to think about these effects, and that some of them were at least devised if not executed.79 The drafts specify more fairy activities than appear in the film, some of them literal-minded: in the shooting script Titania’s line ‘And war with rere-mice for their leathern wings’ was to be illustrated by a fairy capturing a bat and making its skin into ‘a small leather jacket’ (pp. 41–2, scs. 140–2). There would also have been a diminutive ‘Sandman’, to help Titania and the lovers fall asleep. The final use of this (included in all drafts) would have


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introduced the ‘Nocturne’. Sand would have been sprinkled on to Titania and Bottom by one of Oberon’s ‘black’ elves. The August 1934 draft includes the detail that follows: ‘As the sand falls it turns into a thin cloud, which changes into a blue color, out of which Blue elves take form, holding a large veil of blue. (Everything from here on will be in blue tint.)’ (sc. 221).80 If every suggestion had been taken up, the result would have been too crowded and busy, reminiscent of such overloaded Victorian fantasies as the paintings of Sir Noel Paton or Richard Dadd.81 Jackman’s list of effects from 24 October includes a moment that would have resembled the incongruities of scale favoured by the Victorian painters: ‘Bottom’s head now being transformed into an ass, we see one fairy spirit, reduced to the size of a mouse, crawling over his head.’82 The August 1934 script includes an illustration to Oberon’s account of the magic flower and the origin of its potency: NOTE: we suggest DISSOLVING to the scene described – just the mermaid on the dolphin’s back with Oberon’s voice coming over the shot – back to scene on Puck’s line ‘I remember’ – DISSOLVING out again at Oberon’s ‘Cupid all arm’d,’ showing Cupid taking aim at a stately woman, Queen Elizabeth, the shaft falling, the flower turning purple. We come back to scene after the words ‘love in idleness’. (p. 118)

In the shooting script’s version, Puck would have been seen on his way to fetch the flower, flying over a snow-capped alp, eating pine nuts and dropping a pine cone that would be seen – from underwater – being caught by a ‘fantastic fish’. He would alight in the Redwood Forest at Santa Cruz and, while looking for the flower, would meet a black panther (‘not ferocious but gentle – like a good natured dog’). The omission of this was no great loss to the film, but one touch would surely have been worth while: ‘INSERT: THE FLOWER. In slow motion it gradually opens and reveals its beauty. This insert is the only color in the picture – the flower is purple’ (p. 36, sc. 130). The effect is not indicated for every appearance of the flower. The shot would have dissolved to a corresponding close-up of a white flower – a lily of the valley – in Titania’s hands, as she wove a garland for the Indian Prince. In the film’s final sequence, Oberon and Titania fly in attended by three fairies, and the whole screen acquires an overlay of stars, which combine the ‘sharper’ points of light associated with Oberon and the softer focus that accompanied Titania. There are no shadows in the court, until it is invaded by the fairies. The shimmering overlay of sparkling lights continues as we see the mortal lovers climb the staircase that leads towards the bridal chamber, and when Puck, invisible to them, blows out the

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torches of the mortals’ procession, he is seen for the first time behind a shimmer of stars. As he jumps down from the column to open the chamber door, he is framed by flowerlike glittering shapes, and these fill the screen after the final words of his epilogue. ‘Finis’ appears, as if moving towards the camera from the centre of the screen, its outline filled with glittering stars. A film whose opening credits appeared as if written on water that seemed to reflect a starry sky departs with a corresponding optical effect of evanescence. ORDINARY MORTALS: THE CRAFTSMEN

Reinhardt makes the amateur actors a centre of ordinary behaviour in the film, even though as comic characters they already have an extraordinary aspect: like the lovers, they are unwittingly cast in a comic play enjoyed by Puck and us, the audience, but unlike the lovers they are not knowingly engaged in any emotional development. Their eccentricities are those of ‘normal’ persons, exaggerated but recognisable traits of character. They are, however, moving towards the performance of a tragedy of love, which requires other kinds of behaviour. The film’s casting means that for the audience they are also well-known actors, so that the double identity of film actor and role operates as we watch – more so for cinemagoers in the 1930s, when Hugh Herbert and Frank McHugh were more familiar. On one level the film is about the transformation of these fictional workmen into fictional actors playing roles in a legendary story, and also the shape-shifting of the Warner Bros. actors into ‘Shakespearean’ performers. In Cagney’s case this is especially significant. He is not merely a familiar contract player but a star, ‘a performer’, in John Ellis’s elegantly concise formulation, ‘whose figure enters into subsidiary forms of circulation, and then feeds back into future performances’.83 Although the drafts of the screenplay tell a more complicated story in the opening half-hour, in the finished film Reinhardt sets them up with a scene of romantic, carefully composed warmth (see Figure 3). The first workshop scene opens with five of the workmen grouped round a table, at which Quince is seated with his copy of the play, whose title he spells out laboriously for their benefit. Flute is featured strongly: he stands chewing to the right of centre and immediately above Quince and the candle. In the right foreground with his back to the camera is the workman who will never be identified by name or even addressed individually – the Epilogue, Arthur Treacher.84 A silent, vacantly staring figure, he will thrust himself into the background of many shots, eager but uncared for. (And of course


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3. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1935. Max Reinhardt’s (and William Dieterle’s) chiaroscuro effect for the craftsmen’s discussion of Pyramus and Thisbe in Quince’s workshop. Production still showing (L to R) Frank McHugh (Quince, seated), Hugh Herbert (Snout), Arthur Treacher (Epilogue), James Cagney (Bottom), Dewey Robinson (Snug) and Otis Harlan (Starveling).

when the play is performed he will not get to fulfil his allotted role – perhaps at some stage Keaton was considered for this part rather than Flute or Snout.) In this he provides a contrast with Flute who has to be dragged into any conversation and exhibits throughout a kind of superior detachment and distinct lack of enthusiasm. The next shot looks along the table in a reverse angle towards the workman who has not yet been seen, Bottom. His greater dynamism of movement is immediately evident (soon he will climb on to the table to demonstrate a ‘tyrant’s vein’ ) but at the same time he has an automatic assumption of his own importance that runs ahead of his knowledge of what is going on. ‘I play Pyramus,’ he repeats, proudly, before suddenly remembering that he has no idea who or what Pyramus might be. Quince demonstrates the ‘lover’ and his suicide with deft, mincing gestures and a wooden spoon, provoking the irritating giggling that becomes Snout’s defining characteristic. As Bottom considers his role (‘A lover – a lover’), we see a close-up of Flute, who by now has

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retreated to a seat by the wall and is contentedly chewing nuts. Bottom’s demonstration of ‘storms’, whistling and waving a tin tray, leaves Flute unimpressed: his failure to respond to Quince’s calls is a sign of his lack of enthusiasm for the whole project rather than absent-mindedness. The principal would-be players have been distinguished from one another in simple terms, but the dynamics of their relationships have been established: Flute’s ironic detachment that may only superficially be a kind of mental slowness; Bottom’s agility and edgy, assertive self-confidence (at one point he even takes Quince by the lapels); and Epilogue’s vacant desire to be involved and informed. While Flute may ‘act’ daftness, Epilogue seems genuinely dim. Bottom may commandeer scenes or situations, but Flute seems capable of stealing them. In the middle is Quince, painstakingly guiding this awkward squad through the preparations for a play that he regards as a major work but whose title he himself has only just learnt to enunciate. Snug is keen but slow on the uptake, Snout has his irritating giggle and Starveling is quietly amused. The short scene of their arrival in the forest (approximately a minute and a half long and corresponding to the opening of the play’s III.i), includes the first juxtaposition of Bottom with the ass’s head, as with the animal behind him he suggests the prologue that will declare him to be ‘Not Pyramus, but Bottom the weaver’. (In Hoffmann’s film Bottom is introduced in the town square by the camera’s following a donkey, who leads us to the cafe´ table where the off-duty weaver is preening himself and then exits from the frame to leave us with him.) For the first time, Treacher’s character is allotted his role, as the Epilogue that they have now decided they need. Eventually, the workmen find the ‘marvellous convenient place’ for their rehearsal. Again, Flute demonstrates his subversive comic timing, stolidly offering no support for Bottom in his attempt to impersonate a lover, defeating his attempt to imagine the ‘odorous savours sweet’ by breathing in his face and finally coughing uncontrollably when a seed goes down the wrong way. Bottom throws down his part and has to be entreated back into the rehearsal. As Bottom resumes, Flute (Brown) responds with a series of subversive grimaces and twitches to which Bottom (Cagney) reacts with finely timed Vaudevillian double-takes: this has developed into a double-act within the play within a film. Bottom rushes off to the ‘brake’ to await his next cue and undergo his involuntary transformation, while Quince labours to transform Flute, forcing his legs, arms and even fingers into stiff and grotesque postures that must correspond to some Quincian vision of feminine elegance. The passions of Pyramus and Thisbe are to be represented by imposing some kind of ‘classical’ order on this intractable,


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stubbornly inartistic raw material. As Quince persists, it becomes apparent that Flute does not understand the distinction between two aspects of the director’s work, offering instructions and providing models for imitation. After his faithful mirroring of Quince’s exasperated ‘You speak all your part at once – cues and all!’, Flute takes his turn in threatening to leave: ‘I won’t play any more.’ Meanwhile, in the shelter of the brake Puck is transforming Bottom by imitating the effect his magic (represented by spores from a plant or flower) will have, uttering ‘ass’ noises, ruffling his own hair and pulling as if at long ears and a nose. Flute has now been persuaded back and is standing ready for his next cue, still munching. Bottom strides in, takes up his position and launches into a line he has been trying to get right – and which he repeats a couple of times in slightly different readings: ‘If I were fair Thisbe I were only thine.’ It is only after the further attempt at the line, while Bottom is pausing to reach for the next words, that Flute turns and does a ‘slow take’, his face falling and ‘O me’ escaping from him involuntarily. There may have been more than a suspicion of wilful and assumed slowness in Flute’s previous responses to Bottom, but this time the ‘take’ is unaffected: the editing, cutting between the slow, apprehensive reactions of the others and Flute’s appalled fascination (he is after all closest to the beast), holds the audience in suspense just long enough for the ensuing panic to erupt effectively. Puck’s pursuit of them in the guise of hound, hog and fire culminates in Flute’s jump into the pool, from which he emerges (like the water-goblin who directed the fairies’ attention to the whereabouts of the Indian Prince) to utter his ultimatum, ‘I won’t play any more.’ BOTTOM: AN ACTOR TRANSFORMED

As Bottom, Cagney is a true ‘frontiersman’ on the borders of dream and reality, and he is also an erotic lightning conductor between the supernatural and the mundane. Within the narrative he is translated both into a stage lover by taking on Pyramus and also into a ‘real’ (and perhaps potent) but temporary lover by magic in the forest. Because he is played by an actor with an exceptionally strong and familiar screen presence, Bottom’s transformations are, as it were, doubled at every turn, and he also has a place in the film’s radical readjustment of gender discourses. Cagney, an actor who plays gangsters with delicacy (and is also an accomplished singer and dancer) takes on the conventionally feminised traits of a screen lover. To compare him with Rudolph Valentino may seem far-fetched, but Valentino offers a type of the screen lover and was a focus of male hostility

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and fear during the 1920s. Does love – or Shakespearean acting – make a man effeminately soft? Is this a problem for an actor associated with a particularly American style of masculine aggression and swagger? Cagney/ Bottom crosses backwards and forwards across the border between toughness and sensitivity, tyrant and lover.85 Bottom’s first impersonation of a lover is given in Quince’s workshop, where he illustrates how a lover is ‘more condoling’ than a tyrant by puckering his lips, fluttering his hands and kissing the air. Quince’s illustration of loverlike delicacy has a similar feminised quality: lovers are not tough guys. In moments of exasperation with Flute, Bottom’s face suddenly takes on the hard fixity of look that denotes toughness ready to break out. But in Cagney’s gangster performances there is always a vulnerability that his cockiness seems to supplant by an act of will. Left on his own in the forest, believing (or hoping) that he is the butt of a practical joke, Bottom is nervous as he struts up and down. After the anxiety of discovering his ears and nose, and the trauma of seeing his head reflected in the water, he leans disconsolately against a tree, and Cagney’s eyes can be seen, even behind the mainly immobile mask, registering the situation. As Bottom sinks to his knees, then crawls away, Korngold’s score turns the ‘hee-haws’ of Mendelssohn’s motif into swooping, sobbing cadences, and tears roll down the furry cheeks. The anguish of the transformation is first qualified, then gradually forgotten when Titania wakes and Bottom is addressed as the object of her adoration. Titania’s body language as she rises, moves towards Bottom, caresses him and nestles alongside him maintains continuity between her habitually undulating gait and arm movements, and the effects of erotic anticipation. Bottom remains – well, Bottom. He looks her up and down appraisingly when she pleads, ‘I pray thee, gentle mortal, sing again’, he conducts her in a duet rendition of his song, and when she stands on tip-toe to confide in his ear that she loves him, he scratches it as if not sure he has heard aright. By the time she has garlanded him with the chaplet that she removes from the rejected Indian Prince (whom she gently but determinedly sets aside), Bottom is beginning to forget his desire to leave the wood, and when he is introduced to Cobweb, Moth, Mustard-seed and Pease-blossom he is beginning to enjoy himself: he pirouettes into a courtly gesture of greeting to shake hands, and is amused by the self-assertive little Mustard-seed (played by the ten-year-old midget Billy Barty), testing his biceps and feeling his chest muscles appraisingly. Mustard-seed, a very forward child, even seems like a juvenile version of Bottom. Meanwhile, Titania has been collecting a wedding bouquet and her fairies have prepared a veil from the web of a cooperative spider.


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Bottom’s behaviour moves from annoyance through anxiety and a few moments of abject despair to renewed self-confidence and eventually wholehearted fulfilment of his new role as a lover. It is of course far more loverlike than erotic, and although he is going to bed with the fairy queen, there is none of the more or less clear indication of sexual activity that some decades later would become habitual in film and theatrical performances. However, Louise’s performance makes it clear that Titania is a spirit of no common rate, and that this includes knowledge of the sexual implications of a marriage bed. While she is preparing the bridal bouquet the fairies bring the cobweb veil and place it tenderly on her head, and two of them lean in to kiss her. The music modulates to a violin solo, then to a series of harp glissandi, as she looks up wistfully towards the sky and reflects that ‘The moon – methinks, looks with a watery eye – And when she weeps – weeps every little flower – lamenting some enforced chastity’ (III.ii.190–3), punctuating the lines as if with a series of suppressed sobs, brushing away a tear on the final words.86 She seems lost in thought as a quick cut moves us to Bottom, now provided with a sunflower for his buttonhole, amused by the attentions of the child-fairies who dance round him, and Titania, now recovered from her moment of sadness, advancing towards him. As they begin their procession to the bridal bed, the music becomes a parody of the Wedding March and Bottom struts alongside his bride, pinching her cheek affectionately. The First Fairy dances in and strews petals over the bed. Once they have lain down, the cobweb veil is drawn over them. By now Bottom is fully engaged in his new role, and the last we see of the couple is a shot of him taking her hand and kissing it repeatedly. In an action that, as Jay L. Halio has noted, differs widely from the play’s description of the moment (IV.i.44–60), Oberon seizes the Indian Prince, picks him up with a sustained cry of triumph, exclaims, ‘This falls out better than I could devise’, and rides off to a triumphant orchestral crescendo. (At the New York premiere this was followed by a ten-minute intermission.)87 When we next see Bottom and Titania, he is reclining in her arms, receiving the attentions of her court to provide music and scratch his head: the emphasis is very much on his being at home as the fairy queen’s consort. It is her lullaby, ‘Sleep thou my love . . .’ (a version of Songs Without Words, Op. 19, no. 6) as she ‘entwines’ him in her arms, that conveys any erotic feeling the scene possesses. After the lilting repetitions of ‘Sleep thou . . .’, Titania’s ‘Oh how I love thee – How I dote on thee’ is given special intensity, a more meditative melody and a lower place in her vocal range.88 Bottom joins in, vocalising the final note of the accompaniment, as he tenderly takes

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her hand in his, this time without any ‘loverlike’ performance. It seems to be the apogee of their relationship, and is followed by a cut to Oberon (who, with the Indian Prince, has been established as a spectator) and his admission that ‘her dotage now I do begin to pity’. Puck’s warning that ‘Night’s swift dragons cut the clouds full fast’ is followed immediately by the beginning of the ‘Nocturne’ and the awakening of Titania. The completed film and the script drafts now change the order of the play’s scenes. First, Bottom wakes and looks in the stream to reassure himself that he no longer has whatever it was he had.89 Singing ‘What methought I was’, he disappears up the hill, and we cut from the forest to Athens, as Theseus’s triumphal car passes from left to right. This brief scene (less than twenty seconds) cross-fades to the lovers lying in the forest. They are roused by the distant sound of the march, and their awakening scene, conducted in mime, inaudible whispers, laughter and inarticulate exclamations lasts one minute and thirty seconds; they exit left and then reappear at the right of a new shot which looks out from the edge of the forest on to a valley with a classical columned structure where in the middle distance we see Theseus’s procession arriving. He makes short work of overruling Egeus, and promises that the couples will be married at the same time as him and his bride. One consequence of Reinhardt’s alterations, and in particular the practically wordless scene for the lovers, is to make Bottom seem no less inarticulate than the other mortals. The arrangement also keeps Theseus and Hippolyta out of the forest – they are on the edge of it, in one of the film’s few location scenes. In the shooting script and in other drafts, when Bottom returns to Athens after his adventures he has a strange encounter with his spouse: 251. EXT. STREET NEAR BOTTOM’S HOUSE Pick up Bottom walking along the street. FOLLOW HIM WITH CAMERA. He has his part in his hand, his eyes lowered to it. He mutters his lines as he walks. He is highly excited over the events of the past night. As he reaches the door of his house and is about to turn in, he raises his eyes from the part. His face drops as he does.

What he has seen is his wife (whom we see from his point of view) ‘busy over the wash tub’, but as he looks and ‘his eyes grow wistful’, she ‘DISSOLVES into the Fairy Titania, weaving a garland’. Bottom ‘gives a melancholy sigh and runs away quickly, without entering the house’ (pp. 88–9, scs. 251–5). The August 1934 draft has a happier outcome, taking the domestic story a step further. Bottom reaches his house and finds


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the props and costume hidden in his chest, when his wife comes into the room, ready to scold: Bottom has had time to put on his full regalia with helmet, breastplate and sword. She stops stock still and stares at him in amazed admiration. The broom drops from her hand; she rushes forward and embraces him enthusiastically. Bottom is flattered, but in spite of it he groans. He is pleased to cut a figure that can arouse the woman’s admiration, but he wishes the woman were Titania. (p. 246)

In this version Bottom’s final transformation into Pyramus would have effected a revolution in his domestic love life. These scenes do not appear in the completed film.90 Instead, we cut from Dian’s temple directly to the workshop, where Quince is trying out his opening lines as prologue, which he delivers as, ‘We come not to offend, but with good will to show our simple skill’ (V.i.109–10), thus correcting the error over ‘points’ that occurs in the play when he delivers it. Snout arrives with news of the multiple weddings that are about to take place, and almost immediately, just after Starveling comments that ‘without doubt he is – transported’, Bottom appears in the doorway. He is about to tell them of ‘wonders’ when we hears the braying of a donkey, which has thrust its head through the window. This clearly prompts Bottom to think better of it: ‘Not a word of me.’ It may be a further sign of his detachment from the general enthusiasm for the pushy weaver that Flute, who has remained in the background munching his sunflower seeds, is not included in the group round Bottom. The scene ends with Bottom issuing orders – ‘Get your costumes together, meet presently at the palace. Away, go, away’ – and as the group breaks up there is a cross-fade to the first shot of the wedding procession entering the great hall. It is in the context of the palace that Bottom’s final appearance as lover will take place. After shots establishing the procession and the feast, the craftsmen are seen making their way towards the festivities but forestalled by guards and Philostrate as Quince vainly offers his scroll. (In the drafts the actors take their place in an antechamber alongside other hopefuls; in the completed film some of these can be glimpsed on the left as Philostrate rejects Quince’s scroll.)91 Theseus and Hippolyta are enthroned at one end of the hall. A pair of two-shots allows the pairs of lovers to be heard wondering at their experiences (one line each from Lysander and Demetrius, with their respective wives at their side), which seems to prompt Hippolyta’s remark ‘’Tis strange, my Theseus, that these lovers speak of.’ Theseus responds with an abbreviated version of ‘The lunatic, the lover and the poet . . .’ (V.i.3–22), omitting his references to the ‘lunatic’. The film brings Puck

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into the palace earlier than the play, where he does not reappear until the finale of the act. He alights on the open terrace and is semi-transparent, as if invisible to the mortals, then, crouching between the ‘manager of mirth’ and his master, knocks from Philostrate’s hand the scroll he was about to present to Theseus and substitutes another, the announcement of the ‘tedious brief’ play offered by the workmen. A small proscenium arch with a translucent curtain has been set up for the play. Quince delivers an abbreviated version of his prologue, beginning, ‘The actors are at hand’, and as he hesitatingly counts them off on his fingers we see brief shots of each actor preparing. Mopping his brow, Quince retreats and ushers in Wall. The performance of Pyramus and Thisbe ‘on the Duke’s wedding day at night’ brings together three pairs of mortal and one pair of fictional lovers. The players perform in front of a curtain representing the night scene in which the legendary lovers meet their fate, and a rising sun is placed on the back of the dais where Theseus and Hippolyta are enthroned. When Bottom appears in his assumed role as a famous lover, in a classical breastplate and helmet recalling the returning warriors in the film’s first scene, the weaver’s repertoire of poses and gestures is for the most part a compendium of would-be theatrical effects as he overprojects and adopts ambitiously balletic poses. The overall effect is of ‘effeminate’ affectation that goes with play-acting, which defeats a performance of heroic masculinity – Theseus’s preserve. A good deal of the comedy between Bottom and ‘Thisbe’ comes from Flute’s stolid refusal to inhabit the role, his mechanical rote-learnt delivery of the lines and his defiantly fitful attempts at ladylike behaviour. Pyramus, with his effete poses and short-skirted tunic, seems more ‘feminine’ than his beloved. Arms held out at his side, and one foot placed daintily in front of the other, Bottom looks like a ballet dancer as he addresses himself in crooning tones to the ‘sweet and lovely wall’. He may shout his lines most of the time, but he aspires to be lyrical and even sings ‘Sweet moon, I thank thee for thy sunny beams’, whereas Flute has no idea what ‘lyrical’ might be. Bottom strives to move fluidly from pose to pose, but Flute, thrust on stage in response to his repeated cue, strides forward with no inhibiting sense of theatrical decorum. When Flute as Thisbe enters to meet at ‘Ninnus’ tomb’ (spelt thus on a placard hung round Epilogue’s neck), he gambols clumsily round the stage flinging petals with incongruous force and singing a supposedly carefree and girlish ‘la-la’ at the top of his voice. As Pyramus, Bottom at least has a grasp of the character he is playing, even if his vocal delivery is often more appropriate


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to a tyrant than a lover. In any case, whatever airs and graces may have been thought necessary for the play itself, it is clear from what little we see of it that the thwarted ‘Bergamask’ was going to be an assertive, stomping and ‘masculine’ performance appropriate to Mendelssohn’s music. While the actors are absent behind the scenes, Theseus gives a signal for the company to leave the hall. The actors reappear and launch into their dance, but a low-angle shot of their raised feet suddenly freezes, and we see what they see – the empty dais. The effect is oddly ungenerous, leaving characters we have come to love high and dry. The shooting script and the earlier drafts give a pleasanter coda to the actors’ story. The dance (‘one of the Guild dances with masks’) is performed but the mechanicals are so absorbed in their performance that they do not notice what is happening. Puck ‘suddenly appears before [the three pairs of lovers] and waves his little wand. Then as he prances off toward the door, Theseus and Hippolyta rise and follow him, followed by Demetrius and Helen and Lysander and Hermia.’ The ‘nobles’ also follow them, leaving the hall empty, but the dancers still do not notice. Finally, ‘they reach the climax and stop, staggering from exhaustion’, and look up. They are shocked to find that their audience has deserted them (‘a look of disgusted disappointment’), but the script shows them richly rewarded. A ‘full shot’ of the empty hall, with the players in the foreground, reveals a donkey, which brays – recalling the donkey that disconcerted Bottom in the scene of reunion with his comrades. This donkey, though, turns out to be loaded with bags of money for them, which Philostrate offers to them with the line, ‘From the ducal treasury a pension granted for life: sixpence a day to every one of you’ (pp. 111–12, scs. 320–1). A few production stills show the dance in progress, which suggests that this may have been one of the late cuts made for the sake of time (see Figure 4). In the completed film the view of the emptying hall is followed by another of the actors’ astonished faces. We cut to a grand staircase, towards which the ducal party is ascending, and then the hall is seen again, emptied of its crowds and resembling a movie nightclub set with its shiny expanse of ‘marble’ floor, gracefully curved ranges of steps and low cushioned seats. Puck clambers on to one of the carved lions that flank the dais, and blows out a torch before signalling with a cloth towards the sky. Oberon and Titania, attended by two small fairies, fly in through the terrace, and as they alight we cut to a shot of the palace filling with more fairies and the screen once again acquires its veil of glittering lights. The film now moves rapidly to its starry finale and Puck’s direct address to the audience.

4. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1935. The Bergamask: production still showing the continuation of the dance, not included in the film.


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PROMOTION AND RECEPTION

As usual, work on the film’s promotion had begun before and during filming, with the stories fed to the press from autumn 1934 and the preparation in spring and summer 1935 of the trailers and campaign material. An internal communication dated 16 February 1935 contains a draft story by Carlisle Jones of the publicity department providing a variety of ‘insider’ details, including statistics of the usual kind: ‘More than 600,000 yards of cellophane were used for the ballets; Titania’s train required 90,000 yards of gossamer strands alone’, and one of Hippolyta’s costumes weighed 150lb. (Production memos show that the actress had complained bitterly about this, but the weight became a virtue in the magic world of publicity.) There were also some more sensational news items: a number of small fires had broken out (caused by the heat of lamps drying the foliage); Rooney had broken his leg tobogganing; and a bear had died. ‘But,’ the writer concluded jauntily, ‘even fire, injury and death could not delay the progress of this tremendous undertaking.’ Jones also seems to have planted the story, picked up by a number of newspapers, that Bottom would be given a ‘‘‘Mrs Bottom’’ played (without dialogue) by Sarah Haden’.92 As for the trailer, Jack L. Warner did not wish to divulge any of the film’s special effects, and in August Wallis, following his boss’s instructions, was insisting that only ‘the talks by the stars’ – a series of short speeches delivered as if in front of a theatre curtain – should be issued, with no footage from the movie itself. It is clear from one memo by Wallis that a more conventional trailer had been prepared, in which some flying effects and Bottom in his transformed state were seen: ‘My opinion is that it is a mistake to show any scenes of this kind in their entirety, as when an audience looks at them coldly, for the first time, and sees just 50 or 100 feet of strange-looking characters with funny head-dresses and funny costumes and speaking in the Shakespearean language, personally I don’t think it can do the picture any good.’93 The problem of selling the film to the ‘masses’ was an ever present theme in the executives’ discussions. One of the trailers was a brief scene set in the studio commissary in which Brown assured a fellow actor (Pat O’Brien) that the film was funny, an endorsement for the popular audience by a favourite comedian.94 Meanwhile, anxiety about the film’s intelligibility was reflected in a ‘proposed foreword’ to be written by the scriptwriter Kenyon. This may have been the dramatised scene featuring Ian Hunter (Theseus) which is reported to have been included in some prints, but is more likely to be the written message drafted to precede the main title on

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screen: ‘Good friends, if any be disturbed by this tale of a summer’s evening, judging it strange or too incredible, you have only to think that you were dreaming, and that all these adventures were visions which you saw in your sleep.’ This suggests not so much that the dialogue might be difficult to understand, as that audiences might be ‘disturbed’ by not knowing what kind of film they were watching: The Green Pastures (1936) and The Wizard of Oz (1939) had not yet been made, and live-action fantasy films were not yet a readily recognisable genre. The press book issued to exhibitors and ‘designed exclusively for premiere engagements’ attempts to cover all the bases, headlining ‘Best Seller’, names, romance, action, comedy, spectacle, music and wit and emphasizing in the visual material the sensuous appeal of the movie. It is the graceful and (under the drapery) seemingly naked image of Theilade as First Fairy rather than that of Louise that dominates posters and other artwork (see Figures 5 and 6). Exhibitors should cultivate local notables and stress the cultural status of the product: they should ‘SELL ENTERTAINMENT by direct advertising and publicity. SELL CULTURE by under-cover propaganda, personal sales work and indirect and inferential advertising and publicity.’ The British publicity office urged the headlining of Reinhardt and Shakespeare, ‘the greatest money-names of the theatre’.95 The ‘Managers’ Round Table’ in the Hollywood Reporter, where exhibitors reported their local campaigns, included on 26 October 1935 a telegram from Harry Goldberg of the Chestnut Street Opera House, Philadelphia, that encapsulates the spirit in which the film was being promoted: Downtown Warner theatres roadshow premiere Dream biggest event theatre history. Hollywood premiere Chestnut Street Opera House resulted largest crowds on street in years. Entire Warner organisation, women’s clubs, schools, etc., geared to sell tickets in advance resulted largest advance sale ever for road show motion picture. Wonderful cooperation from newspapers. Banner breaks Saturday and Sunday prior Monday opening. Personal addresses, auditoriums, high schools, junior high schools, colleges, Kiwanis, Lions’ Club, etc. aided sales tremendously.

Warner Bros. made great play with a letter sent on 17 September 1935 by the president of the Shakespeare Association of America, Dr A. S. W. Rosenbach, to Will Hays, president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, Inc. (the MPPDA). Having seen a preview, he assured Hays that this was ‘an extaordinarily fine film and deserves the support of all Shakespearian enthusiasts’: ‘To me it is the Midsummer Night’s Dream of Shakespeare’s imagination. It is produced in a manner he would have liked to have seen it [sic], but which was impossible on the Elizabethan Stage, or in


5. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1935. Advertising material from the press book.

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6. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1935. ‘The Production as an Attraction’: page from the press book with advice for publicising the film.


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fact on the stage of the modern Theatre. Of all the plays of Shakespeare this lends itself most to the arts of the cinema.’ Particularly important, in a letter that fell out better than even Warner Bros.’s publicists could devise, was the assurance that ‘this screen version [would] arouse in the youth of today a keener interest in the plays of Shakespeare and a desire for a finer type of film – a ‘‘consummation devoutly to be wished’’’. Replying on 25 September, Hays observed that the film seemed to fulfil a claim he had made ‘less than two years ago, in January 1934’ that ‘the motion picture progress had reached the point where it became possible to ‘‘tap the treasure house of great comedy and drama that lies in a possible Shakespearean cycle on the screen’’’. The scepticism that his suggestion had aroused in some quarters was now answered. This ‘epochal’ film was ‘an event of major importance not only to the motion picture industry but also to all those who have cooperated and are now helping in the better picture movement in the United States’.96 Not only did Rosenbach and Hays obligingly praise the film as of great cultural value, they also provided a connection with the MPPDA’s campaign – of which the implementation of the Production Code in July 1934 was an important element – to assert the social responsibility of the industry. The letters were copied to any interested parties. More interesting in terms of possible future developments was a letter to Warner from Al Dubin, the lyricist responsible with the composer Harry Warren for many of the songs in the studio’s successful musicals, suggesting that ‘if Reinhardt were ever to make a modern musical it would top anything that the industry had seen before . . . I sincerely believe Reinhardt would drive out all other producers of musicals were he to undertake this work’ – high praise from the man who collaborated with Busby Berkeley.97 In a review of almost unqualified admiration, the Hollywood Reporter (9 October) suggested that ‘box office draw . . . will hinge on its vast comedy appeal, which may overcome any lethargy on the part of those who cannot fathom the imaginative plot or fear the classic dialogue and poetry’. In New York Variety (16 October), while expressing admiration for ‘the loveliest fantastic imagery the screen has yet produced’ and welcoming proof that ‘the screen, as a form of expression, need never hesitate to tackle the most difficult job of translating a lovely idea from stage or literature’, reflected that selling the movie would be difficult. It should be trimmed by at least 20 minutes – ‘the medium of the screen demands brevity and pace’. As for the actors, Powell never seemed to catch ‘the spirit of the play or role’, and Rooney was too ‘intent on being cute’. The laughter of the comedy had died ‘somewhere between the cutting room and the theatre’, largely because all the comic actors tried too hard to be funny. Cagney was

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most effective ‘in the romantic passages with Anita Louise’, despite the encumbrance of the ass’s head. In the New York Times (10 October) Andre´ Sennwald admired ‘a brave, beautiful and interesting effort to subdue the most difficult of Shakespeare’s works’, which had ‘magical moments’ when ‘it comes all alive with what you feel when you read the play’. He had reservations, particularly concerning the overacting of Alexander, Cagney and Powell: unwittingly endorsing Wallis’s reservations during casting, he complained that Cagney was ‘too dynamic an actor to play the torpid dullard’. There was ‘a laggard quality in the ballet movements’ but it was the clowns in whom ‘the photoplay achiev[ed] perfection’, and Brown gave the best performance in the show. Brown’s Flute was widely admired, and those who warmed to the perhaps overenergetic comedians did so in the spirit evoked by the New Yorker’s John C. Mosher: ‘They certainly bring a breath of wild and Tudor vitality to the story, which the lovers by no means assist’ (19 October). The needle on the ‘moviemeter’ of the New York Evening Post (10 October) settled between ‘good’ and ‘excellent’ on its dial, despite the critic Thornton Delahanty’s dismissal of the cast’s ‘total lack of uniformity in speech and style’, the distaste with which he responded to Puck (‘a disastrous selection . . . a succession of throat noises that sound like a rather unpleasant old lady with the whooping cough’) and his contempt for Powell, who ‘easily outstrips all the other players in total wreckage’. The redeeming quality lay in the ‘aerial passages’ where, ‘on the extended plane of the motion picture’, Reinhardt had ‘devised effects in rhythm and imagery which clearly show the understanding between himself and his medium’. Perhaps the real problem with the lovers lay not so much in casting as in the standards against which they would inevitably be judged. As John Alfred Thomas observed in the National Board of Review Magazine, the ‘romantic’ element of the film was being seen by ‘a generation which is accustomed to seeing the same thing done much more amusingly in a Noe¨l Coward play’.98 Many reviews balanced reservations against an appreciation of the film’s significance. The Herald Tribune hailed ‘one of the most important Shakespearean productions of our time and a definite landmark in the history of the motion picture’ (10 October). The New York Daily Mirror (10 October) proclaimed 9 October as the historic date which would be remembered as the occasion of Brown’s taking his place ‘among the effective Shakespearean actors’. This was a ‘monumental motion picture – an historic one’. John Reddington, in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle (10 October) announced that ‘the movies took wings for the first time’ – a year later, when the film was reaching the neighbourhood


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theatres, his colleague Winston Burdett begged to differ. It was too literal in its translation of the poetry, the forest scenes were most magical when the camera simply rested on the scenery rather than followed the flight of the fairies, and the actors had not been transformed overnight into Shakespeareans (5 October 1936). Still, Reinhardt had ‘created a spectacle which, for lavishness, can be paralleled only by the highest flights of musical comedy and . . . has succeeded in producing and sustaining a mood with greater art than has yet been witnessed on the screen’. Burdett’s review raises directly the intriguing question of identity that is hinted at in several other accounts. Was this a film that showed that the cinema could deliver Shakespeare, or in genre terms a new and exotic hybrid? Thomas, in the National Board of Review Magazine, refused to accept the play as ‘representative enough of Shakespeare to settle any questions about his adaptability to the cinema’.99 On a more mundane level, it was generally agreed that the film had done what the studio wanted. It was ‘a worthy vehicle to take [Warner Bros.] out of the shirt-sleeve class’ (New York Times, 20 October). And what of Shakespeare’s home? Success in London would set the seal on the prestige of the film. The New York Times reported a Warner Bros. executive in London as being cautious about ‘bringing a fellow to his own doorstep one might say’, but suggested that the advance indications were good: the headline was ‘Warner House Cheers Up. Indications are British Public Will Take to A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ (5 October 1935). The Adelphi Theatre was already three-quarters sold out for the premiere, even at the unusual price of a guinea (£1 1s, the equivalent of $5.25 in 1935) – London audiences were reported to be unused to paying anything at all on such occasions. In some quarters the reception was predictably dismissive. Sidney Carroll in the Sunday Times (13 October), himself a director of Shakespeare and a self-appointed arbiter of acceptability, reviled the film as ‘this frightful nightmare of crudity and childishness, this restless phantasmagoria of mingled Teutonic and Transatlantic buffoonery’. It was his obligation ‘as a man of English descent on both sides for generations to try to protect our national poet dramatist from either idolatry or desecration’, and this licensed him to denounce Rooney’s Puck as ‘an offensive little American boy of the most impudent and irritating kind’, Cagney as ‘an American gunman called Bottom’ and the whole affair as a Christmas pantomime, ‘a splendiferous German-American version of The Babes in the Wood with harlequinade complete’. Having said this, Carroll concluded with the peculiar assertion that Warner Bros. had at least established Shakespeare as a potential source

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for films. The Times (1 October), less strident and spiteful, was reminded of nineteenth-century fairy paintings, ‘the whole setting an animated Noel Paton, with hints of other children’s books’. It had ‘all the faults that grandiose stage productions of Shakespeare once committed but have now happily outgrown’. More welcoming, Hubert Waring in Reynolds News (13 October) thought the forest scenes ‘superbly beautiful beyond anything previously attempted on the screen’ and ‘a constant source of surprise and delight’. Puck was unbearable (‘an urchin, a guttersnipe’) and Victor Jory (Oberon), though impressive, was a little reminiscent of the Demon King in pantomime, but Cagney’s youth and the ‘zeal and intelligence’ of his performance were refreshing. Graham Greene in the Spectator, having expressed ironic surprise at Carroll’s direct access to Shakespeare’s mind and intentions (‘my English descent is less pure than Mr. Carroll’s’), thought the acting ‘fresh and vivid for the very reason that it lacks what Mr. Carroll calls ‘‘proper Shakespearean diction and bearing’’’. Greene suggested that Reinhardt was ‘lavish and fanciful rather than imaginative’ and contrasted ‘sequences of great beauty’ with ‘others of great banality’ (among which he counted Theilade’s fluttering hands). The most interesting aspect of Greene’s review is his insistence on discussing not whether Shakespeare can be adapted to the screen, but rather the extent to which Reinhardt (he does not credit Dieterle) reveals himself as a theatrical rather than cinematic director. ‘At every passage of dialogue we are back before footlights and the camera is focused relentlessly on the character who speaks.’100 Among the responses to the film that addressed the general question regarding Shakespeare’s compatibility with the cinema, one of the most suggestive was that of W. E. Williams (secretary of the British Institute of Adult Education) in Sight and Sound. Having weighed up the difficulties of translating ‘literature’ into film, Williams wondered whether Reinhardt should have ‘dared’ to dispense with dialogue almost completely. As it is, ‘he leaves most of the speeches unimpaired; and the effect of them on the screen is simply to make one feel they are out of place’. The film ‘reduces to terms of realism that element which, in Shakespeare’s play, is left to the imagination, or rather is fed to the imagination by Shakespeare’s wizardry of language’. Williams’s argument is based on a distinction between the media rather than a desire to protect a sacrosanct text.101 Like Allardyce Nicoll’s discussion of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in his book Film and Theatre, this article raises questions beyond those posed by most of the journalists. Nicoll considers the distinction between dramatic verse and the film. Verse ‘presupposes a certain remoteness from the terms of everyday


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life’, while cinema ‘usually finds its most characteristic expression in the world that immediately surrounds us’. Nicoll also suggests that habits of listening have changed since Shakespeare’s time, so that even in theatrical performances a twentieth-century audience will need ‘a direct stimulus to the visual imagination’ not called for or available in the Elizabethan theatre. This is not simply the routine argument about ‘the masses’ and their capacity for enjoying Shakespeare.102 In October 1935 Variety had observed that the film would need energetic campaigning to recoup its reported cost of $1,300,000, but that ‘Warners will not be perturbed if losing $500, 000 on the effort as a whole.’ (The ‘grand total’ of the estimated budget drawn up on the basis of the ‘final’ script, including the opening sequence with the conquest of the Amazons, had been $615,000.)103 In the event, the financial message was not so bleak. On 4 March 1936 Variety published an article with the comprehensively eloquent headline: ‘Warner Bros.’ Ballyhooing of the Bard in the Bumpkin Belt Boosted the Box Office. All on a 2-a-Day Basis at Upper Scale $1.50 to $2.20 – Comparative Takes With Other Pix.’ The strategy was simple, and the studio was charging 50 per cent (in some cases 75 per cent) of the gross from the first dollar: ‘Expecting to get its negative cost and more out of the roadshowing of Dream, the Warner policy is to penetrate every town in the country that’s a possibility for a twice-daily engagement, if only for one day.’ A much less optimistic note was struck by Harrison’s Reports, an independent newsletter for exhibitors compiled from dispatches from more than 500 cinemas. Reviewing A Midsummer Night’s Dream on 26 October 1935, its cautious verdict had been that it was ‘an artistic achievement; but it is entertainment only for class audiences’. By December of the following year, in its retrospective account of the 1935–6 season, the journal was taking a less respectful line: The [box-office] reports on this picture vary from Very Good to as low as Poor. It is a highly artistic production, one that cost Warner Bros. about two million dollars, but it is not entertainment for the masses. Even school children yawned at it when taken to see it by their school teachers. The intrusive publicity has helped it draw in many spots, but the results are not commensurate with the efforts.

The message to the studios? ‘It would be wise if the producers refrained from making pictures out of the plays of Shakespeare.’104 Reinhardt, however eminent and however successful in one project, could never fit into the routine organisation of a Hollywood studio. The degree of control and day-to-day involvement he enjoyed with A Midsummer Night’s Dream included having a voice in the entire process

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from the conception to the final cut. When the film was being edited to remove some twenty minutes (mainly from the final sequence) for a ‘popular’ edition, Blanke felt obliged to consult him over the cuts, even if this was largely a matter of courtesy. Despite his high fee, Reinhardt himself had not been an excessively expensive investment. The Shakespearean production had incurred no costs for purchasing a story ‘property’ (at a time when these could be very expensive) and the fees paid to the writers (Kenyon and McCall) seem to have been reduced in proportion to the script work done by Reinhardt as part of his director’s brief.105 There was no way that he could become a contract director, and for the foreseeable future he would need to work with one at his side. At the same time, he was not a producer, still less a production executive, and he would need the freedom to pursue whatever theatrical work offered itself – though as it transpired little of this was forthcoming. After the completion of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Reinhardt was under contract for three more projects. In the months after its completion, a number of titles were discussed and some began development. On 29 June 1935 Reinhardt reported to Blanke in a telegram that he had discussed a possible Hamlet film, to begin in January 1936. Charles Laughton might be obtained ‘in exchange’ from MGM, an arrangement that could be paid for by giving MGM uncredited use of the director’s theatrical Regiebuch for its planned Romeo and Juliet. Reinhardt reassured Blanke that Hamlet would be ‘incomparably cheaper’ (‘unvergleichlich billiger’) than the Dream. However Blanke or Warner responded, in the event MGM’s Romeo and Juliet went ahead with Leslie Howard and without the benefit of Reinhardt, and began principal photography on 27 December 1935.106 There was also the prospect of Twelfth Night. Korngold was reported in September 1935 to have started work on the songs, and the archives include a script drafted by Julius J. Epstein dated 12 August 1936.107 On 8 September a story in the New York Post reported Warner Bros.’s ‘story manager [Jacob] Wilk’ as announcing that Reinhardt might be returning to Hollywood to direct a version of Marc Connolly’s play The Green Pastures: ‘so far as Dr Reinhardt is concerned, the Warner Studios are his – to do as he likes with what material he likes for as long as he likes’. Future projects, Wilk told the reporter, would not be limited to Shakespeare. The Green Pastures would in the end be directed by William Keighley with cinematography by Mohr. A planned film of Danton, based on the play by Romain Rolland, was brought to the point of script drafts and preliminary discussion of casting: Reinhardt envisaged Laughton or Paul Muni for the title role, with Spencer Tracy as Robespierre. The film seems to have been abandoned at a late stage of


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development because its subject matter was thought inappropriate at a time of political upheaval in Europe. Other unrealised projects with Warner Bros. included Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann, The Gambler (after Dostoevksy) and Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author.108 In New York Reinhardt laboured over a project that dated back to Salzburg in the middle of the 1930s. This was The Eternal Road, Franz Werfel’s epic stage play representing centuries of Jewish life and survival, with a score by Kurt Weill and designs by Norman Bel Geddes. After many postponements and setbacks, the play opened in January 1937. An open-air production of the first part of Goethe’s Faust at the Pilgrimage Theatre, Los Angeles, had its gala premiere on 31 August 1938 and proved so successful that the run was extended from two to four weeks and it was repeated in 1940. Reinhardt directed two further productions in New York, Thornton Wilder’s The Merchant of Yonkers (December 1938) and Rosalinda, a successful version of Die Fledermaus (October 1943). Yet there seemed little chance of further work in Hollywood, and the ‘Max Reinhardt Workshop of Stage Screen and Radio’ drew little effective support from the movie industry. There is a sadness about his final years, despite the warmth with which he was regarded by colleagues from the old world and the new, and Reinhardt died in New York in 1943 without being able either to return to the Salzburg Festival he had helped to create or to establish a new, American equivalent. Reinhardt’s career had been, in his own words, a series of opportunities to ‘realise his dreams’ and these included not merely visions arising from the plays he directed but also visions of the theatre itself – in the United States he had achieved only partial success in continuing the process. It has been argued that the film of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with its dark vision of the fairy world, and in particular the characterization of Oberon and his followers, represents the darkening of the director’s view of the world as Nazi tyranny took hold, but it has also been suggested that the darkness came from Dieterle rather than Reinhardt.109 If the former of these interpretations is to be credited, the forces of darkness would still be seen as outweighed by the brilliance and exuberance elsewhere in the film, and the concluding ‘magical’ gaiety of the epithalamium and Puck’s epilogue. Somehow the dream refuses to end as a nightmare. As it turned out, the next feature film of a Shakespeare play, Olivier’s Henry V, would be made during the nightmare of total war and offer a vision designed to mitigate its psychological and moral effects.

CHAPTER

2

Historical-pastoral: Laurence Olivier’s Henry V, 1944

Saturday 25 November 1944 was a difficult day for Anglo-American relations, though only a select few knew it. The American ambassador, Gilbert Winant, brought Winston Churchill, down at his official country residence, Chequers, for the weekend, a telegram from President Roosevelt ‘about aviation’ – that is, the question of aircraft supplies from the United States under the loan agreement known as ‘Lease-Lend’. John Colville, private secretary to Churchill, wrote in his diary, ‘It was pure blackmail, threatening that if we did not give way to certain unreasonable demands, their attitude about Lease-Lend supplies would change.’ Despite this, the weekend took its usual course. ‘Winant was shame-faced about presenting [the telegram] and didn’t want to stay to lunch, but the P. M. said that even a declaration of war should not prevent them from having a good lunch.’ In the evening ‘Mrs C. and Sarah [Churchill] came and we saw the film of Henry V in Technicolor, with Laurence Olivier. The P. M. went into ecstasies about it. To bed at 2.30.’1 We will never know whether Churchill’s ‘ecstasies’ were enhanced by the refreshing simplicity of the politics of Henry’s campaign, in comparison with the complexities of dealing with Franklin D. Roosevelt. Did Henry’s brisk reception of the French ambassador strike a chord? Colville’s account of the day at Chequers points up the realities not so much of combat as of economics at a time when the ‘special relationship’ with the United States had to be presented publicly as one of steadfast and uncompromisingly generous support. Both the Soviet Union and the United States were proving formidable but demanding allies, and the political and economic forces that would shape the new, divided, Europe were unmistakable. The Bretton Woods conference in July 1944, which established the International Monetary Fund, and the Dumbarton Oaks conference of October 1944, which initiated what would become the United Nations Organisation, effectively directed the world economy towards American domination and anticipated a conclusion to hostilities that would not be a settlement 70


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of the usual kind. As Gregor Dallas points out, there was no international peace conference, and ‘no politically agreed peace was ever established in Europe as a whole’.2 The relationship of Olivier’s film with the war being fought during its production and release can be described in terms both of similarities to and differences from the world of 1944. It engages with its own time through a series of connections and disjunctions, and to label it as ‘propaganda’ is a simplification. At once escapist and in touch with the reality of its audience’s experience, it is one of the subtlest war films of its time: a vision of a conflict in the past, seen at first through the entertainment medium of yet another historical period and at the same time asserting the superior abilities of the new medium. A historical ‘epic’ made in Britain, it participates in the artistic and commercial conflict between Hollywood and the national film industries of Europe, a trade war that dated back to the 1900s. The narrative of its making is – like that of the progress of the war in 1943–4 – one of ‘men and money’. Like other artistic products of wartime, Henry V – a skilful combination of documentary with fantasy and historical epic – also participates in the renegotiation of the discourses of masculinity, social relationships and national identity that the conflict made inevitable. At the same time, the play’s theatrical self-consciousness makes it as appropriate as A Midsummer Night’s Dream for a corresponding approach to filmmaking and ensures that it will both enliven and in some ways sidestep the debates of the 1930s about the compatibility of Shakespearean drama and the cinema. It articulates a hopeful fantasy – a ‘dream’ of England and of the cinema itself. Arguments about high and low culture would be subsumed in the general debate about how the people should be addressed in a ‘People’s War’ and what compromises should or should not be made in the name of bringing culture to the masses. The social idealism that produced the Council for the Encouragement of Music and The Arts (CEMA) – the Arts Council’s forerunner – engaged with the less elevated priorities of those charged with managing morale. If this was a prestige film, the prestige was that of a nation rather than a Hollywood studio. The success of the film was a matter of public policy. HENRY V BEFORE

1943:

A GOOD PLAY OR A BAD TATTOO?

Shakespeare might be invoked as a vital part of the ‘English heritage’ of literature, the ‘greatest accumulation of national prophecy’ where, in the words of G. Wilson Knight’s The Olive and the Sword (1944), ‘the soul of England, which is her essential prophecy, speaks clearly’, but the choice

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of Henry V as a vehicle for wartime propaganda was not as self-evident or straightforward as might be assumed.3 The contradictory effect of its portrayal of Henry and the play’s events may not yet have been compared – as it would be by Norman Rabkin in 1981 – to the ‘double’ image that illustrates an aspect of Gestalt theory by suggesting either a rabbit or a duck, but never both at once; the work done by the play in recuperating a ‘unified’ nation and its participation in the projects of an oppressive ideology may not yet have been explored as they would be in the later 1980s by New Historicists and Cultural Materialists; but even E. M. W. Tillyard, whose account of the ‘Elizabethan World Picture’ has been characterised as supportive of the dominant ideology of his own time, presented Henry V in Shakespeare’s History Plays (1944) as a weak play reflecting Shakespeare’s inability to reconcile the demand for straightforward, idealised Tudor virtues with intractable human material: in terms of Shakespeare’s growing interest in complex individuals reacting to political constraints, the character of Henry is a failure.4 During the 1930s the play’s contradictions, the dubious nature of the military campaign and its motives and the uncertainty of the outcome when viewed in the light of subsequent events had all been highlighted by theatre reviewers. There had been a number of simply celebratory productions: in April 1937 a production by Ben Iden Payne at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre presented Henry V ‘as a series of pictures taken from a child’s history book’ (The Times, 2 April 1937). At the Old Vic in London, Tyrone Guthrie directed a more glamorous and less straightforward interpretation, with simple but brilliant heraldic designs by Motley, starring Laurence Olivier as the king. Both productions were seen as contributions to the celebration of George VI’s coronation, itself an occasion to assert the nation’s emergence from the pain and confusion of the Abdication Crisis. Guthrie’s production elicited conflicted responses from some reviewers. The Evening News was happy to celebrate ‘the sense of controlled design that runs all through [the play], alternating pomp with poverty, rhetoric with intimate sentiment, and making it all a pattern of the English Spirit’, and hoped that ‘every visitor from overseas [would] make a point of seeing it’ (7 April 1937). In the Evening Standard Stephen Williams voiced his distaste for the play, ‘the chronicle of one of the most wanton sacrifices of human life in European history and a picture of war in its basest and most humiliating aspect’ (7 April). On the other hand, he had to accept that ‘taking it on the surface (and it is perhaps better not to look too far beneath) it is a glamorous and high-sounding dramatic poem, rich in acting opportunities’. In the Spectator Peter Fleming welcomed a production that ‘rightly insist[ed] that this is a good play, not


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just a bad tattoo’, but remarked on the striking topicality of the traitors’ scene (likening the miscreants’ rapid confessions to those of Trotskyite victims of Stalin’s purges) and the atmosphere in which ‘[w]ar, and casualty lists, and national prestige are examined at length by those who have to reason why and those who haven’t’. Stephen Murray’s Dauphin, thought Fleming, showed ‘that glut of arrogance and that dearth of stamina of which it is customary and agreeable, in these islands, to suppose all foreigners compounded’. Although there was some disagreement about Olivier’s vocal ability, reviewers generally concurred in finding him an appealing monarch: the New Statesman and Nation reported that Henry had been made ‘as unpompous as possible, and Mr Olivier’s fascinating presence and voice go far to obliterate the heartiness of the role’, while for the Sphere Olivier’s voice was ‘splendidly virile without ever drowning the verse in a din of sonorous masculinity’ (17 April). As for the actor’s physical bearing, the Catholic Herald noted that he had evidently ‘realised the even-poised person he must portray and never allowed his natural talent for agility to overcome his better judgement for dignity’ (6 April). This was, after all, the actor whose Old Vic performance as Coriolanus in 1938 culminated in a breathtaking tumble down a flight of steep steps. It is difficult not to interpret Olivier’s physical feats as self-conscious performances of masculinity, much in the style set by Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. and his successors in costume adventure movies – in particular the young New Zealander who had made his way to Hollywood by way of Northampton Repertory Theatre, Errol Flynn.5 However, with the exception of the siege of Harfleur, the role of Henry hardly offers opportunities for such bravado. Fleming approved of Olivier’s recognition that the king is more Hamlet than Hotspur, and avoidance of ‘the dashing complacency, the Teddy Lester, Captain of Cricket, assurance, with which the part is commonly invested’. The Jewish Chronicle’s reviewer summed up the opportunities of the role as realised in his performance, tracing his development into ‘an adult monarch, intelligent and human, but unassertively aware of his power and easily at home amongst those whose welcome is to be polite but to a recognised conqueror’ (9 April). Although the bright banners and tents of Motley’s designs allowed for a celebratory atmosphere of pageantry, other elements in Guthrie’s production reinforced a sense of gentle but effective scepticism. The French Princess and her lady in waiting were carried on to the stage on a white gothic palanquin for the language lesson. Harcourt Williams doubled as the sickly, dazed King of France (the role and the interpretation he repeated for the 1944 film) and the Archbishop of Canterbury, whom he played as ‘a hard-faced political animal: an anti-clerical’s dream of a

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divine’ (Ivor Brown in the Observer, 11 April). Above all, though, it was the line that Olivier traced through his part that moved the production away from jingoistic simplification. London’s next large-scale production came as a double surprise, in that Lewis Casson directed a grandly pictorial and in many respects oldfashioned staging at Drury Lane, and Henry was played by Ivor Novello, an actor prominent not as a Shakespearean but as author, composer and performer of musical romance. Novello’s Henry was unquestionably more Hotspur than Hamlet, with the vocal and physical presence needed to command a production whose ‘real embarkation on a real ship’, ‘welter of smoke and turmoil’ outside Harfleur and ‘swaying meˆleé’ at Agincourt were the antithesis of the skilful economies of Motley at the Old Vic. T. C. Kemp’s review in the Birmingham Post reflects the reviewer’s uncertainties about the role and the play, reporting that Novello had ‘treated the King as a purely Romantic figure, who makes up in consistent enthusiasm for a persistent lack of that bluff heartiness which alone can balance the initial injustice of the invasion’ (17 September 1938). ‘Bluff heartiness’ was hardly Novello’s strong suit, but for this critic (and several others) he managed to finesse the injustices of the play’s politics.6 Unfortunately for Novello, the production coincided with the finessing of another great injustice: the Munich crisis. What many regarded as the shame of Chamberlain’s temporising with Hitler made the autumn of 1938 an unpropitious time for Henry V. With the advent of war the material resources – and literally and genderspecifically, manpower – called for by Henry V were hard to come by, even if managements had wanted to stage it. Regent’s Park managed afternoon performances in August 1941, with Patrick Kinsella as Henry (Observer, 28 August) and in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1943 the veteran Baliol Holloway in the annual performance on Shakespeare’s birthday was applauded for his gallant impersonation of youth by an audience thickly populated with men and women in uniform – many of them American. In the same month ‘a young soldiers’ battalion of the Durham Light Infantry’ performed Henry V with a concluding pageant designed to ‘show how the spirit of the British soldier has lived on through the ages’. Marching on to the tune of ‘Bladon Races’ they identified themselves to Henry as descendants of his fighting men (Nottingham Journal, 20 April 1943; Auckland Chronicle, 10 June 1943). The reception accorded to these performances had a strong element of celebration of the fact that they could be done at all, the one with the diminished resources of a theatre lacking able-bodied men, the latter by nonprofessionals.


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On radio there were productions of the play’s fourth act in 1939 and 1943, which seem to have shared the same basic script, featuring the scenes before, during and after the battle and including (perhaps surprisingly) Fluellen’s and Gower’s discussion of Henry’s character and the comparison of Falstaff’s rejection with Alexander’s killing of his friend Cleitus (IV.vii). The broadcast was allowed fifty minutes on both occasions.7 A fuller version, broadcast on the Home Service on the afternoon of 19 April 1942, ran for one and a quarter hours. A narrator supplemented the efforts of the Chorus, and the selected episodes included the Salic Law speech, the reluctant comic soldiers being beaten into battle at Harfleur, and – of course – the eve of Agincourt. The opening narration glosses Henry’s decision as unproblematic: ‘In the Presence Chamber of the King’s Palace, his nobles and advisers urge him to take an army to France and claim the throne as his rightful inheritance. He agrees and issues his instructions.’8 This was the radio production in which Olivier played Henry. Television broadcasting, which the BBC had begun on a very limited basis in 1936, was suspended for the duration of the war. Its forays into Shakespeare had included The Tempest, a modern-dress Julius Caesar and David Garrick’s reduced version of The Taming of the Shrew. All had been produced by Dallas Bower, an experienced film producer who shared responsibility for television drama with Stephen Thomas, whose background was in the theatre. In the late 1930s – ‘after Munich’, as he put it – Bower prepared a television script of Henry V, ‘with a view to the possibility of Ralph Richardson’s playing Henry V’. He put it to one side, but returned to it when, after a spell in the army, he joined the Ministry of Information (MOI). Bower subsequently left the ministry to return to the BBC, where he worked this time as a radio producer, but it was his script that would form the basis for Olivier’s film.9 PROPAGANDA, MORALE AND CINEMA

During the opening phase of the conflict, the ‘Phoney War’ of autumn 1939, the government faltered badly in its task of enlisting the nation as a whole in a war effort. Restrictions and burdensome regulations were imposed with too little explanation, and when the feared immediate attack failed to take place, discontent soon began to be felt. Harold Nicolson observed in his diary on 24 September that the authorities ‘have concentrated upon coping with panic and have been faced with an anticlimax . . . We have all the apparatus of war conditions without war conditions.’10 Defining the nation suddenly became an urgent issue. Prewar grievances and conflicts could not

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simply be pushed aside. One of the least successful slogans, prominently displayed on posters during the first months, was open to an unfortunate ‘them and us’ reading if the pronouns were stressed: YOUR COURAGE YOUR CHEERFULNESS YOUR RESOLUTION WILL BRING US VICTORY11

By the end of 1940, there were signs that the authorities had begun to understand the nature of the propaganda task, though the change in attitude did not come easily. The popular radio ‘postscripts’ by the novelist and dramatist J. B. Priestley were thought by some Conservatives to venture into party politics with their insistence on a clear account of war aims. The introduction to his published Postscripts admonishes those who had forced him off the air: The British listening public as a whole . . . may not understand this present war, but unlike many official persons, they do know that it is not the last war, that a simple, almost idiotic nationalism will not do, that either we are fighting to bring a better world into existence or we are merely assisting at the destruction of such civilisation as we possess.12

Priestley later described a shift in attitudes, which he attributed to the experience of the first major bombing raids of civilian targets. Until then, ‘This war, to which we have brought a unity of feeling never known before in our island history, was somehow not quite our war.’ His description of the people appeals to a sense of continuity: ‘Through the fading mists there emerge the simple, kindly, humorous brave faces of the ordinary British folk – a good people, deeply religious at heart, not only when they’re kneeling in our little grey country churches but also when they’re toiling at their machines or sweating under loads in the threatened dockyards.’ Priestley evokes the past and invokes the judgement of the future: ‘Already the future historians are fastening their gaze upon us, seeing us all in that clear and searching light of the great moments of history . . .’13 More mystical and less coherent in argument, the right-wing historian Arthur Bryant devoted an account of British history from 1840 to 1940 to the task of calling a nation to respect its true heritage by conjuring up the ‘Green land far away’ (a chapter title) of the preindustrial culture, ‘not founded on Courts and cities but on the green fields and the growing earth’. In the peroration of his book, Bryant invoked the (alleged) ideals of the First World War generation to claim that the heroic young men who


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fought their way back from Dunkirk ‘were fighting – though they still only knew it hazily – for a dream for which the forgotten dead had died a quarter of a century ago’.14 Less concerned with historical myth and with a surer sense of why people might fight, in 1944 George Orwell was able to hope that in peace a change noticed during the war might become permanent: ‘In 1940 ‘‘They’’ showed a marked tendency to give way to ‘‘We’’, and it is time that it did so permanently.’15 In The Lion and the Unicorn (1940), he presented the experience of wartime conditions as the jolt that would precipitate change: England is the most class-ridden country under the sun. It is a land of snobbery and privilege, ruled largely by the old and silly. But in any calculation about it one has got to take into account its emotional unity, the tendency of nearly all its inhabitants to feel alike and act together in moments of supreme crisis.16

The essay’s central argument was that ‘We cannot win the war without introducing Socialism, nor establish Socialism without winning the war.’ Despite Labour’s victory in the 1945 general election, and the partial introduction of socialism in the shape of state-funded health care and education, the nationalisation of key industries, and the implementation of a planned economy continuing (and in some cases strengthening) wartime measures, there seems to be much justice in Ross McKibbin’s contention that the war ‘probably did more to alter the public and social role of wealth than it did to alter its composition’. Despite the ‘marked redistribution of social esteem’ in postwar Britain, there was in fact little real redistribution of wealth.17 Although some Tories in 1940 regarded Priestley’s demand for an enunciation of war aims with great suspicion, at the highest level of government, including the Cabinet, the Prime Minister and his advisers, there was little doubt that some promise of social justice was called for, not merely as a pragmatic measure but on idealistic grounds. Colville, who during the war had to summarise for Churchill the latest Censorship Report on Home Opinion (based on letters leaving the country), observed in his diary that it made clear ‘a general expectation that this war must bring the end of class distinction and the abolition of great inequalities of wealth’.18 An important element in the national values to which commentators and propagandists appealed was the notion of ordinary British life, a vision of England (the dominant element in the kingdom and often used to stand for all its constituents) as a green and pleasant land. Bryant’s romance of essential Britishness was replaced – or fleshed out – by reference to mundane and amiable realities in the present. The conservative inflection

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of this preferred the rural to the urban – not to mention the suburban – and the detail to the larger general social or economic picture. To a considerable extent, this was a continuation of an anti-urban tendency that has been identified as a major element of anti-industrial sentiment in English (and British) culture, whether on the left or the right. In a seminal study first published in 1981, Martin J. Wiener connects it directly with economic and political thought dating from the early nineteenth century: ‘the impressive cultural capital embodied in the scenery and buildings of the country helped to commit England to its past and to an essentially antique selfimage’.19 The prefatory note to S. P. B. Mais’s volume The Home Counties in the Batsford series The Face of Britain (which began publication with its distinctively ‘pastoral’ covers in 1930), is dated ‘Winter 1942–3’ and looks forward to the ‘tremendous home-coming’ that will follow victory: ‘in the meantime to buoy us up for the struggle it is good to conjure up visions of the woods and the downs, the heaths and the commons, little rivers and village greens of the counties that we know as home’.20 In a 1943 broadcast John Betjeman located Englishness in cow-parsley on a village altar, a Women’s Institute meeting continuing while the Battle of Britain was fought in the skies overhead and similar images of country life in the South-East counties. This diversity and richness of inconsequential civilities was something that would remain incomprehensible to those who had ‘never lived in England’ and spoke of ‘the British’ as though they were all the same: ‘One cannot explain anything at once so kind and so complicated.’ Here Englishness is defined as an inexplicable mystery, but one to be identified in details of lived experience rather than ideology or in the ‘blood and soil’ mystique of Nazism.21 Orwell and Priestley offer a version of national character that is similarly homespun and unpretentious, but more inclusive than Betjeman’s. ‘English civilization,’ Orwell writes, ‘is somehow bound up with solid breakfasts and gloomy Sundays, smoky towns and winding roads, green fields and red pillar-boxes.’ It is also ‘continuous, it stretches into the future and the past, there is something in it that persists, as in a living creature’.22 The pastoral element in this vision of England found strange expression in London during the period after the Blitz. The documentary filmmaker and poet Humphrey Jennings described London as having ‘settled down to a big village-like existence’ in the wake of the bombardments: ‘Endless allotments – beds of potatoes, onions, lettuces – in parks, in the new open spaces from bombing, tomatoes climbing up ruins, trees and shrubs overgrowing evacuated and empty houses and gardens.’ The uncanny appeal to those who had campaigned for improved housing conditions


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and public amenities was not lost on him: ‘The parks and squares open to all – all railings gone, shelters overgrown . . . There is nothing so exhilarating as seeing even a few ideas one has long had really coming into being on the screen.’23 In view of the social tensions that might be aggravated by the emergency and the growing awareness in official quarters that a sense of common cause rather than mere patriotic duty had to be established, the cinema, like the radio, would be of particular importance in any morale-building campaign. One of the first mistakes of the government, though, was the closing in the first days of the crisis of places of entertainment and the imposition of stringent restraints on the film industry. In the build-up to the conflict, there is no sign that the government had any sense of the significance the media would have. As Robert Mackay suggests in his study of civilian morale, ‘Perhaps Cabinet ministers were not among the nineteen million people who bought a cinema ticket every week and perhaps the Chamberlain household was not included in the nine million that had a radio receiver.’24 The confusion and annoyance created by cinema closures and the temporary halt to film production are reflected in the social surveys of the Mass-Observation project, and the trade press reacted vociferously to the chaotic and restrictive conditions imposed. The situation was compounded by the sometimes contradictory responsibilities and aims of the Board of Trade and the newly established MOI. Problems of trade balances with the United States and availability of material, human resources and finance coincided with uncertainties regarding policy on information and propaganda. The realisation that entertainment films might have a part to play in the war effort was slow to arrive.25 Even in 1941 the industry still had to stake its claim in combative terms. The producer Michael Balcon declared that ‘The time will come during this war when a man behind a film camera will command the same respect as a man behind a gun.’26 Before the war, the British Board of Film Censors, like its American counterpart, had strongly discouraged hostile direct references to foreign powers, and there had been some anxiety concerning the alleged trivialisation of national institutions, especially the monarchy. (It had also discouraged and in some cases blocked attempts to present uncompromising images of poverty and distress at home.)27 On the other hand, costume dramas were a major factor in the refreshing of the national mythology, and a valuable way of asserting continuities of feeling and sensibility with the ‘great persons’ and significant events of the past. As Marcia Landy observes in her survey of British genre films, these films, like folklore,

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‘provide a clue to the desires, dreams and collective fantasies which, rather than providing an escape from history, offer a means for understanding the ways in which social power is both exercised and undermined’.28 Like their equivalents in drama and the novel, historical films, which dealt with actual personages and events, albeit in a fictionalised manner, and ‘costume dramas’, which were set in the past but usually featured actual historical figures in walk-on (often deus ex machina) parts, were complementary elements of the folkloric process. Even without the benefit of a Marxist analysis of consciousness, it was easy for those with a more traditional sense of ‘education through entertainment’ to see that films could infuse life into the understanding of the past. The proposition might be given a nationalistic inflection, in that British historical films would at least offer a homegrown perspective on history lacking in Hollywood products. In some quarters it was feared that the remarkable success at home and in the all-important American market of Alexander Korda’s The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) would usher in a series of disrespectful treatments of royal personages.29 Nevertheless, something of the racy, sophisticated Korda style was achieved in Fire Over England (1937), in which Flora Robson played a spirited, wise and humorous Elizabeth I who takes a kindly but firm attitude towards the obligatory young lovers of costume drama (Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh). The production values are equal to those of Hollywood – though not perhaps MGM – with Lazare Meerson’s elegant, spacious sets, rich costuming and an appropriately sizable army for the queen to address at Tilbury. The political significance of the story is made plain in the opening titles. The first reads: In 1507 Spain Powerful in the Old World Master in the New Its King Philip Rules by Force and Fear

The second title card leads to the crucial identification of the nation as defender of freedom: But Spanish tyranny Is Challenged by the Free People of a Little Island ENGLAND

The story is a mixture of romance, espionage and intrigue, with Raymond Massey as an impressive but aloof and ruthless King Philip (‘only by fear


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can the people be made to do their duty’) contrasted with the frank, open and populist Elizabeth. As news of the Armada arrives, a montage of the signal fires of the film’s title being lit and general mobilisation in country towns is followed by the climactic episode of the Tilbury speech. Then the queen confronts the courtiers who have conspired, like the traitors in Henry V, to betray her, and her country and its religion: ‘How will you die, in sunlight or in darkness, for a free world or a world where your thoughts are rationed like prison bread?’ They are given a chance to redeem themselves by sailing fire-ships against the Spanish fleet under Olivier’s command, and the film ends with church bells ringing as part of a ‘victory’ montage. God is invoked but not named by a biblical voiceover: ‘Thou didst blow with thy wind and they were scattered.’ Fire Over England was directed by the American William K. Howard and produced for the Hungarian Korda by a German exile, Erich Pommer, but Graham Greene thought that ‘Mr Korda’s great national Coronation-year picture of Elizabethan England’ caught ‘the very spirit of an English publicschoolmistress’s vision of history’.30 Robson appears again as Queen Elizabeth in The Sea Hawk (USA, 1940) as the secret admirer and supporter of the irregulars who are harrying Philip’s galleons under the leadership of Errol Flynn as the privateer Captain Geoffrey Thorpe. The dash and accomplishment of the Warner Bros. costume adventure series outclass the earlier British film, with spectacular and convincing battle scenes. In the concluding shipboard scene of general rejoicing and resolved love interest (Thorpe and the Spanish-bred but really English-at-heart Donã Maria), the Queen knights Thorpe and thrills the loyal crew with a pledge of resistance to the forces of political evil: We have tried by all means within our power to avert this conflict . . . But when the ruthless ambitions of a man threaten to engulf the world, it becomes the solemn obligation of free men, wherever they may be, to affirm that the earth belongs not to any man, but to all men, and that freedom is the deed and title to the soil on which we exist. Firm in this faith, we shall now make ready to meet the great Armada which Philip sends against us. To this end I pledge you ships worthy of our seamen – a sturdy fleet hewn out of the forests of England.31

Considered inappropriate for an as yet neutral nation, the speech was cut from prints distributed in the United States until on 7 December 1941 the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor brought the country into the war. Propaganda on Britain’s behalf had already been smuggled into the United States under the guise of historical drama, but there was always a danger in putting sometimes incongruous contemporary sentiments in the mouths of historical personages. Korda’s That Hamilton Woman

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(1941; released in Britain as Lady Hamilton) was effectively a British film made in Hollywood, with Olivier and Leigh as Nelson and his consort. The project was supported by Churchill and the resulting film became one of his favourites. The risk of moral offence in a famous case of adultery and the high seas was lessened by having the story seen as if in a flashback by the dying, drink-sodden wreck that Emma Hamilton had become (sin does not pay) and a scene in which Nelson is rebuked roundly by his clergyman father. This element of quasi-Victorian melodrama was complemented by the hero’s demise, which evokes popular paintings of the ‘Death of Nelson’. (A subject also represented for many years at Madame Tussaud’s waxworks.) The political lessons are too obvious, particularly Nelson’s (fictional) address to the Admiralty – ‘You cannot make peace with dictators! You have to destroy them. Wipe them out!’ – and the homily with which Hardy persuades Lady Hamilton that Nelson must leave their rural idyll to lead the fleet against the dictator Napoleon. The film’s outspoken argument for resistance to ‘dictators’ and the fact that it had been made in the United States prompted isolationist and pro-German pressure groups there to attack Korda, who received a subpoena to appear before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Pearl Harbor intervened.32 Despite the requirements of censorship and the effective control of production facilities and resources, the films made in Britain after the government and the MOI came to appreciate the value of the cinema for the war effort show an impressive range of approaches and points of view. Andrew Murphy succinctly describes the ‘distinct war culture’ that ‘evolved remarkably quickly’ in the country: ‘populist, strident, sentimental, its insistence on immediate answers to the big questions of life tempered by an awareness of the absurdity of sudden death’. An industry that was in very poor shape in 1940 was booming by 1945, when cinemagoing was more popular than at any time since.33 Sarah Street identifies the distinctions between prewar and wartime versions of the consensus: in the 1930s ‘consensus meant satisfaction with the status quo, but the wartime consensus contained potentially more progressive elements in that it implied a resolve to extend many of the economic and social reforms into the post-war period’.34 A recurring theme in accounts of the time is the cross-fertilisation of the entertainment film with the documentary movement. Two remarkable films about the fire services illustrate the point. In Jennings’s Fires Were Started (1943), the documentarist adopts the form of a fictional film but uses amateur actors – fire service personnel – while The Bells Go Down (also 1943) is a drama which takes on the qualities of a documentary, at the same time as featuring a popular comedian (Tommy Trinder) in a


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dramatic role consistent with but not simply replicating his stage and radio act. Both films give an impressive and moving account of the dangers and hardships of the Blitz (some two years earlier in the war) and although they avoid vivid and explicit details of death and injury, they do not shrink from the consequences of the bombing or the mental as well as physical toll it takes. In a conflict in which the civilian population was under constant threat, this narrative model was common to films of the home front and of the armed services in combat. Jeffrey Richards and Anthony Aldgate have described the ‘comradeship and co-operation, dedication to duty and unselfconscious modesty’ that characterised films about the fighting services.35 Depictions of the home front, like those of service life, had to withstand the scrutiny of audiences who may have been eager for relaxing entertainment and encouragement but resented stories that were too facile in morale-raising tactics or ignored realities to be seen in the streets every day. A Mass-Observation report on cinemagoing suggests a combination of awareness and the desire for release of stress-induced feelings rather than escape from them: It is rather, we believe, that people go to the cinema to see situations and surroundings which they have heard of or dreamt about and have not been able to see for themselves. And in a war which has peculiar ambivalence between the Home Front and the Front Line as well as a rigid censorship which largely ignores popular interest, they can portray uniquely the actuality and the dream intermixed.36

Mrs Miniver (directed by William Wyler, USA, 1941; released in the UK in 1942), Hollywood’s reverential contribution to the British war effort, represented the pluck and quiet determination of the British in the person of a middle-class housewife (Greer Garson) and in terms of MGM’s vision of English country life. In 1943 the Mass-Observation report of ‘Replies on Favourite Films’ quoted varied but on the whole favourable responses to the film, which had been the top box-office success of 1942. A ‘housewife and mother, aged 40’, in Accrington said, ‘I like Greer Garson and find her a tonic as well as restful. I feel all the picture was in tune.’37 The determinedly well-bred quality of the film, and the fact that the events it looks back to include the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk in 1940, may have made it seem less than topical in 1942.38 On the other hand, it contributes to the national self-image, the people’s awareness of themselves as figures of historical significance, that Priestley and others had described. In many British films the suggestion of living in a ‘historical’ moment and sharing in its dignity is accompanied by the intimation that the

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British are quietly heroic. Went the Day Well? (1942), scripted by Graham Greene and the first feature by the documentary director Alberto Cavalcanti, shows a rural community detecting and defeating a murderous company of German parachutists masquerading as British soldiers. The film begins with the camera travelling along a lane towards a country church, where the sexton addresses us as visitors who have arrived after the war to see a gravestone marking the resting place of German soldiers on English soil. The story returns in flashback to the events of 1942, when the local squire, a fifth columnist, aided the enemy but was defeated by the combined forces of the village’s various social strata – baker, publican, postmistress, Land Girls, vicar’s daughter, lady of the manor – and, crucially, a poacher and the boy evacuee he has befriended. At one point, when the disguised German commandant (Basil Sydney) and the quisling (Leslie Banks) are plotting in the churchyard, the German leans his notepad against the memorial to the fallen of 1914–18. At the end, after the local territorial army and the regular army have come to the rescue of the gallant but besieged villagers, the film returns to the postwar scene in the churchyard, where the sexton reflects on the defeat of Hitler’s attempted invasion (which in fact never took place) and the camera travels back along the lane. Went the Day Well? presents a village where everyone is politely in his or her place at the beginning and the end, and where there is no suggestion that customary habits of deference and good manners will be changed. Even the fact that the poacher and the evacuee from London are instrumental in alerting the outside world to the village’s plight does not disturb this effect. More radical and romantic in its methods but equally concerned with inherited values of ‘Englishness’ is A Canterbury Tale (1944), produced and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (‘The Archers’). It, too, begins with an arresting assertion of historical continuity: a band of medieval pilgrims make their way through woodland towards Canterbury, as a voiceover recites the opening lines of Chaucer’s Prologue in Middle English. A falconer looses his bird and the camera follows its flight up into the sky – which is suddenly crossed by an RAF fighter plane. The modern pilgrims, journeying by train through the blackout, include a woman farmworker (a Land Girl) and an American soldier. Almost immediately after their arrival in a village, the girl is set upon in a darkened lane by a mysterious assailant, who tips glue on to her hair and makes off. Before long we discover that this is only the latest attack of the ‘glue-man,’ who is soon identified as Thomas Culpepper, the local squire, played by Eric Portman with an eerie intensity that would suit a tale of terror. His


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principal motive in these misogynistic attacks is to discourage the women whose attractions are offering servicemen a tempting alternative to his lantern-slide lectures on the ‘heritage’. A degree of local quaintness and ‘English’ niceness qualifies what might seem a potentially dangerous mysticism, but the relationship between consciousness of these matters and the qualities of leadership is strongly suggested. Patterns of leadership in wartime films tend to represent an ideal in which authority is kindly and wisely exercised, so that the commander becomes an agent for social cohesion among his (or, rarely, her) charges. Sue Harper, in her study of British costume films, observes that Lady Hamilton ‘suggested that the only real aristocratic leadership was one which symbolically represented popular aspirations’, and distinguishes between films supported by the Foreign Office (such as Korda’s) which ‘re-presented the aristocratic and proletarian alliance in a compelling way’ and the MOI’s view, which ‘celebrated middle-class perceptions of progress’.39 In the characteristic wartime feature films, where the MOI outlook prevails, social groups are welded together, but with a due deference for their sense of identity as separate but complementary parts of society as a whole. The most famous example of this conservative ideal is In Which We Serve (1942), co-directed by Noe¨l Coward and David Lean and based on the experiences of Coward’s friend Lord Louis Mountbatten. The film encompasses documentary technique – it begins with the building and eventual commissioning of HMS Torrin – and an exciting combat narrative. The crew are not only shown as forming an effective and coherent fighting force, but are also seen in their domestic environment. This is achieved in a series of flashbacks after the ship has been sunk and while the men wait for rescue. Coward’s particular brand of understatement and poise lends his Captain Kinross a degree of charm as well as serving the navy’s image of itself as a polite as well as valiant service. It was a milieu for which Coward had great respect and affection, and it seemed to resolve issues of class and status with a tantalising blend of fictional and real incidents. The seal was set on this when the Royal Family visited the studio and the King took the salute from the ‘crew’ of the mock-up of HMS Torrin.40 The film of Coward’s play This Happy Breed (1944) presents a hero (played by John Mills) who represents the civilian version of the quiet resilience thought quintessentially English: ‘the new Everyman, a masculine ideal of stoicism, steadiness and modest hopes for the future’ in peace and war.41 Another dimension of idealised British leadership is represented in the character played by Michael Redgrave in Anthony Asquith’s The Way

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to the Stars (1945), aptly described as ‘an artist, a dreamer and a squadron leader’ by Ian Christie, who sees him as a forerunner of Peter Carter, the poet/airman of Powell and Pressburger’s A Matter of Life and Death (made in 1945 and released in 1946).42 In The Way to The Stars, the poem ‘Johnny in the Air’ (by John Pudney) expresses the literary sensibilities nurtured in spite of – or possibly because of – the pressures and dangers of war, and the poet-airman is a representative figure who echoes such real-life exemplars as Richard Hillary.43 A Matter of Life and Death is a densely allusive allegory whose climax brings together neurosurgery performed on Carter and the deliberations of a heavenly tribunal where the rights and wrongs of the ‘special relationship’ are debated between an American revolutionary and a British neurologist who has just died in a traffic accident. As in A Canterbury Tale, Powell and Pressburger wittily juxtapose several kinds of pastoral vision, classical and English. Having bailed out without a parachute and landed miraculously unscathed on a beach, Carter encounters a naked boy who seems to come from a Greek pastoral poem, playing a pipe and tending goats. He assumes that this is the next world, and (being a serviceman) asks where he should ‘report to’; and the boy directs him to ‘the aerodrome’. The mystery continues until another aircraft flies over, and we realise that we are not in the next world. Carter sees a uniformed woman cycling along the beach, and she turns out (of course) to be the American ground controller to whom, as his burning aircraft carried him to a seemingly inevitable death, Carter quoted Andrew Marvell and Sir Walter Raleigh. In a later episode a fussy country clergyman, played by the Shakespearean actor and director Robert Atkins, rehearses American servicemen and women in a scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream and tries – in a sly dig at Max Reinhardt’s film – to get Bottom not to sound like a gangster. Like A Canterbury Tale, A Matter of Life and Death invokes English history (the Tudor mansion where the Americans are stationed) and culture (Marvell, Raleigh, Shakespeare) not merely as symbols of ‘what we are fighting for’ but as representative in their operation on people’s minds of more momentous and literally universal influences. The Hollywood ‘prestige film’, represented in the present study by the 1935 A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the 1936 Romeo and Juliet, had long been an element of the movie industry, valued for its promotional value as much as (or, in a spirit of resignation, more than) the ability to meet costs at the box office. In wartime such large-scale ventures, usually costume dramas of one kind or another, were also significant in terms of national self-regard. Film industries directly or indirectly controlled by government agencies produced such films as proof of the nation’s ability to make


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them, sometimes in defiance of the odds. Such considerations are likely to have applied to the MOI’s thinking on Henry V. If it was true, as MassObservation’s research suggested, that ‘what cinema audiences wanted by 1944 was a complete alternative to war films’, a literally colourful adaptation of Henry V might be the answer to a need. HENRY V: FINANCE AND PRODUCTION

As has been noted, the initial impetus for a film of Henry V came from Dallas Bower, who initially approached Kenneth Clark during the latter’s tenure as head of the film department from late 1939 to April 1940 at the MOI.44 Clark was sympathetic to the proposition, but his successor Jack Beddington leaned towards documentary as the most effective form of film propaganda (he had been responsible for the remarkable and innovative prewar publicity campaigns of Shell). The direct financing of feature films was not departmental policy under Beddington, but the ministry’s approval was needed for the allocation of film stock and other resources, and in addition to the usual constraints of contracts and budgets within the film industry, permission had to be given for actors and other personnel to be diverted from war work (whether in the armed services or elsewhere). Materials for sets and costumes were in short supply, and like everyone else film studios had to ‘make do and mend’. Even with ministerial approval, feature films had to find financial backing in the private sector, and Bower secured this from Fillipo del Giudice, a flamboyant but astute Italian-born producer who founded Two Cities Films in 1937, and who had been released from internment as an enemy alien on the Isle of Man. In the event, Henry V cost him his company: he was obliged to seek support elsewhere when the film’s location shoot in Ireland for the battle sequence went over budget. The terms of the deal he made with J. Arthur Rank for completion ceded control of Two Cities to Rank’s production and distribution empire.45 Bower’s involvement in Henry V was qualified by Olivier’s desire to have control of all aspects of the film: his script was set aside and a new one developed by Olivier and his adviser Alan Dent, whom Bower later credited with the idea of opening and closing the film in the Globe Theatre.46 Bower was told by the actor that he would be producer rather than director, and he generously suggested that this was because Olivier ‘didn’t really want anyone to disturb the performance of Henry that he’d done somewhere in the theatre’ – that is, at the Old Vic. He also wonders ruefully whether ‘Larry might have been not quite so all-embracing as to

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the credits he took for himself’ but speculates that ‘he may have been pressured’. There may well have been pressure from Rank to represent the film in publicity as the heroic achievement of one man, and a first-time director at that, but Olivier’s most recent biographer, Terry Coleman, presents the affair as a sign of Olivier’s egotism. In Coleman’s words, Olivier had ‘made the gesture’ of approaching other directors, including William Wyler, David Lean and Carol Reed, but Powell’s account of the offer he received from Olivier suggests that the actor was genuinely anxious about the undertaking. (The film’s credits indicate, perhaps too subtly, that Olivier’s direction was indebted to the assistance of his editor, Reginald Beck.)47 In any case, Bower remained with the film on a day-to-day basis during principal photography and was undoubtedly influential in many decisions, including the appointment of William Walton as composer.48 Apart from Olivier himself, most of the leading parts had to be cast from actors who were either exempt from war service by disability or age, or for whom a temporary permission could be obtained. Three roles presented difficulties of a kind familiar in peacetime: John Gielgud and Edith Evans were under contract to the West End impresario Hugh Beaumont, who would not release them to play the King of France and Mistress Quickly, and David O. Selznick refused to ‘loan out’ Vivien Leigh, under contract to him since Gone With the Wind (1939), for the relatively small part of the Princess. (In Hollywood terms, this would have diminished her value to Selznick International Pictures.) Consequently, Reneé Asherson, who had built up a considerable stage career since her walk-on part in Gielgud’s Romeo and Juliet in 1935, received her first important film role as Katherine, Freda Jackson (who had appeared in A Canterbury Tale) played Mistress Quickly and Harcourt Williams appeared as the King of France. Other actors familiar to British audiences included Leo Genn (the Constable of France), Max Adrian (the Dauphin), John Laurie (Captain Jamie), Robert Newton (Pistol), Ernest Thesiger (the French ambassador) and Esmond Knight (Fluellen). George Robey, a much-loved veteran variety performer, appeared – practically silent – as the dying Falstaff. Among the cast the only actors with an international profile were Thesiger – the formidably crazed Dr Praetorius in James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein (1935) – and Olivier himself. Thanks in some measure to the good offices of Betjeman, press attache´ to the High Commissioner in Eire, permission was obtained to film on the estate of Lord Powerscourt at Enniskerry near Dublin, affording skies untroubled by aircraft and enough horse-owners for a credible suggestion (with a little shuffling) of two armies.49


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Technicolor equipment was in short supply. In Britain there were only four of the cameras capable of running the three strips of film in parallel and equipped with the optical devices this now called for. Since the development in the mid-1930s of the three-strip version, which gave a full spectrum of colours, the use of Technicolor had been controlled strictly by its patent-holders, and the cameras were large and heavy, doubly so when for indoor sound shooting they had to be enclosed in a soundproof blimp. Western Approaches, released two weeks before Henry V, used Technicolor for a quasi-documentary story of the duel between a U-boat and the crew of a merchantman it had sunk. For this film Jack Cardiff contrived to use the cumbersome and expensive colour process at sea rather than in a studio for the kind of subject usually associated with black-and-white.50 In Henry V the bright, heraldic colours and stylised sets of the central portion of the film are well served by the ‘fantasy’ dimension of the process, but the cinematographer Robert Krasker also achieved subtle effects of shadow in the night scenes before Agincourt and for the sunset into which the army march towards their camp. In the opening and closing shots of the sky and the panorama of London, the sky is a clear blue and the city and river are not overcolourful, though they may be almost too spick and span; in the ‘Globe’ sequences, the costumes of the audience are subtler and less vivid than those of the actors. Like Walton’s score, which shifts seamlessly from diegetic to nondiegetic modes (the resources of the Globe and those of the soundtrack blending into one another), the cinematography harmonises genuine outdoor scenes with the painterly effects of both kinds of studio interior. On 11 November 1943 Kinematograph Weekly carried an account of ‘Picturesque Period Settings for Henry V’: Where the action of the film made it necessary to emphasise the players, neutral backgrounds were used and vice versa. Camera work also prescribed its own problem, which was ably solved by the cameraman, Robert Krasker. In shooting this production, Laurence Olivier decided that camera movement should be ‘fluid’ in order to avoid sharp cuts; also, in order to conform with the characteristic paintings of the period, the shots were to be ‘flat lit’ that is to say, with few shadows.

For the dawn shot that ends Henry’s meditation on the morning of battle, the technique was akin to those used in realist theatre: Sparse grass, trees and scrub covered the floor of the [sound] stage, and behind a beautiful scenic reproduction shows the distant sleeping camp. The effect of sunrise has been cleverly obtained by a large gauze curtain behind the scene, on

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to which cotton wool is fixed in little layers of cloud so that when light is shown underneath them, the effect of the rising sun, at first crimson and then turning to gold as it gets fuller, is obtained.51

For the most part the recording of the dialogue achieved the same consistency as the cinematography and the optical effects, though there are times when the resonant acoustic of the studio-built ‘exterior’ sets (such as that for the English camp) prevails, and at others the few short snatches of dubbed dialogue on the location scenes have an inappropriate ‘studio’ sound. Principal photography began in Eire in June 1943, where the unit remained until 22 July. On 3 June Kinematograph Weekly reported ‘Agincourt Refought in Eire’, with 180 horse and 500 foot soldiers to shoot nine out of the film’s (then) estimated 100 minutes: ‘these Agincourt sequences are to be filmed with the object of capturing on the screen the effect of a colourful moving tapestry rather than filling the screen with a vast milling crowd in a phantasmagoria of a mediaeval battle. The motif for this idea is to be seen in the National Gallery painting of Ucello’s ‘‘The Rout of San Romano’’ (1432)’. According to this article, the music for the sequence had already been composed, but as Walton later revealed, he was obliged to undo most of his work for the final edit.52 On 1 July (‘Camp Site in Eire for Henry V’) the journal reported that special arc lights were being used ‘to gain shadow effects in daylight and for special night shots of camp fires (not possible in England under present conditions) and scenes of individual combat’. Filming resumed in England at Denham Studios on 9 August. The first scenes to be shot were those of the final sequence, including the transition from medieval back into Elizabethan costume, after which the English camp and Harfleur scenes were scheduled, followed in mid- to late October by the opening sequence. Photography with the actors was completed in the first week of January, and the negative was delivered to the laboratories in early July. If Olivier’s first meeting with ‘his script collaborators’ did take place on 6 January 1943, as the unit publicist C. Clayton Hutton reports, the preparation, production and post-production had taken just over eighteen months.53 None of the available scripts for Henry V is dated, but it is likely that the ‘Revised Treatment’ (Birmingham Shakespeare Library), which omits the battle sequences that were to be filmed on location, is from the spring of 1943 at the latest. The shooting scripts (Folger Shakespeare Library, British Film Institute and New York Public Library) include shots from the location work in a separate sequence of numbers, and also refer to ‘sketches’, but it is unclear whether these refer to storyboarding done before


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the filming in Ireland or drawings made afterwards as a guide for the editor. One detail included in the shooting scripts – a shot of a cow looking over a gate after the scene of confusion and carnage referred to by Olivier as the ‘morass’ (shot 101/94 in the Folger shooting script) – was an unexpected bonus acquired by accident on location. In the event, it was not used, but its presence seems to confirm that the shooting script was revised before work began at Denham so as to include footage which may even have been made into a rough assembly. All the scripts from the ‘Revised Treatment’ onwards have specifics of camera angles and staging that reflect the need for precise planning when film stock was scarce.54 Both the ‘Revised Treatment’ and the copies of the shooting script include the ‘Globe’ setting for the opening sequence and the transition back to it at the end, but none, surprisingly, indicates the medieval pictorial style of the studio sets for Southampton or the French palace and its environs. The initial impetus for the ‘Globe’ opening may have been the desire to ‘naturalise’ the archaic language for modern cinemagoers, but in the end the multiple-framing device was the source of the film’s subtlest effects. Cinemagoers of the 1940s see theatregoers of 1600 as they in turn watch a performance that evokes events of the 1400s, but what the cinema audience sees when it works on its imagination (or the camera does so on its behalf) is something that few, if any, Elizabethans would have imagined: scenes that are medieval in costume and setting. The formal visual style of art of the 1600s is replaced by that of two centuries earlier. As Anthony Davies points out, one effect of these ‘layers’ of time is to liberate time from history, ‘the primary dissociation on which that important genre the fairy tale is based’, and that because the fairy tale ‘embodies a special relationship of nature to art which modifies our logic of space’, the ‘space becomes ideal’ as the characters take on the character of archetypes.55 It can also be argued that in the case of the films under discussion, this important perception suggests a link between the fantasy world of the Dream and the film of Henry V, one present already in Shakespeare’s recurrent interest in metaphors of life, dreaming, fiction and theatre, but here attached decisively to a national mythology. The abbreviation of time in the play and film that allows events to be dispatched in ‘an hour glass’ is accompanied by an abridgement of the time it takes to return through the centuries, and the king’s achievements in fact occupied a ‘small time’ – ‘Small time, but in that time most greatly lived / This star of England’ (Epilogue, lines 5–6). In addition to the ‘rabbit or duck’ duality of the play itself, the film has its own doubleness, which has troubled critics since its first appearance. Is its multiple mise en abyme a propagandist’s sleight of hand or an artistic

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7. Henry V, 1944. The ‘frames’ of the film.

triumph? Or both at once? One implication of the audience’s having ‘worked’ for the illusion – even in the supposedly more passive mode of cinemagoing – is that they are now complicit in the achievements of the past two hours. Henry V also participates in another process, akin to the pleasurable disjunctions of fairy tale and dream, which Vivian Sobchack identifies as characteristic of the ‘Hollywood historical epic’, which ‘is not so much the narrative accounting of specific historical events as it is the narrative construction of general historical eventfulness’ (Sobchack’s emphasis). Such films are an admixture of past events of different kinds: ‘mythic, biblical, folkloric, and quasi- or ‘‘properly’’ historical’. The sloppiness (or in the case of Olivier’s film, we might add, meticulously created inaccuracies) is inimical to scholars but welcome to audiences.56 In its own way, Olivier’s film, like Reinhardt’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, finesses the relationship between history and fantasy, in this case by playing on the conventions by which in historical films audiences might accept (and expect) a qualified but at least temporarily convincing artifice in delivering images of the past.


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Outside these framing devices, however, there is yet another, which brackets the story of Henry and Agincourt with those of the film’s circumstances and – if we extend the field even further – the narrative of its making, as represented in publicity. These make the film Henry V, like the life of the historical Henry, representative of the war effort of the 1940s, but they also encompass a further story – that of the British film industry and its survival in the face of American competition. The multiple framing can be expressed diagrammatically as a series of boxes (see Figure 7). FRAMES AND STORIES WITHIN THE FILM

Olivier’s film begins with a blue void – the sky, perhaps – and the distant sound of church bells, heard as the first titles are superimposed. This lasts for a few seconds, but it suggests almost subliminally a ‘blue yonder’ of serenity and harmony, altogether outside the film proper. (Church bells were silent for the duration of hostilities, and would normally be rung only in the event of an invasion or a victory.) This blue space is taken over by the production company’s identification. The first card reads ‘EagleLion present’, and then follows ‘A Two Cities Film’ with ‘In Technicolor’ faded in, which is then supplemented by the process’s own acknowledgements. In the full version of the opening (not included in the DVD versions currently available in the United Kingdom or the United States), the dedication then follows: ‘To / the Commandos and Airborne Troops / of Great Britain / The spirit of whose ancestors it has been humbly attempted to recapture in some ensuing scenes / This Film Is Dedicated’. On a sky-blue background the words ‘A Laurence Olivier Production’ appear above a small heraldic emblem representing a swan, then the screen fades to blue again. A piece of paper flutters through the sky over a panoramic view of London. As it reaches close-up, the paper is flattened out and we see that it is a playbill, with the title, the name of the author and the date of the performance: 1 May 1600. (In spelling – ‘Henry the Fift’ – and layout, this anticipates the title board soon to be held up to the Globe’s audience by a boy member of the company.) We see a bird’s-eye view of a panorama of Elizabethan London, centred on the Tower. A wordless chorus is now heard, quietly at first but growing to a crescendo and augmented with more and more orchestral instruments and female voices, as the camera then pulls back westward along the river towards the South Bank and the theatres. Boats move slowly along the Thames, and smoke drifts from tiny chimneys. The scene has a documentary quality. It also represents a London that is conspicuously pastoral,

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safely at peace and a good deal cleaner than any Londoner in 1944 would have seen. The model London is so tidy as to be somewhere on the borderline between documentary and fantasy. Every spectator would have recognised it as a model, but its three-dimensional nature puts it in a different order of ‘realism’ from a matte painting, so that its double status provides the film’s first variation on the theme of cinematic artifice. James Agate in the Tatler suggested that this was the city as it would have been ‘if half the population had been house-painters’ (26 November 1944). Compared with the modern, urban and industrial ‘peacetime’ panoramic opening shot of London in This Happy Breed, this is a distinctly pastoral vision, the kind of city imagined in the opening of ‘The Wanderers’, the prologue to William Morris’ The Earthly Paradise (1868), which exhorts the reader to ‘Forget six counties overhung with smoke’ and ‘Think rather of the pack horse on the down, / And dream of London, small and white and clean, / The clear Thames bordered by its gardens green.’57 The playbill sequence binds together the outer world of the film’s presentation of itself and its techniques and the first of the series of inner frames. The blue sky of the London panorama, source of the fluttering playbill and implicitly of what we are about to be shown, resembles the blue void seen before the dedication fills the screen. Thus, before we reach the interior of the Globe, connections have been made deftly between these different frames, moving the audience further from the dark in which its own, real world has been enveloped by the dimming of the cinema lights (itself different in quality from the blackout beyond the walls). The Globe’s sense of expectation and festivity might be hoped to reflect the mood of the cinema audience. The Revised Treatment indicates that throughout the sequence ‘it should be made clear that there is far more intimate interplay between actors and audience than can be imagined in today’s theatres’ (p. 2), and several opportunities are taken in the completed film to drive this point home. Although the image of Shakespeare’s audience is one of middle-class restraint compared with the rowdy mob of groundlings who dominate the theatre in John Madden’s Shakespeare in Love (1998), it reflects the wartime preoccupation with a newly cultivated sense of communal enjoyments, a democracy of feeling. Jennings’s scenes in Listen to England (1941) and Diary for Timothy (1945) of the audience listening to Dame Myra Hess’s piano recital in the National Gallery convey a similar message: art brings together in rapt attention all sorts and conditions of men and women. The Chorus enters to applause which he acknowledges, a habit shown in all the Globe performers but associated by the 1940s only with variety


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artistes and a few very old-fashioned ‘legitimate’ actors. He uses formal, elegant gestures and elocution as he addresses the Globe audience, but with ‘On your imaginary forces work’ he comes downstage and speaks simply, directly and forcefully to the camera, which has hitherto been mobile but now maintains a respectful stillness at some distance from the centre front of the platform. The Chorus has a more direct and intimate relationship with us than with the Globe audience, none of whom could share the camera’s vantage point for this. At this point we hear nondiegetic music, which cannot be produced by the Globe’s band. Like that over the titles and the model sequence, it is part of the film’s own identity (the filmic frame). The audience’s laughter during the scene with the two clergymen does not arise from any matter within the conduct of the inner narrative (a, b or c in Figure 7). It is the hapless Globe actor rather than the scheming cleric whom they respond to, a tactic which begins the process whereby the fictional King’s behaviour is legitimised by using events in the inner (Globe) frame. In the backstage sequence that follows, Olivier’s Elizabethan Actor, dressed as Henry, comes into shot from the audience’s left, coughs to clear his throat, shows us a flicker of nerves and then briskly crosses to make his entrance: we remain on the tiring-house side of the door and watch him as he advances towards the audience and acknowledges the applause that welcomes him. The Revised Treatment envisages a less economical, more symbolically charged version of this: ‘A shot should linger for a moment on the back of the actor who plays the King, shift to the crown at his elbow, and then show him in close-up as he appears gazing critically at himself in an elementary form of mirror. This glass – the only one in the tiring house – should then be seized by another actor’ (p. 5; the business is not included in the shooting script). Many of the completed film’s eventual departures from this draft script show a consistent policy of avoiding such effects, perhaps to avoid adding a level of self-consciousness to an already intricate film. As it stands, the simpler oblique view of the Actor assuming his role takes us gradually into the presence of his performing personality. Something momentous is allowed to ‘occur’ casually, and we happen to have been there. It is an effect – and even a gesture – to which Olivier as director and actor will return later (see Figure 8). Although we are now well into the Globe sequence, and are frequently reminded of the gaps between the Globe actors and the historical personages their play requires them to impersonate, the film begins to take subtle measures to elide this frame both with the stories it ultimately has to deliver (a, b, c), and also with the outer framework of its own cinematic

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8. Henry V, 1944. Laurence Olivier as the Elizabethan actor: publicity still posed in front of the model of London Bridge.

devices – the ‘filmic’ frame. When the actor playing Ely makes a hash of managing his paperwork, is it the actor playing the King, or the King ‘himself’ who exhibits urbane patience? When Exeter exhorts the King to action, the camera moves in to hold him in medium close-up, excluding for several lines both the theatre and the Globe actors playing his peers. This leads to the first confident and clear utterance from Henry, who now uses less of the self-consciously rhetorical address perceived in his earlier speeches. It is part of a larger scheme on Olivier’s part, in which as well as suggesting varied degrees of self-conscious artifice in cinematic technique he also uses different kinds of vocal projection. At this point in the performance of the Globe actor, we begin to sense the presence of


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something that reads as felt and authentic – a voice, as it were, from the core of the film, the ‘real’ Henry. The Globe audience responds to Exeter’s astonished ‘Tennis balls, my liege’ and again to Henry’s eloquent frown, thus marking aurally for the cinema audience this physical indication of a new turn in the King’s demeanour, and allowing Olivier to achieve it by subtle means. How Henry is seen by his peers and contemporaries (the reformed prodigal, etc.) is part of the central core of stories (a, b, c), but Olivier’s film is notable for aligning this with the narrative conveyed in explicit and persistent concern with the abilities (and limitations) of film and theatre. Often in what follows Olivier allows the camera to witness a simple change in expression that will register as an intimation of ‘depth’ and reflection in the midst of one of Henry’s public performances. As he harangues the ambassador, Olivier’s Globe actor strikes a new note vocally, a crescendo on ‘Strike his crown into the hazard’ accompanied by what becomes a favourite public gesture of the King: the right arm raised from the elbow, the index finger lifted in emphasis and a demand that we mark his words. He takes the speech out to the theatre’s audience, making them an off-stage extension of his on-stage audience of peers, and after the ambassador has withdrawn he makes a flourishing coda to the scene, tossing his crown nonchalantly on to the throne. He pauses in his stylish, sweeping exit to acknowledge the Globe audience’s applause. Everything is calculated to reinforce the sense of theatrical as well as diplomatic success and to vindicate Henry as a wise and effective leader. It may also be showing the cinema audience how it may be excited by precisely that area of unfamiliar, elaborate language that was supposed to make Shakespearean dialogue problematic for filmmakers. The sequence has by now addressed important questions that apply to all the levels of the film’s narrative: how will Henry/the actor/the play/the film perform? The corresponding sequence in Kenneth Branagh’s 1989 Henry V serves to point up Olivier’s very different strategy. Branagh makes Henry’s quasidramatic situation as monarch clear (he is appearing before his peers – will he rise to the occasion?) but in his film the issues are simpler. Nothing foregrounds rhetorical skill in a specifically theatrical context like that of Olivier’s Globe, and the emphasis even in his defiance of the Dauphin is on Henry’s ‘authentic’, deeply felt sincerity rather than consciously strategic speech and behaviour. It is not simply a matter of the choice of a film studio for the opening Chorus: in the early drafts of Branagh’s script, it would have taken place in an empty theatre.58 Branagh’s film includes many sequences where the camera is admitted to hushed, private

9. Henry V, 1944. The shipboard scene at Southampton, following the first transition to ‘medieval’ settings.


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conferences, and the nighttime council is not an occasion for public pronouncements. For Olivier, ‘private’ moments are rarer and point up such important contrasts as that between the meditation before the battle and the King’s habitual performance of a calm and leaderlike resolve. In Olivier’s film, after the first Boar’s Head scene, performed in a broad ‘Globe’ manner and accompanied by noisy audience reactions, the Chorus pulls across the ‘discovery space’ a cloth representing the harbour at Southampton, rendered in the forced perspective of a medieval painting, and asks the cinema audience (a close-up helps to lose a sense of the Globe audience), to linger its patience on. The camera pans to our left, pulling up and back as the curtain image dissolves, first to a cut-out of a fortified wall against a backcloth of cliffs and the seas, then into a three-dimensional set composed in imitation of an illumination (see Figure 9). There are ships in the foreground, and beyond them a stylised wall beside the harbour. The music has changed to an unaccompanied chant, over a tableau of the King and his company at prayer. Henry’s ‘Now sits the wind fair’ (II.ii. 12) is held in close-up as a ‘private’ thought, and is not declaimed. The lines concerning the drunken man who had railed at him are spoken to the peers around him, he turns to Canterbury with ‘We doubt not / But every rub is smoothed on our way’, and his full ‘public’ voice is first heard on ‘Let us deliver / Our puissance into the hand of God.’ The action of striking the seal on to the parchment accompanies ‘No King of England, Unless King of France’, marking the climax, and he turns to walk along the quayside as the scene quickly dissolves visually to the window of the tavern and on the soundtrack to Walton’s elegiac passacaglia. Olivier’s voiceover, in the lines from 2 Henry IV rejecting Falstaff (‘I know thee not, old man . . .’), has the ringing tone of his last lines at Southampton, his ‘public’ voice recalled in this private scene from that famous episode of Falstaff’s public humiliation. This scene, with the dying figure on the bed, is presented naturalistically – that is, this is a ‘real’ Boar’s Head rather than some part of the Globe stage, but the painterly composition, skilful lighting, solemn music and (for audiences in 1944) the presence of Robey in a cameo role all mark it as a ‘film’ moment. As Graham Holderness observes, the curtain (with its motif of ships) pulled across ends the ‘Falstaff’ episode here and in Henry’s life as if it were an act in a play.59 Freda Jackson, as the hostess, is seen now for the first time in close-up, her make-up less elaborate than when she was on the Globe stage. The account of Falstaff’s death, spoken quietly and accompanied by a camera move even closer in, is not marked by any of the histrionics attached to the ‘Globe’ character. Even in the comic lines of Bardolph,

10. Henry V, 1944. The French court receives Exeter as ambassador. Harcourt Williams enthroned as the king, with Max Adrian as the Dauphin to his left.


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Nym, Pistol and the Boy, the music, still elegiac, undercuts any lingering staginess. Pistol’s parting tirade from Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine is spoken as women wave handkerchiefs from a window and a balcony to the departing men; Pistol always carries something of the Globe with him, but here the pathos of the farewells softens the effect. With his more villainous behaviour removed or toned down, the character remains through the film as an embodiment of the ‘essential openness of spirit’ that Dale Silviria identifies with the Globe.60 This scene, like the later campfire debate, is reminiscent of the scenes of homely emotion and unelaborated feeling much admired by reviewers of In Which We Serve. In Olivier’s film it is the scenes of common wartime experience – partings, anxiety before battle – that are presented with the least degree of self-conscious art, giving them a kinship with the newfound and much-celebrated realism of the British cinema. In 1944 characterising the French as enemies was a matter of some delicacy. Olivier seems to achieve something that might be designated as ‘The French’, a nation with excessively stylised notions of architecture and overelaborate taste in dress who are led by wrong-headed or in some cases mentally disturbed men. (The women are either simply charming or – in the case of the Queen – level-headed but unable to prevail in matters of policy.) Bower observed that the example of the Vichy regime had made it easier to accept this, implying that the governing elite might not be representative of the entire nation.61 Raymond Durgnat offers a formulation that seems to cover some of the perplexities: ‘the English are the English but Agincourt is D-Day where the French are the Germans until Henry courts Katherine when the French are probably the French’ – though this fails to allow for the glamour of the enemy at Agincourt as opposed to the very sordid image of the Germans in 1944.62 The French palace (in the play’s II.iv) is another stylised set, but is quite different in effect from the Southampton picture (see Figure 10). The pastel-coloured fantastic architecture and the poses of the courtiers suggest Sleeping Beauty’s court, with the King sitting distractedly on a pile of cushions and some soldiers apparently asleep. As the camera moves close to the King of France, a wistful Auvergnat melody is heard. This seems to suggest a momentary dream of peace within the film’s dream of warfare in a distant century. Preparing to receive the English ambassador, the king makes use of a mirror, not so much as if he were a player getting ready for a performance, but in a desperate attempt to bring his dishevelled hair into some sort of order appropriate to the elegance that is the house style. These men participate willingly in their own theatricality, as befits members of a court, but lack the ‘male’ energy of Henry and his

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peers: languor replaces brio. When Exeter enters he does not behave with unmannerly aggression, but the force of his threat is represented by a square-on head-and-shoulders close-up and his sober clothes. His defiance of the Dauphin is spoken directly to him, with each man occupying one side of a window embrasure divided centrally by a pillar. Exeter’s speech is thus shown as capable of fully occupying the aesthetically ordered French world. A storm-tossed sea (location footage) begins the series of dissolves that lead to the tempestuous motion of the Harfleur scene. When Henry rides into the foreground, which although studio-built registers conventionally as ‘real’ in contrast with what has gone before, he weighs up the situation for a moment. This is hardly sustained enough for the briefest turn of the head, but suggests that he makes a decision to speak: the observation by the camera of a private moment of anticipation recalls the Globe actor’s nervous cough. Not only does the camera move gradually from close-up to long shot as he speaks – a famous effect which the Revised Treatment already indicated – but the sea sounds under his speech as if to emphasise the stillness of the men listening to him. His voice rises again to its high, ringing tone. The paradigm is by now familiar: a private moment, seen only by us, leads to (or interrupts) a ‘performance’ by the character which modulates to a crescendo of heroic declamation. It is common to sequences at Harfleur, Southampton and the Globe, linking in each set of circumstances the core narratives (a, b, c) to the theatrical behaviour associated with the Globe frame. Again, comparison with Branagh’s very different agenda as actor, director and King is revealing: his Henry repeatedly shows his emotions to his comrades. After uttering the bloodcurdling threats to Harfleur that Olivier omits, he falls exhausted into Exeter’s arms, and his ‘Once more unto the breach’ begins as an exhortation to men of all ranks whom we recognise rather than (as with Olivier) to a general mass of soldiers standing between him and the camera. Throughout Branagh’s film, the King’s nervous apprehension is seen by his friends and they see him overcoming it. Olivier’s flickers of nerves are for the cinema audience alone. Who watches whom, and specifically who looks where, are crucial to the workings of Olivier’s Henry V, and to his characterisation of the King. The ‘gaze’ of the characters within the narrative complements the manner in which the director has problematised the camera’s ability to gaze on our behalf. At the end of the Harfleur scene, after the town has surrendered and Henry’s army has begun to file in through stylised gates, the King gazes across to the audience’s right and the camera takes up his line of vision to


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show the painted landscape with the castle which (we will discover) is that of the Princess. After the language-lesson scene, the Princess gazes out across the countryside towards the English ambassador’s party glinting in the distance. These complementary moments, plotted precisely in both the Revised Treatment and the shooting script, establish a situation in terms of geography – they are part of the common grammar of filmmaking – but they also plant the notion of looking towards the distance as a sign of growing awareness in the on-screen gazers. This marks an epiphany in both characters that corresponds to the ‘point-of-view’ issue in the film’s narrative. In a sense it marks the beginning of a relationship between characters that have not yet met, and at the same time gives another sign of correspondence between ideas and attitudes. As James N. Loehlin observes, ‘it is as though fate, and film technique, are drawing them together’.63 Seeing and wisdom are linked in both the core narratives of the film and its frames. It has been argued persuasively that the scene in the English camp on the eve of Agincourt (IV.i) is the heart of Olivier’s film, and Dudley Andrew proposes it as the centre of a symmetrical arrangement of real and stylised techniques.64 It certainly has great importance in the pattern of greater and lesser degrees of subjectivity in the camerawork. In the night scene Olivier for the first time places the camera unequivocally with Henry, implying that we are seeing with his eyes. By now the film has established point of view as an issue in the dual sense of a character’s attitudes and outlook, and the strictly cinematic question of who is seeing what and how, either in the story or through the camera. This lends considerable force to the sudden innovation of giving the audience Henry’s viewpoint. The progress of the King’s shadow across the tents as he walks through the camp seems to be shown from his point of view, until the camera lingers on a soldier by a brazier and shows Henry’s shadow cross him before panning right to reveal Henry and his party at some distance. The continuation of his tour of the camp, now alone, reverts to the new subjective point of view. Pistol and Fluellen are seen as if by him, with his off-screen voice registering amusement at Pistol and commenting on Fluellen. Indeed, these lines – ‘Though it appear a little out of fashion / There is much care and valour in this Welshman’ – are spoken by Henry virtually as a Chorus. (As we are, after all, looking with his eyes, they may implicitly become ‘our’ thoughts.) When Henry answers Williams’s ‘Who goes there?’, we see him for one shot from the challenger’s point of view. After the quietly spoken discussion with his men, in which Henry employs a level, earnest tone and holds back from his exhortatory public manner, his soliloquy (IV.i.227ff: ‘Upon

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the king . . .’) is delivered in voiceover as the camera observes his face in increasingly intimate close-up before moving back (on ‘slave’, I.278) to a painterly composition which takes in the sleeping figure of Court and the glimmerings of dawn in the distant landscape. The conduct of the whole sequence has effectively endowed him with the perceptive and expressive abilities of the film’s outer and inner frames: the scopic and interpretive abilities of camera and Chorus are for this sequence identified with the ‘essential’, private Henry as he meditates not only on the ethics of policy but also on the notion of selfhood.65 He has at his command the whole range of the film’s technical and artistic devices, as well as being a skilful and caring observer and interpreter of scenes. ‘He’ – by now an amalgam of Olivier and Henry – is a model director, and in a sense he has also become a second Chorus. In the French tent on the eve of battle, the Constable’s sceptical realism has been contrasted with the posturing of the Dauphin, but immediately before the battle Olivier shows the French leaders boasting in anticipation of inevitable victory and giving peremptory orders: at this point they are nearest to the contemporary stereotype of Nazi leaders, and (as in the play) they are never seen addressing their forces. Henry, by contrast, deals sensibly with the morale of his troops, according to the received idea of a good British military commander. In the St Crispin’s day speech, the camera regards Henry from his own level, tracking along and into close-up as he walks to a cart and climbs easily on to it, then pulling back to take in the audience of soldiers surrounding him. The movement of the camera is simple and fluent, as though the single take registers the calm, simplicity and force of the occasion. Again Henry’s voice modulates from a level tone, approximating to the conversational, to a heroic higher register, and he uses gestures (raised arm, crooked at the elbow, pointing finger) whose origin is in the Globe actor’s performance but are now very much ‘his’ own, an intriguing vocal and physical coming together of heroism and a sense of community. When Mountjoy arrives there is a sense of respect and understanding between the two men. Henry delivers a speech in ‘public’ tones but focusing on the Herald, making sure that the rejection of ransom is heard by everyone present. As the army cheers Henry on ‘Now, soldiers, march away’, there is moment of private prayer – seen and heard only by us – for ‘And how thou pleasest, God, dispose the day.’ (In Branagh’s film the line is heard by Henry’s followers as well.) After the battle, in the final section of the film’s ‘core’ story, Olivier shows an exterior painting of the French palace, visible briefly as the sequence moves to an interior, now viewed from a high angle and square


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11. Henry V, 1944. Henry and Katherine in the ‘wooing’ scene: publicity still posed in front of pieces of background set.

on to the frames provided by the architecture. Andrew points out that this sequence of scenes (Agincourt castle – village – palace) accomplishes a return towards the Globe which reads as symmetrical with the longer progression that had moved the film towards the true outdoors of the battlefield location shots.66 Henry on his entrance takes up a stance that compounds the Globe and ‘public’ rhetorical gestural language with a newfound picturesqueness appropriate to the new surroundings. As he holds the pose, his body tilted forwards slightly, knee bent elegantly in his white hose, forearm raised at the elbow, finger pointing, Henry is at home in this newly conquered world, much as the actor (either the one at the Globe or Olivier himself) can inhabit them all (see Figure 11).

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Burgundy is now made the centre of a static composition that moves from medium shot to close-up, but although his words are ‘public’ they do not have the Henrican timbre and his eyes avoid the camera lens when he shifts his focus from right to left. In a sequence plotted in the shooting script, the camera follows the direction of his look into the French landscape to observe the wretched state of the French countryside. It adopts his point of view to begin with, but seems to acquire a life of its own as he speaks, for it returns eventually to show the painted scene of the castle exterior, then moves up to the window and shows the interior from a new, reversed angle. It is at once the servant of Burgundy’s speech and independent of him. A comparable circling effect occurs during the wooing: Olivier’s Henry at one point walks out of shot to our right and his voice is heard ‘off’ until he returns to the left of the screen, with an appraising look at Katherine that recalls Henry’s point of view of Pistol in the camp scene. At this point Henry’s view of her is adopted by the film. When he moves in towards her to answer the ‘enemy of France’ rebuff, he is framed by the left-hand panel, while she occupies the right-hand side, of a triptych formed by a window. Although he has conducted the wooing in intimate tones, he now shifts to the higher, ‘public’ register on ‘avouch the thoughts of your heart’. Ace G. Pilkington deduces from this that ‘Olivier has suggested . . . that the camera can view its own starting place, examine its own images’, but it remains open to question how much such a subliminal effect can achieve for an audience at this point in a long film and without the benefit of repeated viewings and video or DVD replay. Perhaps the camera’s movement registers more generally as part of the film’s virtuosity and fluidity of style, and its meditative, dreamlike elisions of time and place.67 It has been argued that in Olivier’s transition from the ‘filmic’ Henry and Katherine to the Globe stage there are three Katherines rather than two – that the camera pans across to show a boy player, shyly acknowledging applause, and then, in long shot, we see another somewhat less feminine-looking youth.68 If this were susceptible of proof (and neither study of the film scripts not repeated viewing of the DVD versions has so far provided it), the transition would still stand as a clear meeting-place of the film’s frames, for the heavy make-up marks the Globe frame off from our own stage and film conventions as well as from the medieval world of the French palace itself. The music (the choir occupies a gallery equivalent to the Globe’s upper level) has been given a visible source for the first time, and now is seen to correspond directly with what is seen and heard at the Globe – though in the manner of such moments, orchestration and


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on-screen instrumental forces do not really match. When the Chorus appears, drawing a traverse curtain across in front of a stiffly posed wedding tableau that does not resemble anything seen in the ‘medieval’ court, he addresses the Globe audience but makes no eye contact with that in the cinema. There is no equivalent for the look directly to camera in his opening speech, and he addresses the theatre audience to each side, the camera rising slightly before a cut to a long shot of him as though from one of the galleries. After we have left the Globe, rising vertically on the same ‘journey’ by which we arrived, to look at the panorama of London, the screen is taken over by rolling credits rather than some kind of playbill or parchment, so that the film is now speaking in its own, modern, voice. And as the Agincourt anthem rings out, the final shot is of the Tower of London – here a symbol of steadfastness and tradition rather than summary justice – before a fade to black. In the cinemas of the time, this would have been followed by the drum roll that indicated to audiences that the national anthem was about to be played, and it was customary (and more or less obligatory) to stand and join in. The procedure of this concluding sequence is one that has become familiar in the course of the film: the viewer’s gaze moves up and out from a dramatic scene to contemplate a landscape. In the central narratives it accompanies new recognitions or (as Henry and the Princess both gaze across the landscape) intuitions. This is one of the ways in which the actions of characters within the inner narrative are connected with the devices of the Globe and ‘filmic’ frames. Looking is learning, not only for Elizabethan playgoers at the Globe, but also for medieval monarchs impersonated for their benefit, and for filmgoers in 1944 as the final shots take them back to a London unlike the one they might see when they left the cinema – except for the stubbornly persisting fortress of the Tower. In 1944, when the action of watching the sky over London was associated with anxiety about Nazi missiles, this was a privileged gaze indeed. A VISION OF LEADERSHIP

I have suggested that the frames of the film’s narrative are complemented by a graduation of private and public behaviour in the central character, in which the privacy of the meditation on the eve of battle is the most intimate moment and (within the ‘core’ narrative) the orations at Harfleur and on the battlefield the most public. The various kinds (or degrees) of

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pictorial stylisation underline this, working together with the ways of looking within the film and – via the camera – on the part of the audience outside it. Olivier himself, as seen in the film, conflates the roles of heroic historical figure, star actor from the past and actor-director from the present. A quality of quiet determination, intimating his care not to dishearten his troops, is combined with oratorical skill when the occasion demands it. After his credentials as a public speaker have been established both at the Globe and at Southampton, Henry is presented as a king who can deliver speeches when occasion demands, but who is not habitually inclined to do so without good occasion. Unlike Churchill, to whom eloquence was habitual, or Olivier himself, who often wandered into grandiloquence when given the chance, Henry is an orator for the working day. In this respect there may also be a hint of George VI, a sincere but hesitant speaker whom the nation had come to admire and whose reign, with the support of Queen Elizabeth, had established an image of the monarchy as humane rather than glamorous after the tribulations of Edward VIII’s abdication. Henry’s demeanour, a touch of modesty and the concluding wooing and marriage reinforce this effect. In its selection from the play’s texts, the film does much to reinforce this presentation of an ideal monarch: there are no traitors to be dealt with at Southampton, no threats of violence against Harfleur’s citizens (though we glimpse a handful of them, kneeling in submission in the street, when the gates are opened) and no reference to the hanging of Bardolph for looting. The shooting script includes a version of the passage in which Fluellen tells the King about Bardolph (III.vi.90–114), but the scene (shot 103) was not included in the final cut: Henry on foot, Standard Bearer, Gloucester and English Herald, and Bodyguard. Camera pans Henry left to right until we discover Fluellen and Gower kneeling. F L U E L L E N : God bless your majesty! (Henry motions them to rise) H E N R Y : How now, Fluellen, cam’st thou from the bridge? F L U E L L E N : Ay, so please your majesty. (Camera pans them right as they walk level with the camera) The French is gone off, look you, and the Duke of Exeter is master of the pridge; I think he hath lost never a man, but one – (Fluellen stops on ‘but one’) – that is like to be executed for robbing a church, one Bardolph, if your majesty knows the man: his face is all bubuckles, and whelks, and knobs, his nose, like a coal of fire, sometimes plue and sometimes red, but now his nose is executed, and his fire’s out. H E N R Y : We would have all such offenders so cut off; and we give express charge – (Camera pans him round to include Gower, Jamy and Macmorris in the right of the picture. He makes his speech to these four – so that they form a little semi-circle FULL MEDIUM SHOT:


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round Henry who has his back to the camera.) – that in our marches through the country there be nothing compell’d from the villages, nothing taken but paid for, none of the French upbraided or abused in disdainful language; for when lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentler gambler is the soonest winner. (There is a tucket of trumpets off. All react off camera right. They look at each other as a second tucket is heard. Henry separates himself from the group.)69

At this point the English and French Heralds are seen approaching across the fields, as in the completed film. From the script it is impossible to tell how Henry would have reacted to news about Bardolph, though Fluellen’s hesitation suggests that he knows the significance of what he is about to say. Henry’s instructions that all such offenders should be so ‘cut off’, with its grim play on words, is delivered to the small audience of captains and he has his back to the camera so that the scene ‘plays’ on them rather than on him. It is conceivable that the passage was omitted to save time and because it refers to a character that has been barely established. However, the scripts (and the film) also omit Fluellen’s laboured comparison of Henry with Alexander in IV.vii, so that any lingering memory of Falstaff has been removed: once we have seen the death of Falstaff and heard that ‘the king hath run strange humours on the knight’, Henry’s past is firmly put behind him. The play combines two attitudes to history, public and private – looking back to ‘your famous ancestors’ and forgetting Falstaff – but this dimension is simplified in the film to the point where it hardly exists. Like the ‘traitors’ scene, which not only suggests dissent among the nobility but also refers to Henry’s past friendships, the omitted passages recalling the Boar’s Head milieu would have made Henry a more complex and less admirable figure. Henry’s prayer on the eve of battle no longer refers to his father’s usurpation of Richard II or his anxiety that some punishment for this may be visited on his succesor now (IV.i.289–301). However, the cumulative effect may be not only a politically motivated sanitising, but also the presentation of a forward-looking monarch who looks to the past only for inspiration. Another scene omitted from the final cut (256 in the shooting script) would have shown Henry as a compassionate commander ‘framed’ by a reference to the past. As well as including Fluellen’s reminder of the feats at Crećy of Henry’s ‘great-grandfather of famous memory,’ and his boast about the good service done by Welshmen on that day (IV.vii.90ff), the sequence shows Sir Thomas Erpingham lying wounded and being tended by a priest (seen briefly in the film after the attack on ‘the boys and the luggage’). Henry notices Erpingham and gives him his glass of wine. As Fluellen insists that ‘all the water in Wye’ cannot ‘wash the Welsh blood’

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out of the king’s body, he hands Henry another glass of wine. Exeter enters from the tent with the crown, which he places on Henry’s head, and Fluellen kneels. In the next scene (257) soldiers are drinking and examining booty, and there are signs of exhaustion as well as good spirits among the troops. Montjoy is handed a list of the dead, which is then brought to Henry who receives reports of the casualties on both sides from the two Heralds. The final version begins the sequence at this point: Henry has his crown on, and as the scene dissolves to the shot of troops marching towards Agincourt itself we can just see Erpingham being helped to his feet. Even without the fuller version of this sequence, there has been sufficient evidence in the night scene of Henry’s calm, compassionate leadership. In the face of the advancing French cavalry, we see him steadfastly taking measure of the situation until he gives the signal for the flights of arrows, and the sense of personal courage is enhanced by his single combat with the Constable. This is manufactured at some expense to consistency. The character has been established as a professional soldier and thoughtful foil to the boastful Dauphin, he is less decoratively dressed than his peers (appearing throughout in at least partial armour) and he seems to have a decidedly ‘masculine’ forthrightness, while the Dauphin seems childish and effeminate. In effect, the Constable is more like a conventional British officer than his colleagues. It is hard to tell exactly who among the French commanders is doing what in the battle, and although the shooting script indicates that the Dauphin rides away because he is disgusted by the spectacle of the attack on the camp, this motive does not ‘read’ clearly.70 Any confusion, though, is overshadowed by the combat between the blackclad knight on a black horse and Henry on his white horse watched by a circle of (presumably) English troops. The battle sequence is structured so that the initial charge and the single combat bracket a series of incidents. After the scene copied from The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), when English foot soldiers drop from the trees on to French cavalrymen they have lured into the woods, and the ‘morass’ that represents the height of hand-to-hand combat, the attack on the camp motivates Henry to renew the assault not with an order that every man should kill his prisoner (often inserted at this point in stage versions but here omitted altogether), but by riding off to engage the Constable. Unlike Sergei Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevsky (USSR, 1939), which may have influenced him to some degree, Olivier’s film does not identify and follow through the adventures of individual soldiers during the battle; the principal actors were not available on location, and there is no real attempt to create a narrative in terms of personal battlefield experience other than that of the King himself. As


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scripted, the scene would have included a more explicit version of the blow that defeats the Constable – a shot from within the visor of a mailed fist descending on the victim – but in comparison with the somewhat clumsy attempt to show the giving and receiving of blows on the part of the main body of the army, Henry’s duel with the Constable seems effectively violent and suspenseful. It also appears to be the decisive event of the conflict. Both the Revised Treatment and the shooting script have symbolic details that would have emphasised aspects of the battle. Scene 45 of the Revised Treatment opens with the early morning sun ‘glinting dully on the heavily embroidered fleur-de-lys banners that rock gently in the wind. Only the pure gold of the needlework would keep them hanging so sleepily for the wind is fresh.’ Behind the French lines a cat ‘licks at himself and stretches lazily’. In the English camp a threadbare banner of Saint George ‘blows cheerfully in the wind’, and soldiers are making ‘a rather pathetic attempt to smarten up their rather sorry appearance’. The camera passes ‘patient looking horses, . . . mud-stained, cold and hungrylooking men’ and ‘ends up with a dog (mongrel) who is scratching away industriously’. Immediately before engaging the enemy, the English are shown praying and ‘kneeling three times and raising earth to their lips’ (sc. 45) – business used in Branagh’s film, which presents a similar image of ‘warriors for working day’ in contrast to the well-turned-out and overconfident French. Olivier’s script has birds leaving the trees before the battle and returning afterwards, and shows ‘several ragged-looking crows . . . flapping about’ in the English camp, but none of this was used. Like the cow fortuitously caught on camera in Ireland, the details may have been discarded before or after filming as too fussy: the resulting sequence is effective without underlining of this kind. In a shot that (as has been noted already) combines stylised matte painting with a natural foreground landscape, the troops march towards Agincourt castle while the Te Deum is sung, and a brief shot shows the battlefield, where we see a few scattered corpses. The scripts are more lurid, suggesting ‘mountains of dead’. The scene dissolves to a pastoral scene of a French village in the snow, so much in the style of a specific illustration (February) in the calendar pages of the Tre`s Riches Heures that the side of a cottage has been left off to reveal Pistol and a French woman sitting by the fire within. Pistol has purloined the Constable’s helmet and breastplate, but the shooting script’s indication that Fluellen is polishing a captured helmet is not followed through. (In the Revised Treatment both he and Gower would have been ‘tricked out in various pieces of finery that we recognise as having belonged to Bourbon and Orleans’.) After the leek-eating

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episode, and Pistol’s short soliloquy, the latter is seen stealing livestock from a barn before he makes his exit across the snowy fields. A dissolve leads by way of a view of the exterior of the French palace (again a painting rather than the model indicated in the scripts) to the airy, pavilionlike ‘interior’. The decision to make the results of the battle less vivid and the subsequent looting less evident allows for a smoother transition to the ‘fairytale’ mode of the palace scenes. The management of ‘gazing’ in this sequence has already been discussed, but it is important to note the way in which the architecture, with its elegant framing of space, and the light blue of the sky beyond the palace echo both the Globe’s wooden framing of action and the harmonious image of London beyond its confines. The move back into the theatre also substitutes artificially posed figures for the elegantly mobile courtiers who sweep Henry and Katherine into position for their joint coronation. Like the artificiality of the Globe make-up and the boy substituted for Asherson, this suggests that something genuine has been replaced by its effective but not altogether adequate ‘mockery’. The fantasy world delivered by the cinema is still superior to that available in the Globe. The ‘Actor who plays the King’ also stands halfway between Olivier and Henry, licensed by his circumstances to acknowledge applause within the film on behalf of the actor-director outside it. As a figure representative of masculinity, Henry passes through a number of stages, which the film elides and superimposes as it moves from one frame to another. The contrast between the ‘feminine’ languor of the French nobility (with the notable exception of the Constable) has been remarked on already. In their world the King needs his queen to prompt him, and Katherine and Alice, though shocked by the occasional coarseness of the men (they shriek off-screen when Bourbon refers to ‘Norman bastards’) seem to enjoy the bawdiness of the language lesson and its puns on foutre and con. The Auvergnat melody associated with them in Walton’s score is distinctive but shares a wistfulness of mood and woodwind orchestration with other music accompanying French scenes. In this scene and in the way she copes with Henry’s wooing, Katherine is very much in control, for all her demureness when she asks Henry whether it is possible that she should love the enemy of France, and when her mother speaks in the final scene we get a suggestion of the royal peremptoriness lacked by the French king. With the exception of the ambassador, the Herald and the King, the men of the French nobility are excluded from the final scene, so that the court has become conclusively feminised. The English nobles wear the court dress that has previously been seen only in the brief


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embarkation scene at Southampton, and Henry is wearing long white hose that display his legs fully for the first time. His incontrovertibly masculine deeds and appearance on the campaign have earned him the right to cut a figure more elegant but at the same time less dandified than the absent (and presumably disgraced) Dauphin. Nationality, masculinity and authority are asserted decisively, while success in wooing, however foreshortened the process, stands for effective diplomacy as well as indicating Henry’s personal attraction. The winning of the Princess also confirms Henry’s possession of the aesthetic world of France and assertion of his own ‘feminine’ dimension, put aside for the purposes of war. The play’s bawdy language about the taking of maidens and cities (V.ii.288–319), often cut in stage productions and also absent from Branagh’s film, has no place in this scheme.71 The negotiation of images and roles in terms of masculinity and its opposite was always problematic in the dominant culture of mid-twentiethcentury Britain where the theatre was associated with effeminacy – a profession which called on men to wear make-up and dress in costumes that defied current norms of gender and sexuality. The situation was further complicated in wartime by the need to represent conventionally masculine characteristics in leadership. In terms of the wartime representation of the nation to itself, Sonya O. Rose has observed that gender difference ‘was both essential to the nation and disruptive of its imagined unity’.72 In her chapter on ‘Temperate Heroes,’ Rose comments on the perplexities this presented: In World War II Britain, the nation-at-war was a masculine subject, but this was a temperate masculinity. Combining good humour and kindliness with heroism and bravery was an unstable mix. Pushed too far in one direction, it could uncomfortably resemble the hyper-masculine Nazi enemy. Pushed too far in the other direction, it could slide into effeminacy.73

In this respect negotiating an image of leadership in the person of Henry himself resembles the problem of identifying the French as his (or ‘our’ – the cinema audience’s) enemies. The film’s formal subtleties help to express and make acceptable more contradictions than those already present in the play’s notorious duality, its ironic but ultimately heroic representation of an aggressive territorial campaign as a famous victory. The film’s effect may well have seemed less exhortatory than reassuring in 1944, when victory was in sight but tantalisingly evasive. Valour and the attraction of success needed no recommendation in themselves, but the film seemed to offer a vivid and literal sight of the ‘broad, sunlit uplands’ towards which Churchill had pointed in his famous speech of 18 June 1940, when he announced that the


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battle of France was over, but that he expected ‘the battle of Britain’ was about to begin: If we can stand up to [Hitler] all Europe may be free, and the life of the world will move forward into broad, sunlit uplands; but if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, and all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister, and perhaps more prolonged, by the lights of a perverted science.74

In the film Henry’s leadership, with its resolution of paradoxes inherent in leadership, gender roles and performance as well as its military success and broad humanity, intimates that the ‘best garden’ can be achieved in personal as well as political terms by cultivating the fundamental ‘English’ traits of commitment, pragmatism and modesty. ‘A

FILM EVERY BRITON MUST SEE’

The film’s production and initial distribution took place during phases of the conflict that produced varied moods of optimism and alarm. During post-production the Normandy landings had prompted the addition of the dedication to the airborne troops, an element not included in the shooting scripts. By the time of the release, the hopeful spirit generated by the June invasion had been qualified by military setbacks on the European continent and the continuing conflict in the Far East. Even more discouraging was the menace of unmanned bombing attacks on London and the South of England: the first flying bombs (V1s) struck on 13 June 1944, and the onslaught of these and the larger rockets (V2s) did not cease until 27 March 1945. By then, it was estimated, 2,500 had been killed and 5,869 seriously injured.75 This was the anxious London recalled in Diary for Timothy, Jennings’s eloquent documentary setting out a new version (for the benefit of a newborn child) of the values we were fighting for. By October correspondents in Time and Tide were already debating the suitability of Henry V for a time of peacemaking.76 Despite the unforeseen and novel nature of the V1 and V2 attacks, though, the effect on public mood seems not to have been as grave as might have been expected: Robert Mackay concludes that this ‘final trial of the war [. . .] served to confirm the broader story of wartime civilian morale’.77 After the premiere in London in November 1944, the film ran at the 1,189-seat Pavilion in Marble Arch for almost a year. Because of the decision to distribute it as a ‘road show’, which entailed fewer costly prints and allowed for unusual promotion at venues, the film did not reach many


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cinemas in the provinces and the London suburbs until well into the following year. The first booking outside London was – as an act of useful homage – in Stratford-upon-Avon, where the film was shown on two evenings, with one matinee and two schools’ morning showings: proceeds from the sale of souvenir brochures would go to Holy Trinity Church.78 In emulation of the Pavilion, with its ‘fleet of mimic galleons’ which reminded Ivor Brown of the D-Day flotillas, local exhibitors were encouraged by the distributors to vie with each other in devising eyecatching decorations for their exteriors and foyers.79 Not every cinema owner achieved an appropriate dignity: the Yorkshire Post reported the poor taste of the marquee of the Leeds Odeon, which advertised ‘the atomic film of the century’.80 Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been bombed on 6 and 9 August respectively, and Japanese surrender had followed on 14 August. Public relief at the end of the war in the Pacific was tempered with widespread dismay at the nature of the weapons now revealed. In its ‘Reviews for Showmen’, Kinematograph Weekly rated Henry V as a ‘memorable, thrilling and majestic prestige picture’ and predicted that it would be an ‘outstanding box-office achievement, a film every Briton must see’ (30 November 1944). The ‘Points of Appeal’ were summarised at the bottom of the column: ‘Story, language, patriotism, unsurpassed spectacle, title, Technicolor, music and box-office star and cast’. James Agate’s review in Tatler captured one viewer’s immediate response. At the end of the film, he wrote, ‘we rise in a state of exaltation, excitement, and exhilaration such as we have not known in the cinema for many a long day. We search for hyperbole. What fine acting! What horsemanship! What amazing colour! What marvellous photography! What splendid dećor! And, gosh, what a poet!’ (29 November 1944). For the most part, the critical reception of Henry V in Britain was one of qualified enthusiasm, in which reviewers urged cinemagoers to see the film but at the same time expressed serious reservations. ‘Olivier triumphs, but Henry V fails gloriously’ announced the headline of Ernest Betts’s review in the Sunday Express. Olivier deserved credit ‘for undertaking the most ambitious film of our time’. It was also ‘the most difficult, annoying, boring, exciting, wordy, baffling picture yet made. It is good, and it is bad. It has a sort of damnable excellence’ (28 November 1944). The opening sequence – and indeed the whole of the ‘Globe’ framework – was not universally admired. Olivier had made his intentions clear in an interview with the Evening News critic, Jympson Harman: to cope with the difficulty of ‘putting poetic speech among realistic settings such as the film uses’, they would ‘break the ice by starting the play in the old Globe Theatre in

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Shakespeare’s time, leave the theatre at a convenient moment and then film [the] action against stylised settings such as you see in old paintings’ (24 November 1944). It was not the ‘poetic speech’, however, that proved difficult: several reviewers found the film’s opening too slow and objected to the unfunny comedy. ‘A little too much detail and . . . a trifle too wordy’ thought Kinematograph Weekly. The Daily Express complained that twenty minutes were wasted on ‘several scenes of feeble humour and garrulous talk’ and Campbell Dixon in the Daily Telegraph objected to the delaying of ‘a narrative that should have been direct and swift’ by ‘shots of audience and players back-stage’. Dixon seems to have been annoyed that something genuine and direct was being held back: ‘Once we leave the theatre and its scenery, and let Shakespeare give us real people against real backgrounds, what has been just a rich, ingenious pageant comes to life; but by this time grievous damage has been done to unity and tempo’ (23 November 1944). The battle scenes, however, had ‘the sweep and excitement one expects of Mr De Mille with the gorgeous colour of a Flemish old master’, and the headline given to the review (probably by a sub-editor) proclaims ‘£500,000 Film of Shakespeare’s Henry V. Colour and Thrills’. Despite its reservations, Dixon’s review endorses the film as a big-budget spectacle to rival Hollywood (it cost half a million pounds and is worthy of De Mille) and as a prestige affair with ‘high’ artistic values (the Flemish old masters.) In this respect it is typical of the critical response in the popular press. Mary Hunt in the Evening Standard (25 November) objected to the use of the prologue and choruses, which ‘damps the interest instead of whetting it’ and Elspeth Grant in the Sketch (23 November) noted that while Olivier is still playing the Elizabethan actor, the story hangs fire: ‘it is not until the film leaves the playhouse and settles into its swinging stride as a film that the drama becomes absorbing and Olivier a King indeed’. The communist Daily Worker (25 November), under the headline ‘Shakespeare for the Millions’, praised the film as an effort that would ‘please a large section of the public, and by the very name of Laurence Olivier, make Shakespeare known to many who were strangers to him’, but identified its ‘principal fault’ as ‘unevenness’. It should move away from the Globe much sooner. According to the Daily Express (25 November), ‘had he been living at this hour, Shakespeare would have scrapped all that unfunny comedy of the opening.’ In the Picturegoer and Film Weekly, Lionel Collier was bored by the opening and annoyed again when one of the ‘stylised pink and white icing sets – charming in fantastic comedy but out of key in a story of blood and courage’ followed immediately on the Harfleur scene.


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Many other reviewers, though, welcomed the Tre`s Riches Heures sets of the film’s second frame. Moor Raymond in the Sunday Despatch (26 November) was delighted by ‘a kind of film fairyland, where colours and shapes are a compromise between the real and the fantastic’, and Matthew Norgate in the Sunday Chronicle and Referee (26 November) praised ‘colour photography that so well blends the stylised with the realistic that one forgets that it is photography at all’ – a reference to the prevailing anxiety about the capabilities of the colour processes then available. The Manchester Guardian had its doubts: the ‘visual life of the screen’ was ‘wavering and uncertain’ and the film found itself ‘in its element’ for the first time at the Battle of Agincourt (23 November). One of the few dissenting voices on this point was that of Agate, whose published response, quoted above, was enthusiastic, but whose temporarily private opinions (they were published a year later) claimed that when he inserted outdoor scenes such as battles a director was merely filming the ‘raw material’ of Shakespeare’s poetry, and maintained that ‘when the film flew, so to speak, out of the window, Shakespeare, as far as I was concerned, walked out of the door’.81 Shakespearean dialogue – too much, too quaint – might still be a stumbling block. When the film was shown for the first time in Glasgow, a columnist in the Evening Times (10 February 1945) observed that the early scenes, ‘though brilliantly done, make the characters seem artificial to a film audience, and they never really achieve realism in the later scenes’. (This is the kind of remark that may report the response of the audience; one would dearly like to know.)82 Harman, in an Evening News article on 22 November, clearly placed by the producers to anticipate the official opening, asked whether cinemagoers ‘used to having their dialogue served out in Fifth Form fashion’ would follow the film with ease. ‘Will the unfamiliar, leisurely mood of much of the film come too strange to eyes and ears fed on Hollywood conventions?’ Olivier seemed, though, to have carried his point. In an enthusiastic notice (‘An English Film That Will Thrill England’), Helen Fletcher in the Sunday Graphic (26 November) hailed a movie that would ‘give Shakespeare back to the groundlings’ and that, after its first half-hour in the Globe, did not pretend to be a play, but was also not ‘ashamed of being what used to be called a talkie’. It put aside ‘the absurd convention that deems it poor cinema for any character to speak more than ten words running’. One of the most self-consciously populist reviews, Norah Alexander’s in the Sunday Pictorial (26 November), headlined ‘You’ve GOT to See this £500, 000 Film’, reported the results of a random survey of nineteen passers-by, who all declared themselves unwilling to go to a Shakespeare film, and set out reasons for their changing

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their mind. This was ‘a film that you’re going to see eventually, whatever you think now. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’ She went on, as if a prophet new-inspired: After the war you’ll find that it’s reissued and shown on special prints to schools and youth-clubs and what-have-you. After that, I don’t mind betting it’s offered in your nearest village hall. Or the vicar’ll borrow a copy for his church bazaar. Sooner or later you’re bound to see it. Believe me, that’s high praise. No one can make you all see something you don’t fancy.

The dialogue was ‘tricky’ and the running time half an hour too long, but Olivier had made an irresistible and unavoidable film. In a comparable, though less boisterous, vein, F. W. Wilkinson, headmaster of Latymer Upper school, foresaw that in the ‘considerable changes in our education system, especially in curriculum and teaching methods’ required by the 1944 Education Act, ‘a more prominent place’ would be assured to two things: ‘the film as a medium of interpretation and Shakespeare, as the greatest creation in our language’. Olivier’s film had shown how the two might be brought together.83 Alexander’s review addresses in its own way an important dimension of the film, that outer framing narrative constituted by the history and current situation of the British film industry. One of the most thoughtful considerations of this, an anonymous review in the News Chronicle (25 November), is especially significant for being offered in terms of adverse criticism, which is consistent with the editorial habits of this Labour newspaper even through the years of wartime political coalition and the often uneasy avoidance of party politics. To see the British cinema challenging and triumphant is one of my dearest wishes. A wish that will be realised only when we get a film that has unity and sureness, one that never stumbles in confusion as this enormously expensive production does half the time. Because of its virtues the temptation is to praise this film extravagantly and uncritically. Yet in a picture which cost as much as this did (£500,000) and took so much time to make, several memorable, even great, scenes do not atone for the patchwork quality of the remainder, for the projection of characters who are meaningless as well as incoherent to anyone who does not know the lines. By costly experiment Britain has formed here, in those moments which are of the cinema, and are not unclouded by staginess, the real approach not only to Shakespeare but to the treasure chest of her history. Now perhaps it will be explored to mint a native Kermesse He´roique, a Tarakanova or an Alexander Nevsky.

This places Henry V firmly in the long-running debate about the British film industry’s ability to compete successful with those of other countries, but


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the standards invoked come from continental Europe and Soviet Russia. The aesthetic values invoked by the phrase ‘of the cinema’ are those of the advanced film-loving intelligentsia, the members of film clubs and founders of the BFI, and the implication that expenditure is not enough in itself is implicitly a denial of the ‘Hollywood’ standards of prestige filmmaking espoused by Korda.84 The tone of the review, refusing to concede ‘unity and sureness’ to Olivier’s work, also recalls the current anxiety to achieve a satisfactory settlement, when peace had been achieved, of the social contracts uniting the nation. Commentators on the left – and, by all accounts, the population in general – waited to see how many of the recommendations of the Beveridge Report (published in December 1942) for a fairer society would be given effect.85 In May parliament had passed the Education Act, but would the other elements of what came to be known as the Welfare State be put in place? Optimism about the British film industry’s ability to make and market independent and worthwhile films was qualified with the same caution applied to prospects for the implementation of Beveridge. Olivier’s Henry V, in this context, is presented as a film whose undeniable achievements fall short of the requirements for ‘quality’ filmmaking – it is still that commercial entity, a studio-style ‘prestige’ product, attuned to the demands of a Hollywood-defined popular market rather than pointing the way ahead. In a personal ‘message’ accompanying the pressbook issued to exhibitors with specimen advertisements and suggestions for publicity, J. Arthur Rank urged exhibitors to spend at least a month preparing the ground, and suggested that, although the film would be available in continuous showings rather than special, separate performances, the cinema owners should take care to advertise the times of each performance of the main feature. Cannily, he also insisted that the opening night should not be ‘papered’ with complimentary tickets, but ‘a night when the chief citizens of the town have decided to pay for their seat in much the same way as a West End audience flocks to the first night of a new play’.86 On a more immediately political level, Olivier’s film was accepted as an invocation, appropriately stirring, of a heroic past. However, some had their doubts about the applicability of the Agincourt story to contemporary events. Caroline Lejeune in the Observer went so far as to claim that it was not ‘an anticipation of the heroic actions that have been fought this summer and autumn so close along the route that Henry Plantagenet followed’, and insisted that Henry V was not a ‘great war play’: ‘The Elizabethans were too much in love with beauty and splendour and the heady draught of words to write great war plays. The stuff of war is patience and endurance, courage and cold blood, and a kind of long, hard anonymity, and these are not virtues for

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the playhouse, still less for the camera.’87 Lejeune celebrated the film’s ‘springtime ardour’, not its alleged relevance. Other reviewers were less ready to detach it from current events, to the extent of finding fault with missed opportunities. The Daily Sketch (27 November) complained about the omission of the conspiracy of Cambridge, Scroop and Grey, ‘the fifth columnists of 500 years ago’. Among the incidental contemporary resonances noted by critics was an aspect of Olivier’s rhetorical style that took him away from the admired but unabashedly ‘public’ style of Churchill and closer to another Allied leader, Roosevelt. In the Evening Standard (25 November), Mary Hunt noted that ‘Olivier neither declaims nor stylises [the speeches]’ and that ‘when reciting the soliloquies he is natural, personal, intimate, with the charm and lightness of a radio fireside chat’. In the Spectator (1 December), the documentary film director Edgar Anstey suggested that ‘the great mass of people’ would notice that the film ‘begins with a formulation of a British case for the invasion of France which is so tortuous and incomprehensible that the film’s makers have felt bound to present it in terms of comedy’. This argument, though, is used ‘to provide a sort of Hitlerian justification for an attack upon the incompetent and effeminate French’. (A characterisation that gave ‘no very friendly picture of our allies across the Channel’.) The 1944 audience would also be struck by the contemporary application of the speech before the battle, ‘But if the cause be not good, the King himself hath a heavy reckoning . . .’ and the failure to answer this very question ‘will not elude the great war-conscious audiences for which this film was intended’. Like other reviewers, Anstey found the omission of the ‘fifth columnists’ curious, and (unlike others) he noted that the French attack on the English camp was shown but not the King’s order to kill French prisoners. This response to the politics within the film is rounded off with a question about its usefulness at this historical juncture – the politics, that is, of its production. Despite the feeling of ‘gratitude for this rare screen experience’, Anstey has ‘a fancy that the eminently practical ghost of Shakespeare is lurking somewhere, to ask whether the time and the vast sum of money expended on this film could not have been devoted to original work better suited to the medium. I suspect that Shakespeare would have preferred Western Approaches.’ By invoking a colour film (rare in itself) that united the modes of drama and documentary, Anstey brings Henry V into direct comparison with an example of the development in British cinema that likeminded critics and directors were promoting. When the time came for its summary of the year’s business – ‘1945 BoxOffice Stakes’ – on 20 December, Kinematograph Weekly was able to report that ‘Henry V (Eagle-Lion) was the ‘‘class’’ horse but found the going uneven,


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being outstripped by The Seventh Veil.’ Maintaining the racing metaphor, it noted that ‘Henry V did not do so well in the sticks, but, of course, cleaned up in town.’ As Brown had noted in August, the London box office showed this was not merely a succe`s d’estime: ‘You do not pack a vast cinema morning, afternoon and evening for nine months or so in one city, however huge (and at really high prices) by merely handing out a cultural opportunity.’88 ‘ P R O N O U N C E D ‘‘ O ’ L I V ’ V Y

Y A Y ’’ ’

UNITED STATES,

– HENRY 1946

V IN THE

Henry V was one of six films from Rank for which United Artists (UA) had obtained American distribution rights in 1944. Sarah Street, in her study of the reception of British feature films in the United States, gives a detailed account of the marketing and distribution of this group of films, and in particular Henry V, which was first shown at the Esquire Theatre in Boston, Massachusetts, on 3 April 1946 and had its New York premiere in June.89 The distributor kept tight control of advertising and presentation, to the extent of sending representatives out to supervise promotion in every venue and not issuing the usual pressbook with stock materials for exhibitors to use at their discretion. Street quotes internal memoranda from the Lawrence Organisation, Rank’s publicity agency in New York, outlining the pros and cons of the film from its point of view: Pros 1. It is Shakespeare. 2. It has sex interest. 3. It is new and ‘different’. 4. It has a musical score. 5. It is entirely non-controversial and can be shown anywhere, at any time, to any audience. 6. It cost a good deal of money. Cons 1. It is British. It is historical – and British history! 2. Its theme is ‘Good Old England’. 3. Its difficult dialogue. 4. Its ‘highbrow’ connotation.90

This was no more than conventional wisdom regarding the fate of British films with general American audiences. In the event, reviews reflected some of these anxieties. The dialect of the comic scenes, especially those with the Welsh, Irish and Scottish captains, and the amount of dialogue as well as its

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archaic idiom were problematic: unlike the scripts of most costume dramas, with modern language embellished by occasional ‘period’ touches, Henry V was uncompromisingly and genuinely Elizabethan. Variety’s ‘Miniature Review’ on 24 April summarised the film for the trade as ‘Technically excellent, but will require extra-special handling to get biz.’ The full review in the same issue indicated UA’s strategy: UA’s intention, which it has already put into practice in Boston, is to two-a-day the picture in small houses, preferably legiters, and make a determined pitch for the school and longhaired trade . . . Openings are being widely spaced to allow the huzzahs which the film is getting in the academic trade to seep around the country. UA has only five prints and intends to make no more, although it is talking of a gross in excess of $1,000,000. That’ll take time, of course, lots of time. But on the merits of the picture for the special audience to which it appeals, it is by no means impossible with the nursing UA is giving it.

Variety noted that UA was trying different lengths of the film, and that the version shown in Boston and screened for the trade papers in New York ran at two hours and seven minutes. ‘Scissoring’ would be easy because of the way Shakespeare had written the play ‘in scenes with virtually no integration’, but on the whole, the reviewer suggested, ‘there seem[ed] good justification for leaving [the film] as Olivier made it’. Whatever its merits (which the Variety reporter recognised generously), this was still ‘no film to be dropped in on by a casual passer-by’, and the limited roadshowing distribution was therefore doubly appropriate. Shakespeare’s language would be ‘so much abracadabras to the kid from Brooklyn or the average film-fan in Birmingham or Seattle’, and prior familiarity with the plot would be essential. On the other hand, ‘Story is considerably simpler than the boys from Hollywood turn out.’ The New York Daily Mirror’s Hollywood correspondent reported that ‘the highbrows and longhairs here, both sincere and phoney, are wild about the film, and will be echoed on Broadway’ but added that ‘we peasants are puzzled and disturbed’. In a flourish of dubious Latinity, he doubted that Shakespeare would ever ‘be a movie click for the pabulum’ (18 June 1946). In the event, the film’s American showings, which continued into 1948, produced a handsome profit, nurtured by UA’s strategy, and may have grossed some $3 million overall. Breaking even took some time: by 1949 Rank had recouped the negative costs from revenue in the United Kingdom and abroad.91 Henry V was the National Board of Review’s best film for 1946, Olivier won the top acting award from the New York Film Critics’ Circle, and the film received a special award at the Oscars ceremony. Academy Award nominations were received for Best Picture, as well as for music and art direction (see Figure 12).92


12. Henry V, 1944. ‘What’s Henry V doing in New York?’: advertisement from the Observer, 10 August 1947.

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The ‘legiter’ – that is, legitimate theatre – chosen in New York was the City Center, a venue not hitherto used for film exhibition, and the event was carefully orchestrated to provide an audience of international dignitaries. Delegates to the newly established United Nations Organisation were invited, along with the usual roster of available celebrities, and Olivier and Leigh stayed on in New York to grace the occasion after the departure of the Old Vic Company. A surprise addition to the programme was a colour film of the victory parade in London, only the second newsreel in Technicolor. Bosley Crowther, after giving the film a warm welcome in his New York Times review on 18 June – ‘a stunningly brilliant screen spectacle, rich in theatrical invention, in heroic imagery and also gracefully regardful of the conventions of the Elizabethan stage’ – returned a few days later to the question of its popular appeal. In ‘The Public and Henry V’ (23 June), he insisted that it had ‘what it takes to make it a ‘‘box-office picture’’ in any town in the United States’. It was ‘spectacular in an eye-filling, action-crammed way’, Olivier’s performance was ‘in a style of self-confident regality which can be comprehended by all’, and ‘the whole film [came] off as a romantic and exciting action-play’. There were problems regarding the motivation of the plot, ‘pompous, treacherous (by our lights) and particularly hard to understand’, and the clowns were both incomprehensible and unfunny. ‘But for all that,’ he concluded, ‘it makes a splendid picture; and if Shakespeare doesn’t click this time, there’s no use trying further. Let ’em eat Veronica Lake!’ Other reviewers hailed Henry V as the first successful Shakespearean film after the false starts of the 1930s. ‘For once,’ wrote Alton Cook in the New York World-Telegram (18 June), ‘a Shakespearean movie rings with the authentic heartiness and grandeur of the original play.’ Kate Cameron in the Daily News suggested that Olivier had ‘shown Hollywood the way to put Shakespeare on the screen’ (18 June). Reviewers noted the ‘beautifully modulated’ and ‘soft’ Technicolor and welcomed the theatricality of the acting: ‘Henry V has been produced, as Shakespeare should be produced, with a flourish’ (Eileen Creelman, Sun, 18 June). In all the reviews, and in the film’s handsome publicity booklet, much was made of the heroism of the filming process and Olivier’s personal responsibilities as director, actor and adaptor. John McCarten in the New Yorker (22 June) noted that the film was ‘as polished throughout as if it had been made in the blandest days of peace’ and announced that Olivier had ‘emerged as the most imaginative film-maker around’. (So much for Orson Welles?) In such reviews, and in the general context of the film’s American reception, Henry V was confirmed as participant in the story (yet another framing narrative) of the British film industry’s troubled


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relationship with Hollywood. In another continuing story, that of Shakespeare’s cinematic career, the signs were equivocal. Howard Barnes in the Herald Tribune (18 June) welcomed the film but warned that Hollywood should not be tempted to ‘follow a precarious path’. Henry V would be ‘a boomerang in any over-all picture of film producing’ – presumably because any attempt to emulate it would fall on the inventors’ heads. The most thoughtful and eloquent American response to Henry V came from James Agee in three review articles: one in Time magazine on 8 April and two for the more ‘longhair’ readership of the Nation on 20 July and 3 August. (The Time article was reprinted as part of the film’s continuing publicity campaign.)93 Agee’s Time review is full of factual information gleaned from the publicity department, including details of Olivier’s career, instructions on pronouncing his name (‘‘O’liv’vy yay’’), and the version of the film’s making that credits him with almost every crucial decision – though Bower ‘was responsible for the idea of the production’ and Beck took over direction for those scenes in which Olivier himself appeared.94 It also uses some characteristic Time expressions and noun/name combinations (‘cinemactress Vivien Leigh’), but all his writing on the film reflects Agee’s romantic emotional response to its language and situations. Although the visual effects of the film’s settings, staging and photography are praised, it is the language that Agee finds most remarkable: ‘The one great glory of the film . . . the words set loose in the graciously designed world of the screen, like so many uncaged birds, fully enjoy and take care of themselves’ (Nation, 3 August). The ‘bloodraising reply to the French Herald’s ultimatum’ is a ‘frank, bright expression of the moment for English ears, amusedly and desperately honoured as such, in a still gallant and friendly way, by both Herald and King’. Agee’s account of the film asserts a duality in response that is connected with the self-consciousness of the film and of the King within it: His Crispin’s day oration is not just a brilliant bugle-blat: it is the calculated yet self-exceeding improvisation, at once self-enjoying and selfless, of a young and sleepless leader, rising to a situation wholly dangerous and glamorous, and wholly new to him. Only one of the many beauties of the speech as he gives it is the way in which the king seems now to exploit his sincerity, now to be possessed by it, riding like an unexpectedly mounting wave the astounding size of his sudden proud awareness of the country morning, of his moment in history, of his responsibility and competence, of being full-bloodedly alive, and of being about to die.95

In Agee’s account the film is at once modern and ancient, and its ‘nervous, branching intelligence’ is ‘so contemporary in quality except that it always keeps the main lines of its drive and meaning clear, never spiralling or

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strangling in awareness’. Although he admits that the film ‘is by no means as adventurous as it might have been’ and makes no attempt ‘to develop a movie style which might in poetic energy and originality work as a cinematic counterpart to the verse’, he identifies in it a distinctly modern kind of faithfulness to the film’s source, ‘in playing a hundred kinds of charming adventurousness against the incalculably responsive sounding-boards of tradition’.96 The peroration of his second Nation article is remarkable for its lyrical acceptance of the film’s representation of England and history, while at the same time measuring the distance between the play’s ideology and his own – that of the radical New Deal poet who had documented rural poverty in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: I am not a Tory, a monarchist, a Catholic, a medievalist, an Englishman or, despite all the good that it engenders, a lover of war: but the beauty and power of this traditional exercise was such that I wished I was, thought I was, and was proud of it. I was persuaded, and in part still am, that every time and place has since been in decline, save one, in which one Englishman used language better than anyone has before or since, or ever shall; and that nearly the best that our time can say for itself is that some of us are still capable of paying homage to the fact.97

In this response to the film, Henry V has become another version of ‘the world’s best garden’, a space in which energies and feelings from another age can operate independently of the ideology they express. Agee’s dream is uncannily like that of the final chorus’s nostalgic gesture towards the ‘small time’ when this ‘star of England’ greatly lived, and the image of a sword (rather than a ploughshare) made by Fortune ‘by which the world’s best garden he achieved’ suggests something of the paradox by which a writer who was not ‘a lover of war’ could acknowledge ‘all the good it engenders’. By 1946, viewed from another country and watched by an audience laced with United Nations dignitaries, Olivier’s Henry had acquired yet another distancing frame.

CHAPTER

3

Visions of Renaissance Italy

In comparison with Max Reinhardt’s and William Dieterle’s eclectic and darkly (if fitfully) erotic romance and the stylised presentation of history within a history of Laurence Olivier’s Henry V, each of the three films of Romeo and Juliet discussed here seems to offer simpler and more direct access to an ‘authentic’ recreation of a historical period. Unlike the films of Renato Castellani (1954) and Franco Zeffirelli (1968), MGM’s 1936 version does not address its own society directly or attempt to engage with any of the problems facing young people in its own day. All three, however, evoke a vision of Renaissance Italy, either as an ideal world in which tragedy occurs despite its refinement or as a sophisticated and graceful but flawed society which – in the Italian neo-realist mentality of the 1950s or the romantic ‘youth culture’ of the 1960s – can be held responsible for the death of the lovers. In their distinct ways, all the films endow the Shakespearean source with the cultural aura of the Italian Renaissance and at the same time reverse the process to dignify Verona with Shakespeare. They also embody different notions of what the cinema is and what it should achieve, though only Castellani’s film has its origins in a radical or considered critique of the medium. Each film in its own way raises questions regarding the relative value of cinematic realism and stylisation, and the value of familiar, recognisable behaviour in the context of an evocation of a more or less ideal past and heightened language. Paradoxically, it is arguable that for all its ostentatious irreverence and frenetic energy, Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 Romeo þ Juliet does something similar, creating a fantasy world that seems more ‘real’ but is soon revealed as being so patently stylised that the viewer is encouraged to peel away the surface of cynicism and caricature to arrive at the ‘authentic’ love of the principals. When Leonardo DiCaprio attends the ball as a knight in shining armour and Claire Danes dresses as an angel, they are even more decisively set apart from their society than their cinematic predecessors. Implicit in Luhrmann’s film is a dialogue with Zeffirelli’s – if not with the 127

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others – and an engagement with the possibilities and problems of a Shakespeare Film. 1. ‘MORE STARS THAN THERE ARE IN HEAVEN’: MGM’S ROMEO AND JULIET, 1936

Romeo and Juliet, produced for MGM by Irving Thalberg, directed by George Cukor and released in 1936, was sound-era Shakespeare from the company that Warner Bros. had been emulating in its A Midsummer Night’s Dream a year earlier. In it, a vision of the Italian Renaissance is superimposed on an idealised version of Shakespeare’s tragedy – and MGM’s vision of itself. Where Warner Bros. was seeking to enhance its image as a studio, with this film MGM was self-confidently confirming its perceived status. The image of city life and manners in the period is that enunciated by Jacob Burckhardt, whose The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (first published in 1860) was drawn on by the studio’s researchers: ‘The demeanour of individuals and all the higher forms of social intercourse became ends pursued with a deliberate and artistic purpose. Even the outward appearance of men and women and the habits of daily life were more perfect, more beautiful, more polished than among all the other nations of Europe.’1 The film opens with credits displayed as if on a series of parchment documents, with a medallion of Shakespeare’s head at the bottom right corner. The principal members of the cast are then identified in a series of head-and-shoulders film clips, framed by borders which include the names of the characters and the actors. The accompanying music is a pot-pourri of traditional English (rather than Italian) melodies, beginning with ‘Sumer is icumen in’. After the credits, at first as if in the form of a tapestry then as a three-dimensional picture resembling a waxworks tableau, we see a spacious loggia overlooking an ideal landscape. Church bells and trumpets usher in the tableau. Young men are lounging in elegant attitudes, some holding musical instruments, one tending a large hound, and at the edges of the picture are some tall, cloaked figures – churchmen or scholars, perhaps. The intention seems to be to evoke the milieu of Bocaccio’s Decameron or Castiglione’s Courtier. The camera moves in on an actor standing in the centre. He half turns towards us and begins to read the prologue from a scroll. The attentive listeners do not move. At his last words he turns back to offer us his profile, as if he were reentering the picture, which resolves again to a tapestry. The bells are faded up, and a dissolve takes us to an obvious painting of Verona seen from the air. The

Visions of Renaissance Italy: Romeo and Juliet, 1936

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camera moves down towards the square at the centre of it, and then we crossfade to a wide shot of the spacious piazza in front of the cathedral, whose campanile rises in the background. There are considerable numbers of citizens, some carrying banners, and the atmosphere is festive. An off-screen choir is singing an ‘Alleluia’. The two rival factions make their appearance, processing towards the cathedral. Groups of citizens point them out and – helpfully – identify them. Threatening gestures and contemptuous looks are exchanged, but would-be hotheads, including the hefty servant who later turns out to be Peter (Andy Devine), are restrained. This sequence, with its proudly displayed credits, dignified prologue and initial impact of grand production values, proclaims the film’s authenticity (the Shakespeare ‘seal’ of approval), the distinction of its cast, the dignity of its subject and the resources of the studio. Warner Bros. may have ‘had the honour’ to present its Reinhardt production, but here one feels that it is Shakespeare who has the honour of being interpreted by MGM. The speaker of the prologue, announcing his story to a leisured coterie in an idyllic setting, is part of a composed picture that evokes High Art without imitating any specific work.2 The English folk music intimates that this is part of the old world’s cultural heritage. The movement from tapestry to tableau and from painted view to ‘real’ city square leads the audience into the film’s world by way of different levels of artifice and kinds of vision, a compressed and more rapid equivalent of the process subsequently elaborated in Laurence Olivier’s Henry V. The names of John Barrymore, Leslie Howard, Violet Kemble Cooper, Basil Rathbone and C. Aubrey Smith indicate that the film fulfils the MGM boast of ‘more stars than there are in heaven’, all of them with excellent ‘legitimate’ credentials. Then there is Norma Shearer, who shares an above-the-title credit with Howard. By the time the film was released, in 1936, few cinemagoers would have been unaware that the producer, Thalberg, had poured money into it as a showcase for his wife – and that he had died shortly after the Hollywood premiere. The success in December 1934 of Katharine Cornell’s Juliet in a New York production described by Brooks Atkinson in the New York Times as being ‘on the high plane of modern magnificence’ seems to have prompted Thalberg to emulate it for Shearer’s benefit.3 In the hierarchy of studio projects, there could be no doubt that this was an exceptional production for which nothing was too good. In addition to Adrian, the studio’s exclusive creator of gowns for the female stars, and Cedric Gibbons, the head of its art department, at Cukor’s instigation MGM brought in Oliver Messel, a brilliant and fashionable young English

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designer.4 There was diligent preparation by the studio’s research department in Hollywood and, in the words of one trade paper, ‘Messel spent over four months going round Italy, studying detail, atmosphere, delving into queer sources of information to get his background correct’ – and then set it all aside and made his drawings.5 The choreographer was Agnes De Mille, already making a name for herself in the dance world and here fulfilling her first screen assignment. Press stories, undoubtedly emanating from the publicity department, disclosed that the regular studio staff were fighting to get their name in the credits, and that the budget had risen to a phenomenal $2 million – four times that usually allotted to the first rank of ‘A’ pictures.6 The scriptwriter Talbot Jennings had recently written the screenplay of The Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) for MGM and he began work on The Good Earth (1937) once Romeo and Juliet went into production. Prominent in the opening credits as ‘literary adviser’ was Professor William Strunk, Jr. of Cornell University, who provided notes on Renaissance Italian customs as well as suggestions for ‘additional dialogue’ after Jennings had moved on to his next project. In a suggestion made ‘with some hesitation’, Strunk even anticipated Olivier by wondering whether the prologue might be delivered ‘from the stage of an Elizabethan theatre (The Swan)’.7 Random House published an illustrated edition of the play, accompanied by a version of the script and essays by cast members and the heads of the production team. Study guides were produced and distributed to schools and colleges, and lobby displays in cinemas reproduced production stills alongside designs and photographs of their architectural and pictorial sources. Whose vision of Renaissance Verona was this? In the souvenir programme of the New York opening, Thalberg claimed that the ‘picturization’ was ‘the fulfilment of a long cherished dream’. He appeared to be suggesting that the dream in question, awaiting MGM’s resources, was that of Shakespeare and the intervening centuries of performance and interpretation.8 In more immediate terms, though, we can try to apportion responsibility for the 1936 film. Jennings, the principal writer (and the only credited one), must have had a considerable part in it, and all drafts up to the ‘Final’ shooting script bear his name.9 As director, Cukor would have been responsible for the staging and acting of scenes, working in collaboration with the cinematographer and the designers – though by De Mille’s account he did not have much to do with the choreographer during the filming. However, as was customary in the studio system, he would have had little to do with the scripting of the film, and is unlikely to have been involved in the editing. Cukor had a reputation as a fine director of


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actors – in particular of women – but it would be misleading to describe this as his film. The supervision of preparation and post-production was primarily the responsibility of the producer. For better or for worse, this is Thalberg’s film for MGM. From the studio’s foundation by merger in 1924 to his loss of overall control of production in 1933, most of MGM’s films were, in the words of his most recent biographer, ‘the product of Thalberg’s vision from conception to final execution’.10 It was Thalberg, with his grasp of ‘the whole equation’ of Hollywood on whom F. Scott Fitzgerald based Monroe Stahr, the Last Tycoon of his unfinished final novel. The studio’s name evoked certain standards: in 1932 a comprehensive account of it as a business concern in Fortune magazine characterised its pictures as ‘always superlatively well-packaged – both the scenes and personalities which enclose the drama have a high sheen. So high a sheen that it sometimes constitutes their major box-office appeal.’11 There is plenty of evidence for the care lavished on Romeo and Juliet. Perhaps because the play’s story was more or less a given – even allowing for necessary additions and rethinking it in cinematic terms – work on the script was brisk by MGM standards: it began in May 1935 and the ‘complete’ draft was delivered on 13 November with further revisions, as was customary, during shooting. (See the Appendix, pp. 225–6.) Principal photography began on 27 December, but (perhaps following the example of Reinhardt and Warner Bros.) it was preceded by a period of rehearsal in which the principal actors were required to learn their lines. This in itself was exceptional, but in addition a complete performance of the script was filmed in front of a neutral background to provide a reference for work on the set. The long period of principal photography (108 days) seems to have ended with the final set of script revisions, delivered in late April and May 1936. These included new scenes with the courtesans (30 April); a new version of the opening procession with Peter spitting at the Montagues and being slapped by the Nurse; the scene in which the ‘flower girls’ tease the Nurse during preparations for the wedding; and a revised version of the bedroom scene (III.v), with Romeo ‘by Juliet’s bedside, embracing her’. Thalberg conducted his habitual sneak previews to test the film on audiences near Los Angeles. Howard told a London paper in May 1936 that the producer had considered removing Romeo’s combat with Paris, but the reaction of an audience in ‘a very tough spot called Pomona in California, populated mainly by fruit canners’ persuaded him to keep it in: ‘It was just the situation needed to carry the play over the scene at the bier.’12 A press preview was held in Hollywood on 15 July 1936, and the New York premiere took place on 20 August.

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Thalberg died on 14 September 1936. Romeo and Juliet may have been his unwitting parting tribute to his wife, and his ‘monument to himself’, but it also represents the studio’s vision of itself and of the industry, at least in its grander (or more grandiose) moments. Like MGM’s other prestige productions, such as Grand Hotel (1932), David Copperfield (1934) and Camille (1936), its story was the development of an existing property (in this case in the public domain) rather than a completely new script. The motto under Leo the Lion at the beginning of every MGM picture – Ars Gratia Artis – proclaimed that art was its own reward and pleasure, but even in such costly projects as this, it was also business sense. The economies of scale meant that the inflated budget of a Romeo and Juliet might be recouped, even if it failed to attract the ‘masses’. The prestige itself, bolstering a company’s image and attracting direct and indirect rewards, was not negligible. However, if a film was going to be grand, it would have to achieve this in ways that exemplified the studio’s style. The version of Renaissance Italy offered by the 1936 Romeo and Juliet is one of richness and display. Architecture plays a major part in this. Gibbons created ‘an ideal Veronese public square, such as Shakespeare might have imagined from the accounts of returned travellers’ rather than copying any existing location exactly.13 The Capulets live in a palace which must extend for several blocks of any fifteenth-century city’s street plan, with a garden the size of a public park and a grand hall worthy of a monarch. Juliet’s bedroom is spacious to the point where (in terms of cinematic convention of the time) in wide ‘establishing’ shots we have no sense of where the lateral walls end. Even Friar Laurence’s cell shares this general air of spaciousness and light. In Mantua Romeo occupies a large apartment with an open, arched loggia. The only confined spaces – apart from the tomb – are the dingy room in the plague-stricken town where Friar John is detained; the shadowy, cramped shop of the Apothecary; and the narrow, precipitous slum street where Romeo finds it. The shooting script indicates ‘Mantua – a back street. In the poorer quarter, dark, narrow, unpaved, cluttered with refuse flung from medieval houses with overhanging gables’ (216–18). The earliest extant drafts suggest a dichotomy in the city of Verona itself between the opening ‘panoramic shot’ revealing ‘as much beauty as possible, in the best period of the Renaissance’ and ‘the narrow streets, the twisted alleys, the drawbridges, the balconied and barred windows, the atmosphere of fear, of unholy intrigue, of lurking violence, and swift, sudden death, that characterised the Italy of the period’.14 This more fantastic and sinister dimension of Veronese society had disappeared from Jennings’s script – along with passing references to the


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young factions as being like modern gangsters – by late June 1935. Much of the picturesque detail remained, but the overall effect is oddly prosaic. The shooting script is crammed with period detail indicating that Jennings had absorbed the information provided by the researchers, and by Strunk and (for some sequences) De Mille. Some of it would be hard to render in terms that would be intelligible to the uninitiated viewer: the speaker of the prologue would be a ‘wandering scholar’ and a few of his colleagues would be seen among the crowd as ‘care-free scholars (half poets, half thieves)’ in the scene where Mercutio and Tybalt are killed, though we do not learn how to recognise the type. In the opening scene a number of craft guilds would process towards the church, preceded by the banner of the guild. (Two such groups are just about visible in the opening long shot of the square, but they are not featured as they are in the script.) Details are given of the different parts of the Capulet garden, which the film realises selectively: the script’s ‘pleasaunce’ seems to be the little formal garden where Juliet is first seen, but there is no sign of the dove-house (no doubt inspired by the Nurse’s reminiscences) or the other parts of the domain. At Friar Laurence’s monastery background activity would have included ‘the brothers of the order, some working in the gardens, others making manuscripts, others walking or reading’. During the fateful interruption of his journey to Mantua, Friar John would linger with a crowd watching players perform a religious drama (in the film a group of acrobats are performing on a trestle stage), and when he lifted the arm of the sick man to examine him, he would have seen ‘under the arm-pit a black swelling as big as an apple’. (In one version this was to be the actor who played ‘Death’ in the morality play.) The shooting script has an amendment dated 12 December specifying that Romeo (as in the completed film) should first be seen as he lounges among Roman ruins, listening to a shepherd singing ‘Come away, death’, and it also has a scene dating from a draft of 23 September in which Juliet encounters a wandering minstrel (and flings a coin to him) on her way back from Friar Laurence’s cell with the potion. This was either not filmed or not included in the final cut. The overall effect of all this would be what the script describes as ‘a noisy, brightly-coloured pageant of fifteenth century Italian life under blue skies in July weather’ (sc. 10). The selection eventually made from this accumulation of local and period colour may have excluded some items on grounds of expense (the fuller view of the monastery), while others (the guilds and their banners, for example) were not featured as prominently in the final cut but seem to have been there ‘on the day’. As described by the script, the first scene’s riot is bloodier than the eventual result: after the Prince interrupts it, we would

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13. Romeo and Juliet, 1936. Benvolio (Reginald Denny) and Mercutio (John Barrymore) – and sleeping dog. Mercutio is waving a flaglike fan given to him by the courtesans: production still.

have seen ‘FLASHES – The square –littered with torn banners – Men limping off scene, covered with blood and sweat – A beggar lying in the square trampled by horses – Four men carrying off a wounded man on a shutter torn from a window’ (sc. 10). The plague victim’s bubo was probably omitted on grounds of taste, and Juliet’s meeting with the minstrel may have been considered incongruous. The shooting script has two mercenary soldiers lying in the sun by a wine cart at the beginning of the scene that ends with the deaths of Mercutio and Tybalt, but there is no trace of them in the film. However, the courtesans with whom Mercutio is a favourite are present, and they lower one of their little flaglike fans to him as he lounges outside the tavern in this scene (sc. 115) (see Figure 13). In business evidently added during shooting, he had sent them up a flask of wine in the earlier scene with Benvolio, Romeo and the Nurse. Among other details added to those in the fullest version of the script, the studio clearly hired three tumblers to accompany the maskers to the feast, to replace the mercenaries and their wine cart in the opening of the next scene


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in the square (performing with a band of musicians and dressed as skeletons) and found two fire-eaters for the entertainers seen in one shot in the ‘plague’ sequence. The costuming of the maskers as pilgrims, with cockle shells in their hats and long cloaks, is not envisaged in the script, where they wear ‘fantastic costumes’ and Romeo dons ‘a rich flowing overdress which he thinks suited to his melancholy, but which actually gives him a romantic, almost an heroic appearance’ (sc. 49) – a phrase adopted from De Mille’s contributions, in which she had also argued against the use of the ‘pilgrim’ disguise as ‘an awkward, stuffy costume’.15 In some respects the film goes beyond the shooting script in colourful detail. The studio’s campaign book for exhibitors makes the customary boasts about the research and expenditure needed: by its own account, MGM had ransacked Italy for authentic props as well as sending Messel and two cameramen on a mission to gather references for the design department. Even the coins used by Mercutio to tip the innkeeper were genuine ducats. The Capulet entourage includes two tall black servants and several dwarves, in addition to a full complement of serving men and women.16 There are also some exotic pets: Juliet is first seen feeding a deer, and there are at least two peacocks and a chained leopard cub. (The last of these is seen in a production still, but did not make the final cut.) When Capulet and Paris are seated at table, discussing the latter’s suit to Juliet, women are seen at work in the background, and a dignified senior servant who does not appear in any other scene – probably the ‘scrivener’ referred to in the script as present to one side of the room – hands Capulet the list of guests. Beyond this, there is little sign of productive activity in the Capulet household, apart from Peter (who does some sweeping up but falls asleep on the job) and the servants seen in subsequent scenes serving the guests at the feast, preparing for Juliet’s wedding and then replacing festive garlands with black drapes. On the eve of the wedding there is some bustle, but the scene is dominated by a group of girls bearing garlands who tease the Nurse. Herbert Stothart’s score for the film consists largely of his orchestrations of music from the period itself, woven into the familiar fabric of leitmotifs and continuity passages to link and support the action and the mood, but the composer was apparently ordered to import a good deal of Tchaikovsky’s ‘Fantasy Overture’ into his score, especially for the vigorous fighting in the opening scene (where it is first heard) and for the ‘balcony’ scene and for such crucial moments as the lovers’ parting at dawn after their wedding night and Juliet’s awakening in the tomb. The pavane derived from Thoinot Arbeau’s dance treatise Orche´sographie is also used thematically

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(for example, as Romeo kisses the apparently dead Juliet), allowing Stothart to revisit the tune that accompanied the lovers’ first meeting rather than refer to the generalised romantic and tragic associations of the ‘Fantasy Overture’. Under the headline ‘Stothart Happiest When They Ignore His Music’, in an article in the Los Angeles Evening Telegraph (20 October 1936) he told an interviewer that, in a break with normal practice, he had decided not to underscore major speeches and (perhaps disingenuously) that he had been surprised to find that others had already researched the music of the period.17 As well as impressive sets, elaborate historical detail and effectively romantic musical scoring, the MGM style is evident in William Daniels’s cinematography, in particular the lighting. Gibbons habitually insisted that his sets should be ‘bathed in brilliant high-key lighting that created a soft gray-white glossy look’.18 There is very little gloom in this Verona, not only because the bright, even South Californian sunshine floods the piazza, but because interiors are almost without exception brightly lit. Juliet’s room is in shadows when the Nurse finds her after she has taken the potion, and the shop and alley in Mantua lack daylight, but the Capulet household – especially for the feast – blazes with a light whose clarity and brilliance could not be produced by the number of visible torches and candles. In the street outside the Capulet house the maskers have no real need for torches, and even the garden seems floodlit rather than moonlit. Juliet is consistently lit in the customary ‘star’ manner, with backlighting that by illuminating her hair frames her face in an aureole. Much of this would pass unnoticed by cinemagoers used to the prevailing conventions of Hollywood and MGM’s house style. Although, as has been noted, the shooting script included more realistic touches (notably in the aftermath of the initial brawl), the only evidence of bleeding in the film occurs when Mercutio reveals the small bloodstain on his doublet from Tybalt’s rapier thrust. Even after his struggle with Paris in the tomb – the darkest and dustiest place in Verona – Romeo rises from the floor with his tights unmarked. The costumes are encrusted with embroidered and applique´d patterns and motifs and the patrician women’s dresses – Juliet’s ballgown in particular – are highlighted with brilliants. In general, though, Shearer’s ‘gowns’ (as Adrian always preferred to call them) are simpler than those of the other women, tailored with high waistlines to compensate for the actress’s comparatively short stature and setting her character apart from the more extravagantly decorated older ladies. The Nurse’s bodice and skirts are heavily textured and layered, with complicated lacing and open-work details.


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Some of the younger men wear small fringed sporrans – not quite codpieces – that decorate their lower abdomen without covering the genital area. Their outline is the smoothed-out and idealised one of the male ballet dancer, and much was made in publicity of the commissioning of large numbers of pairs of tights woven in one piece. One press release even cites this aspect of costuming as an issue in casting: ‘Perfect Legs Won Title Role For Leslie Howard. Two Dozen Others Failed In Tights-Wearing Test’ (Boston Globe 16 February 1936). The retainers and most of the dancers at the feast wear particoloured tights, with jerkins cut close to the body and jaunty hats that are either peaked (like Benvolio’s) or like pillboxes. All this conveys richness and variations of texture in a medium without colour, and is consistent with the regular practice of cinema designers in the period, but Messel decorates his athletic young men to a degree that moves them decisively into a fantasy world. Romeo, Benvolio and Paris have elaborately waved hair, and Juliet’s coiffure, although its designers could claim that it was based on pictorial evidence, is unmistakably of the 1930s. The cited source was a fresco of the Annunciation by Fra Angelico.19 Pallor prevails on the cast’s complexions, and not only among the women: Mercutio, oddly, seems to be the only upper-class male character with any hint of a tan. The overall effect is to idealise the Renaissance, presenting it in terms of vivid colour (or its black-and-white equivalent), wealth and the picturesque, and the ordinary activities of daily life remain firmly in the background. There is a single market stall in the square for the opening scene, and some women selling fruit from baskets, but there is no market activity and the stall seems to be that of a carpet merchant. (Hardly a priority on a Sunday: the script envisages a general market to provide fruit that the rival factions can then spit at each other.) There are tradesmen among the passers-by in several scenes, and some building work is going on in the street where Romeo tracks down Tybalt at a tavern. Without the background ‘brothers’ at the monastery, Friar Laurence’s general air of piety and his hobby as a herbalist (he has an elaborate chemistry set which for some reviewers evoked Dr Frankenstein’s) are all that remain to give a sense of religion – apart from the important practicalities of marrying and burying and Friar John’s ministering to the sick. PRESENTING JULIET: CAPULET’S FEAST

As in the play, the ‘old accustomed feast’ (I.v) constitutes the film’s second ‘big scene’ after the opening. It is the most important opportunity for

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demonstrating the wealth and power of the Capulets, and serves further as the principal vehicle for the film’s version of Renaissance magnificence. The image of Juliet is central to this, as it is to the film’s other purposes, in celebrating the studio’s preeminence and that of its stars. In this respect the entertainment that Capulet offers his guests is also what MGM offers its public.20 For the dances at Capulet’s house, De Mille worked with the dancers for sixteen weeks. Fifteen years later, she was still bitter about the cavalier way in which she felt her work – so long in preparation – had been handled by Thalberg and Cukor.21 The final version of this long sequence, which lasts ten minutes from the first sight of dancing to the departure of the lovers from the feast, incorporates episodes from De Mille’s work, but cuts into them at points where, from a choreographic viewpoint, we want to see more. However, it is clear that the dramatic business of the scene requires this, and (as we shall see) the dances envisaged by the scriptwriter, working largely from her suggestions, would have been just as likely to be discarded or drastically curtailed. Her first notes in the script files date from July 1935; these were absorbed into the intermediate script drafts, a further outline by her was issued on 31 January and the final form of the dances, more or less as filmed, was distributed on 9 March 1936.22 Even in the final cut, De Mille’s dances fulfil an agenda for presenting Juliet that is consistent with the overall tendency of the film: to that extent, they do carry forward a part of the narrative, though in some respects it is a puzzling one. Like everything else about the ‘great rich Capulet’, his feast is on a grand scale. The banqueting hall seems only slightly smaller than the concourse of Grand Central Station: studio publicity claimed that it was 200 feet long and 90 wide.23 The expert dance troupe had been handpicked for artistic excellence by De Mille, and here they are very much a display team rather than guests at an ‘old accustomed feast’. The draft scripts make it clear that the studio could cite the example of documented Renaissance festivals in justification, but in the finished product this is not explicit. The first substantial dance, in which Juliet is introduced, is indeed an interlude which could only have been rehearsed and prepared for by the Capulets with the same time and resources as MGM itself, whereas the pavane that follows is more credible as a dance to be executed by talented amateurs. The assumption, to some extent warranted, seems to be that in the Italian Renaissance the accomplishments of the courtier corresponded to much that has subsequently been assigned to the professional artist. Professional or semi-professional entertainment begins when Romeo and his friends arrive. When the maskers enter the palazzo’s entrance hall,


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they encounter a parody of a tournament – devised by De Mille in January 1936 and not distributed as a script amendment until March – in which diminutive masked ‘knights’ on hobby-horses are jousting before a dais where a masked ‘lady’ (herself a dwarf) is attended by a dwarf as her chamberlain, while a tribune to the side holds a group of masked ladies in medieval finery. Mercutio intervenes, poking a fallen knight with a dummy sword, and bowing to his companions with an elaborately theatrical courtesy to acknowledge their applause. De Mille’s first notes, with a sly glance at her Uncle Cecil’s propensities as a director of historical spectacle, advise that ‘this battle should be staged with characteristic De Mille emphasis on slaughter. The vanquished knights are pelted by the ladies in the boxes with roses and pillows.’ (In fact, there is no pelting in the film). Mercutio is rewarded by having a lance thrust up between his legs. Laughing, he is pushed up to the steps on the right, which lead to the main festivity.24 Inside the hall Romeo and his friends line up in pairs, masked and enveloped in their ‘pilgrim’ cloaks and hats, and advance in step to the music we can hear off-screen. Capulet greets them genially and is amused by a dwarf dressed in a miniature version of their disguise, who pushes in front of the young men. The spirit of the burlesque tournament is so far maintained. We see a raised gallery with balustrades which runs round the sides of a wide dance floor, where a lively dance is in progress; men holding torches advance across the floor in lines, then take up position and sway gracefully from side to side as ladies weave in and out between them. In De Mille’s notes the dance is longer, and – more important – is addressed to the Prince (not present in the sequence as filmed) and Capulet, to whom obeisance would be done at its conclusion. Tables and seats are set out along the left- and right-hand sides, and at the opposite end an archway opens on to a terrace beyond which a garden is visible. As Romeo and Benvolio look along the tables, we see a scene of merriment: a man’s voice is heard asking (with Theseus’s line from A Midsummer Night’s Dream) ‘What revels are in hand?’ and two dwarves are wrestling on the floor. Benvolio points out Rosaline (the uncredited Kathryn De Mille), who is playing blind man’s bluff with a group of young men.25 Romeo places himself in her path and she raises her blindfold, but she turns away contemptuously when he lifts his half-mask. Romeo returns to a vantage point overlooking the main hall, and with him we see the beginning of what is evidently an artistic display rather than a social dance. (In De Mille’s notes the effect is more or less that of the version filmed, except that here, as in the first ‘number’, the dancers are

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performing for Capulet and the Prince, and acknowledging them as the focus of the performance.) First, two lines of choirboys bearing silver artificial trees file in from the terrace and take up positions on either side of the archway. As they sing verses from The Tempest – ‘Honour, riches, marriage-blessing . . .’ – there enter two groups of women in flowing white dresses criss-crossed by applique´d vines or tendrils and embroidered with flowers. There are fourteen women dancers, all the same height and slightly taller than Juliet, who enters in the centre of the formation and makes her way down towards the camera, making ‘reverence’ gestures with her hand to her heart as she approaches, tilting her head to the right and smiling sweetly. (She is seen first in medium shot and then in close-up.) The women gather round her as the singers modulate into a setting of ‘O mistress mine’, then the group breaks up, the women taking places parallel to the camera (and to Romeo’s position) and linking raised arms to form a bowerlike tunnel through which Juliet dances. For this the camera is placed at the left-hand end of the group, so that she dances swiftly towards us. The other women, having formed the ‘bower’, break into two lines parallel to the front of the hall (Romeo’s position again) and move across in both directions as Juliet dances in front of them at a quicker pace towards the right. She turns and passes back to the left, joining hands with a central group of dancers while three pass in front of them, swaying backwards as they go, and a line of four or five dancers behind strike attitudes in profile, rocking backwards and forwards on their heels, their hands raised in gestures of salutation. The dancers now form a group round Juliet, doing obeisance to her, and the dancer on her left hands her a rose (see Figure 14). De Mille’s notes of 9 March suggest an effect more ethereal than that of the sequence as filmed: ‘The dance is simple, gracious and child-like, in contrast to the sophisticated posturings of the court dancers. [The girls’] hands flutter like bird-wings as they surround Juliet with a mystery of chaste and delicate emotion. They kneel at her feet, bowing like little seraphs.’ The two lines of women now line up on either side of the centre line. Juliet moves forwards in the centre, each dancer raising her arms gracefully and falling to a kneeling position as she passes. When she reaches the front of the women’s formation, corresponding files of cavaliers are moving in to continue the lines, stepping in sideways from either side as she dances past them as if looking for the appropriate recipient of the rose. She reaches the front and Paris moves in from the camera’s right, takes off his mask and holds out his hand to her. On the chest of his doublet there are two cupids and on each shoulder of his heavy metallic collar there are cherublike heads. She looks at him (seen from his point of view) but then turns and notices


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14. Romeo and Juliet, 1936. Juliet (Norma Shearer) and her attendants at the dance: production still.

Romeo, still apparently in his place on the edge of the dance floor, who also removes his mask. Distracted, Juliet has failed to give Paris the rose and he courteously holds out his hand to remind her of the next move she should make. He gently takes the rose and kisses her hand. With another glance towards Romeo, she joins hands with Paris and they move up towards the other dancers. We cut back to Romeo, who asks a servant (identified in the scripts as his own ‘link-boy’) who the lady might be. This is the point at which Tybalt, who had his suspicions when the maskers arrived, notices the unmasked Romeo and calls for his rapier, and the ensuing dialogue with Capulet is interspersed with glimpses of Romeo, seen from the back as he watches a line of male and female dancers moving across the hall to the opening strains of the pavane. Romeo has now moved to the hall’s right-hand side (from Tybalt’s perspective), and the dancers are progressing towards the ‘garden’ terrace. Some thirty dancers, in couples, now form lines facing the terrace, with Juliet and Paris in the centre (see Figure 15).26 This dance mimics the gestures of courtship, and in

15. Romeo and Juliet, 1936. The pavane: production still.


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its first phase the men move away from the women, facing to the right as if about to change partners. Juliet sees Romeo, who is half-concealed by a pillar on the left of the archway, and abstractedly continues to execute the dance steps as she moves towards him. Unsurprisingly, Paris notices this (but not, it seems, the cause of her distraction) and brings her back into the formation. This occurs a second time, but in the next pas, when the couples face each other, Paris has disappeared and Romeo is able to step in front of Juliet and dance with her. This seems to please her very much, and like the dancers behind them they execute a movement in which the right arm is extended and the hand passed over and under that of the partner without touching it. In De Mille’s words in her draft of 9 March, ‘Romeo gives the cue for progressing through the next figuration. They dance, their hands passing over one another caressingly until, at the end, she drops her fingers into his upturned palm.’ Romeo, unlike the silent dancers behind them, speaks to Juliet – ‘If I profane with my unworthiest hand’ – takes her firmly but gently by the hand and leads her off the dance floor to the left. From Romeo’s intervention onwards, the dancers in the background are in softer focus and less brightly lit than the foreground couple.27 At the side of the archway, the dialogue between Romeo and Juliet becomes more intense. On ‘Saints do not move’ she holds up her hand as if repelling his, but looks away towards the left of the camera and speaks dreamily. Her eyes are half-closed as he leans round and kisses her. She turns and moves back slowly as if to rejoin the dance, but with ‘Sin from my lips’ she turns with an expression of delight and anticipation. He pulls her back towards the balustrade and she leans back over it, facing away from the camera, as he kisses her on the lips. At this point the Nurse intervenes, entering from the dance floor behind them, and we see that the dance is coming to an end. After a close-up on Romeo’s ‘Is she a Capulet?’, Benvolio walks up and suggests that they should leave. We cut to the lobby, where Juliet is by her parents’ side as they accept the thanks of the departing guests. Juliet sees Romeo, smiles and raises her hand – partly to him, partly as if to lean against a pillar – and calls the Nurse to her. The music of the pavane is now heard in a nondiegetic version, which swells up to imply the growing attraction. For ‘My only love, sprung from my only hate’ Juliet is left on her own for a moment, while in the background the Nurse talks to a servant, then the Nurse comes forward to lead her off down a corridor. As they walk away from the camera, the servant (possibly Peter but he has not been otherwise visible at the feast) walks behind them using a long-handled snuffer to put out the lights burning in sconces along the wall.

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The shooting script of 13 November, before De Mille’s outline of 9 March 1936 but incorporating her earlier ideas, gives a slightly different shape to the scene, in terms of lengthy and elaborate dance episodes that were eventually perceived as failing to move the plot forward. First in the script’s version (scs. 56–8) comes the outline for a pavane. (In De Mille’s notes this is in fact a passacaglia). The men will be holding torches, and a square will be formed round the dance floor by torch-bearing ‘link boys’. Paris and Juliet are ‘leading the procession and forming the pivot of the dance’, which ends with the men quenching torches and unmasking. (In the scene as revised, Juliet does not appear until the second dance sequence and Paris is seen attending the Capulets as they receive guests during this number.) Then Romeo and Juliet see each other, and Romeo asks ‘his own link-boy’ who she is. The second dance, which seems to anticipate the form taken by the introduction of Juliet in the scene as filmed, is a ‘Ballet against a tapestry background’ by eight girls dressed to represent the Graces’, and the ‘steps and gestures are very simple accompanied only by the voices of . . . singing boys, crowned with wreaths of pink and white carnations, [who] surround the dancers with flowering branches of velvet, silk and jewels on which are perched live birds, cockatoos, etc.’. De Mille indicates that ‘this glade of fantastic, magic trees’ is effectively ‘a bower-like frame’ for the dancers, ‘fitting into the tapestry background to give the effect of a moving projections [sic] from the tapestry itself ’. The overall effect of the ‘simple processional and interlacing of figures’ is to suggest a ‘Botticelli fresco’ (sc. 72). Elements of this survive in the ‘Botticellian’ costumes and gestures of the women who attend Juliet, and the choirboys who carry artificial trees, but it is easy to imagine the arguments presented in production meetings against the ‘live birds and cockatoos, etc’.28 Finally, there is a passacaglia, a ‘dance of romantic gallantry’ which corresponds in some respects to the pavane as executed, though in the film it lacks the element of machismo suggested here: The men beat their heels on the marble floors strutting and turning with magnificent, sweeping gestures, the women rising and sinking in the folds of their skirts and sliding their dresses over the floor with a definite rustle that is used in counter rhythm to the music. The design of this dance lies between each several couples, hand touching hand, foot approaching foot, bodies turning toward and away from each other, heads inclining, hands in little fluttering gestures of coquetry. Spaced across the floor the dancers stand up to one another in isolation from the other partners like figures on a chessboard. (sc. 73)

After this, the lovers retire for their first scene together to a terrace overlooking the city.


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The completed film improves on the sequence of dances to the extent that they are more concise and carry the plot forward, but creates some difficulties. Even as drafted by De Mille, the dancing at the feast has been contrived not merely to present Juliet to the world, but also to make an unequivocal and public statement to the effect that she is to wed Paris. His costume, with its applique´d cupids, declares his status as a wooer; he is seen standing by the Capulets as they receive their company; the first long dance culminates in his being given a rose by Juliet; and the two of them lead the pavane. Given that he received his invitation only in the morning, one might think that his skilful participation in all this would have required at least a little rehearsal time. When Juliet notices Romeo she forgets the rose business, and then begins to falter in her steps. She eventually leaves the pavane abruptly to have her scene with Romeo, and Paris is nowhere to be seen. In any performance of the play, Paris is a somewhat thankless part for an actor, but in this film the way he is presented at the feast makes it doubly difficult to account for his subsequent absence until the plot needs him again. In her outline of 9 March, De Mille envisaged a moment of closure for this scene, but it was not filmed (or at least not included in the final cut): ‘The pavane is ending. The men return to their original partners. Paris finds Juliet gone and stands perplexed and angry in the middle of the room.’ Her draft also includes another reference of the dance to its social context, also absent in the film: ‘The partners [i.e. other than Romeo and Juliet] kiss and take hands, standing quietly, hand in hand, to face the Prince and the host on the last note of the music.’ To sum up: the film’s version of the feast moves the plot forward more efficiently than the version suggested by the shooting script, while omitting some of the moments De Mille imagined to connect the dancing with its social purpose, honouring the feast’s presiding authorities as well as exhibiting the dancers’ skill. Not only does the sequence ‘sacrifice intimacy for show’ (in Robert F. Willson’s words), it modifies the film’s sense of Veronese society.29 In presenting Juliet so decisively in public as Paris’s intended bride, it also produces a false emphasis. Stardom may have come to her too early in Verona. JULIET AND ROMEO AS STARS

Stars, as has already been noted, were a major selling point for MGM, proclaimed as one of its trademarks. In the presentation of the leading roles, the priority had to be to give as favourable a presentation of the actors as possible, emphasising and enhancing their familiar qualities. At the same time, the relative maturity of the players (Shearer was thirty-six, Howard

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forty-three when the film was released) had to be discounted where it could not be disguised. Shearer and Howard assume their dramatic roles, but in such a way as to enhance rather than displace the images that made them popular. The familiar mechanism of the star system was at work, and the pleasures it afforded (and which attracted cinemagoers) had to be accommodated in the interpretation of the script. In the run-up to the film’s production, much was made of the search for a Romeo, and most of the named candidates were mature: one report in September 1935 printed photographs of Ronald Colman, Frederic March, and Franchot Tone alongside Howard. Another syndicated article (with what authority is unclear) claimed that Thalberg had originally considered casting teenagers in the leading roles, but that once Shearer had been decided on, an older Romeo was inevitable.30 Howard’s success on stage and screen in The Petrified Forest (Warner Bros., 1935) and his appearance in Alexander Korda’s The Scarlet Pimpernel (London Films, 1935) had shown his ability to speak ‘poetic’ dialogue and play ‘sensitive’ men without sacrificing a sense of conventional masculinity. Moreover, as we have seen, he had passed the tights-wearing test. By his own account, not of course made public at the time, he was reluctant to take on the role, but was persuaded by the prospect of being able to finance a stage production of Hamlet.31 Romeo’s first appearance among the ruins, with the shepherd and his flock in the background and the mournful ‘Come away death’ to feed his melancholy, emphasises his gentleness. Howard’s qualities as a sensitive, well-spoken actor with engaging good looks are very much in evidence. He is posed charmingly in a pleasing environment. With Benvolio he is quiet and restrained (there is none of the impatience that actors often find in Romeo at this point, and he certainly does not kick or cuff his friend). From the outset Howard is as mature in behaviour as in appearance, a sensitive man rather than a baffled youth. Juliet’s first appearance establishes her as gentle, dutiful and nurturing. In a little bower (the script’s ‘pleasaunce’), she is feeding a tame deer. She looks up in response to the call with a winsome tilt of the head that becomes one of her distinguishing features in the film. Juliet is wearing flowers in her hair and a garland round her neck and she runs to meet her mother with a somewhat overdone impulsiveness. There was evidently some indecision as to what Juliet might be doing at this point. The published screenplay shows her with a falcon and supervised by an expert falconer, and the unpublished shooting script gives her another sporting pursuit: ‘JULIET. Standing on the sward of the pleasaunce, fitting an arrow to a bow, and measuring with a business-like


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eye the distance from her stand to the archery-butt, which may be seen in vista. Her instructor, a grizzled old bowman, is watching critically in the background’ (sc. 43). She shoots and hits the mark, to the satisfaction of the retainer. Both versions would have established a positive, energetic quality in her, which may have been thought inappropriate. The bow and arrow did not go unused, however. When Juliet comes over to her mother’s side, she picks them up from the floor, has them in her hand when she and the Nurse go to watch Paris walking in the garden with Capulet, and uses them to illustrate her meaning when she promises not to ‘endart [her] eye’ further than she should when she encounters her suitor. Juliet is delighted at the prospect of being wooed by Paris – she holds her hand to her heart as she runs over to look at him walking in another part of the garden with her father – and affectionate with the Nurse. There is no coldness in her behaviour towards her mother, who does not seem at all awkward when talking with her. The image is one of an idyllic childhood and warm family surroundings. Juliet’s demeanour during the feast has already been discussed. It is consistent with the earlier moments in the garden when she strikes attitudes with her head tilted and her hand (sometimes both hands) raised, palm forwards, as if expressing naive delight and gracious beatification. This repertoire of gestures continues into the ‘love scene’ during the dance with Romeo and the final moments of the scene, but in the balcony scene it has largely disappeared, suggesting that it was a symptom of youthfulness and (perhaps) the choreographed public occasion. From now on her behaviour is simpler and more direct. Nevertheless, this is part of the performance of youth and the evocation of ‘painterly’ Renaissance womanhood: production stills, including some used in publicity, show Shearer posed in this characteristic manner. The staging of the balcony scene, with Juliet’s pulpitlike balcony two floors above ground level, does not serve the action especially well, making some of the acoustics unreal, and obliging Cukor to ‘cheat’ Romeo closer to the balcony in some two-shots, apparently with the aid of at least two alternative versions of the structure: an unretouched production still (see Figure 16) apparently taken from the camera platform, shows a balcony markedly lower than that seen as Romeo enters the garden. When Juliet appears from the double doors of her bedroom and advances on to the balcony, the moment is marked by a burst of Tchaikovsky, and the backlighting enhances the effect of her as an apparition. The lighting makes it odd for her to claim that the ‘mask of night’ is on her face, even allowing for contemporary conventions. The scene is alleged to have taken several days,

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16. Romeo and Juliet, 1936. Romeo (Leslie Howard) and Juliet (Norma Shearer) in the balcony scene: production still.

covering all possible angles and with many retakes, and the editor Margaret Booth recalled that she had ‘five versions . . . One with tears, one without tears, one played with close-ups only, another played with long shots only, and then one with long shots and close-ups cut in.’ It was part and parcel of Thalberg’s habitual perfectionism, shooting ‘every sequence so it could be cut in many different ways’.32 However, for all the intensity of the labour, Shearer’s performance in the completed film is relatively simple throughout. Her ‘Ay me’ is not drawn out, she is determined in urging Romeo to ‘deny [his] name’, and is believably alarmed by his sudden appearance. ‘Dost thou love me?’ is touchingly vulnerable, and with ‘What satisfaction canst thou have tonight?’ she opens her arms in a gentle, generous, earnest


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gesture – there is, of course, no sense of a bawdy undertone in this. The lovers’ hands touch between ‘My heart’s dear love’ and ‘Well do not swear’, and again (to the strains of Tchaikovsky) when Romeo holds his hand up to hers to reassure her when she urges him to ‘cease [his] strife’ if he does not ‘mean well’. Finally, Tchaikovsky is heard again when she goes in, and the scene fades out on Romeo’s departure through the garden. Howard is simple and ardent, but by no means indecorous, and although there is nothing stilted in his performance he literally keeps his gloves on throughout. The overall effect is much less impassioned – and certainly more mature – than many of the first reviewers thought appropriate. Juliet is much less self-consciously charming than she has hitherto appeared but she is also unfalteringly picturesque and exceptionally polite. This is sustained in her scene with the Nurse (II.iv), and Juliet’s impatience with her tardy messenger is qualified by good manners. (She does not speak the lines complaining about ‘old folks’.) When she arrives at the Friar’s cell, Shearer makes a running entrance down the cloister with a rather mannered moment of sudden hesitation before she rushes through the door. Kneeling at the altar, three-quarters on to the camera, the couple look warmly at each other then compose themselves for the ceremony: Friar Laurence has no need to remind them of the need for restraint. Even when she is waiting for her lover to arrive, Juliet gives no hint of sexual desire: her first speech in Shakespeare’s III.ii is edited to a more decorous version, which does not even include the opening exclamation ‘Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds.’ The lovers’ night together (preceding Shakespeare’s III.v) is represented by a montage, in which a soaring statement of the lovers’ theme from Tchaikovsky’s ‘Fantasy Overture’ accompanies images of a starry sky, the water in a pond, banks of flowers, and a view across a garden as the dawn comes up behind trees and birds begin to sing. A fade back to the bedroom reveals Juliet still on the bed and Romeo kneeling at its side. It is notable that the one dreamlike sequence within the film’s main narrative uses this lyrical but conventional technique for indicating the passage of time, as though withdrawing the viewer tactfully from any more direct display of passion. However, for all its restraint, the scene includes some delicate shifts of mood as Juliet, at first unconcerned, realises that it is indeed day and when Romeo, having returned to lie beside her on the bed and laughing happily at the thought of defying the consequences, is brought back to reality by the Nurse’s voice outside the door. As he descends from the balcony, Juliet exclaims, ‘O God I have an ill-divining soul’ and holds out her hands to him (the pavane tune is heard again), and the anguish of

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her look as she watches him cross the garden is simple and unaffected. Her mother’s news and her father’s anger at her refusal to accept Paris produce a stunned rather than impassioned reaction in Juliet. Betrayed by the Nurse, she becomes determined and calm, and it is not until she is safely inside Friar Laurence’s cell that she gives way to grief, leaning her head on the altar and sobbing. (She also crosses herself, a rare occurrence in this film.) Most of the ‘potion’ speech (IV.iii.14–57, with some omissions) is shot in a single take, moving from medium shot to close-up and again acted without melodramatic excess. Howard’s restrained Romeo complements this effect. His cold anger at Tybalt and dismay at having killed him is followed by a sense rather of impatience than passion as, in the Friar’s cell, he contemplates life without Juliet. His offer to kill himself (‘In what vile part of this anatomy / Doth my name lodge?’) is so deliberate as to make its prevention easy, and there is no question of either lover ‘weeping and blubbering’ as the Nurse describes them in the play (III.iii.86). There are no tears for the Friar to denounce as ‘womanish’. When Romeo learns of Juliet’s death, his ‘Then I defy you stars!’ is stern and determined. When he buys poison he even finds a moment of sympathy for the wretchedness of the Apothecary (he and his shop might have been transplanted from a German expressionist film), smiling as he reassures him that ‘I sell thee poison: thou dost sell me none’ (IV.iv. 83). In the Capulet vault he fights Paris effectively, with the nearest Howard comes to a sense of desperation, and after killing his adversary he seems appropriately but not excessively remorseful. (Oddly, it is clear that Romeo knows whom he is fighting.) As he murmurs ‘I die’, Romeo is resigned, loving and manages a hint of a smile. In this final sequence there is a restrained sweetness and a ‘becoming gravitas’ about him.33 SUPPORTING THE STARS

Mercutio (Barrymore) is a middle-aged roue´, and the young men around Romeo – Benvolio (Reginald Denny) and the anonymous group who accompany them to the feast – seem to be in their mid-thirties. There are plenty of personable younger men in Verona, but they are mostly in the background. Juliet is seen with her mother and the Nurse, but the women she dances with have a coolly professional air (one of them smiles at her during the dance, but that is about as far as it goes). The effect is to isolate Juliet, but even if the film’s makers had wanted to provide her with a peer group, it would have been hard to cast without compromising the illusion of the heroine’s youth. (The Nurse says that ‘Susan and she were of an age’


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but tactfully does not specify what that age might have been.) Mercutio’s seniority is not a problem, and the sense of him as a man-about-town of some years’ standing is enhanced by the addition of the group of courtesans, who provide a willing audience for him from their vantage point above the square and are distressed when he is wounded. Barrymore, by all accounts the worse for drink during much of the shooting, gives an eccentric but strangely fascinating performance, with elaborate gestures and vocal affectations for ‘Queen Mab’ and dandified, oddly effeminate, skips and jumps in the ‘conjuring’ speech, but he is also a good foil for the cool cruelty of Rathbone’s Tybalt. Edna May Oliver gives the Nurse a harsh imperiousness (she slaps Peter down when he wants to start a fight with the Montagues on the way to church), but she reveals a degree of humour and sly and affectionate warmth with Juliet: the effect is not unlike her Betsy Trotwood in the 1934 David Copperfield. There are hints at another side to her: when she remembers her husband she winks on ‘’a was a merry man’ as though recalling some of the suppressed bawdy, and she knows perfectly well what is meant by ‘the prick of noon’. The Capulets are played effectively but unremarkably, and the only outstanding member of the household is Peter. Devine’s undisguised accent was variously ascribed to Texas and the Bowery by British reviewers, though he was in fact from Arizona. He has the only voice in the film that could not be assimilated into the conventionally ‘British’ idiom associated with legitimate Shakespearean performance – Oliver affects a strangely clipped version of this – and consequently he provides an unusual point of contact with the ‘real’ world. In the opening brawl, after a display of bravado he struggles unsuccessfully to pull his dagger from its sheath while Montagues and Capulets fence around him.34 Peter is present, with the Nurse, to witness the Prince’s banishment of Romeo and they both attend Juliet’s funeral. The unselfconscious humour of Devine’s performance and his presence at this point in the film suggest, as the silent ‘background’ activities of Verona cannot, a life beyond the formal display of the Capulet palazzo and the lovers’ passions. Although the film begins with a procession to the cathedral, as little is made of the place of religion in this Verona as of its economic and social life. (The earliest script materials include a scene inside the cathedral, where the rival families, seated on opposite sides of the nave, hear from outside the beginnings of the brawl: as well as being expensive, this would not have added to the narrative momentum.) In addition to the festival of the opening scene, the film includes Juliet’s funeral and a final scene in which a bishop seals (and blesses) the Capulet vault. There are shrines in

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Juliet’s room and Friar Laurence’s cell, and the Friar also has a crucifix with a figure of Christ on his wall. In each case an altar is sketchily represented, with an unidentifiable statue as its focal point, and is hardly seen. When Romeo and Juliet kneel at it, we get no hint of the ceremony that is about to take place. The interior of the cathedral is never seen. Graham Greene, a sharp-eyed Roman Catholic, noted that the families seem to arrive just in time for the Benediction.35 Henry Colker’s Friar Laurence is stern, reserved and not unkindly but very little of his speaking part remains in the film. (His soliloquy on herbs is omitted altogether.) Beyond this, the indications of religious observance are few and far between: Juliet crosses herself when she arrives at the Friar’s cell after the news that she must marry Paris, a woman in the ‘plague’ town reacts with the gesture when she hears of the ‘pestilence’, and the Friar makes the sign of the cross over the dead Romeo’s face. But the Nurse does not cross herself when she remembers Susan or her husband, and no one reacts to the deaths of Mercutio or Tybalt with this customary gesture. In rare specific references to the iconography of religious art (in particular, scenes of the Annunciation), Juliet is seen seated on the left of her room at an embroidery frame or a small desk when the Nurse arrives with news of Romeo’s banishment, and pots of lilies (conventional symbols of chastity) figure on a table in the centre of her room and on a windowsill. The effect of this restraint – which is in any case in accord with the requirements of the Motion Picture Code36 – is to isolate the lovers still further in a world dominated by their passions, but without suggesting any rival sets of values. The ‘Alleluia’ heard in the first scene and the off-screen chanting heard in the monastery are part of a general wash of inspirational music, skilfully arranged by Stothart but lacking any hint of authenticity. Whereas in their different ways Castellani, Zeffirelli and (in a more extreme mode) Baz Luhrmann achieve a sense that a whole society is threatening the lovers, the MGM film locates the opposition in the feud and little else. The economic basis of wooing and wedding is more or less absent: the Nurse does not intimate to Romeo that whoever marries Juliet ‘will get the chinks’ and Paris’s eligibility resides in his being handsome, personable and extremely well dressed. In this sunny Verona and given their maturity, why could these two not-very-young people not simply move to Padua or some other convenient city? The closing moments of Romeo and Juliet return us, by way of a shot pulling up and away from the aerial view of a painted city, to the ‘tapestry’ of the prologue. (The shooting script’s plan to have the same speaker deliver the Prince’s words as an epilogue was not followed.) The final


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statement is an assertion of the dignity and status of the ‘walled city of the 15th century, shining in the sunlight among poplar, plane and cypress, the river Aedige like a thread of silver’ (as the shooting script describes it) and of the story. ‘SILK

STOCKING AUDIENCES’, AND BEYOND: PROMOTION AND RECEPTION

After the Hollywood premiere in July 1936, the Los Angeles Evening News declared that Romeo and Juliet ‘will certainly please silk stocking audiences’, but left open the question of its pleasing others. Unsurprisingly, the studio’s publicity department headed by Howard Dietz strove, as Warner Bros. had with A Midsummer Night’s Dream, to proclaim the film’s appeal to anyone and everyone. If Leslie Howard’s report is true, Thalberg had discovered the importance of an ‘action’ sequence even at the point when the film’s length might be telling against it. During the post-production process, which had begun almost before production proper was complete, unusual strategies had been considered: Jennings had prepared a revision of the film’s opening that would move even more rapidly to the first fight, and had devised intertitle cards to clarify the action throughout. There is no evidence that these were ever taken beyond the script stage.37 The English actress Constance Collier was engaged to coach Shearer, but otherwise there seems to have been no anxiety concerning the accents of the largely British cast. The strategy of printing the script’s verse as prose was an attempt to avoid staginess in verse-speaking. The exhibitors’ campaign book offered taglines to promote the story as a popular romance, of which the most notorious was printed on the souvenir book distributed at the London premiere: ‘Boy meets girl – 1436. Romeo and Juliet – 1936.’38 Newspaper advertising copy, especially that suggested for the film’s general distribution at ‘popular prices’ (as a prestige production running over two hours, the film was initially ‘roadshowed’ at prestigious venues with higher prices and reserved admission), trumpeted ‘The Mightiest Entertainment of our Time! Brought to you now at popular prices!’ and promised that ‘Every Girl in Love will Truly Live and Experience the Ecstasy of Juliet’s Romance!’ Poster designs showing the lovers in or near the bedroom or balcony were headlined enticingly: ‘They could scarcely tear themselves apart – these secretly married lovers who defied danger and death for one exquisite night.’ Lines not quite heard in the play or the film were attached to them: ‘Dawn was their Warning Signal! Brief Ecstasy! Farewell, my Beloved!’

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At the educational end of the market there were advantages. In his ‘Tradeviews’ column in the Hollywood Daily Reporter (16 July 1936), W. R. Wilkinson suggested that ‘now the industry is in possession of the most powerful piece of entertainment it has ever had, a picture that will pack every theatre in the land, a show that will bring out every member of every family – and repeat on most of them’. The Motion Picture Herald, less likely to be swayed by the studio’s propaganda, noted that ‘from the showmanship angle’ the film was an attraction of an unusual kind, and that ‘doors not commonly open to the motion picture exploitation will be wide to the exhibitor seeking co-operation’ – in other words, the support of schools, colleges and cultural associations as well as the usual collaboration with department stores and other advertisers. The cover of the large-format press book for exhibitors announced that ‘The World’s Greatest Love Story Becomes Your Guaranteed Box-Office Attraction When Backed by EXPLOITATION.’ The Random House edition was promoted to the trade as well as to the bookselling world as a profitable tie-in and a study guide was published for free distribution to schools. The ‘silk stocking audiences’ were to be wooed by making the film fashionable, and the studio’s Austrian office achieved a coup by having it shown in August at the Salzburg Festival and obtaining an admiring quotation from Max Reinhardt. (The Great Ziegfeld, also shown at the Festival, may have seemed a less appropriate companion to the grander cultural fare offered by Die Meistersinger and Jedermann.)39 Three scenes from the film script, with Shearer, Ralph Forbes as Romeo – Howard was no longer available – and Oliver were broadcast on Hollywood Hotel Hour over the Columbia network.40 Syndicated columns drawing on the publicity department’s information and interviews with the principals, either genuine or ghosted, appeared in a multitude of papers: everything usable, from Shearer’s dress sense to Denny’s passion for model aeroplanes (a usefully masculine hobby) was exploited, some of the material finding its way into the Random House edition of the play accompanied by the script.41 The lavish expenditure and the expertise of all concerned were impressed on the public, though no article seems to have reproduced the pressbook’s claim that Shearer had undergone ‘one of the most rigorous novitiates since the time of Ignatius Loyola . . . Practically nothing that a girl of 14 of that day would have thought, known or done remained foreign to Miss Shearer.’ However, a widely used publicity still in a composition resembling a Renaissance painting did show Romeo kneeling to Juliet as if she were the Madonna (see Figure 17).


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17. Romeo and Juliet, 1936. Publicity still showing the lovers as if in a Renaissance devotional painting.

Variety delivered its businesslike verdict on 26 August: this was ‘a faithful and not too imaginative translation to the screen’ but ‘whether the film will be the box-office socko that the jewelled cast of actors would seemingly guarantee, is likely to be answered by the methods employed in its presentation to the public’. Nevertheless, ‘with full blast propaganda behind it, Romeo and Juliet will draw into the theatres plenty of the casuals, and the star names will magnetize the regular fans. It will also attract a new crop of cinema patrons from the arty, cultural, literati and dramatic bunch.’ Harrison’s Reports, an independent bulletin by and for exhibitors, reviewed the film on 19 September, noting that Shakespeare’s language might be a problem: ‘This may be a drawback as far as the masses are concerned, for

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the intellectual dialogue will be difficult for them to follow. Otherwise, the famous love story has the ingredients for popular appeal – tragedy, romance and excitement.’ Although the high cost meant that the film was unlikely to turn a profit directly for the studio, its performance for exhibitors (and for Loew’s, integrated with MGM) was not merely a matter of prestige. On 22 May 1937, reviewing box-office reports for the 1936–7 season, Harrison’s listed the film as ‘Good’. ‘A few reports had it as excellent, a few very good, but also a few as fair and a few as poor.’ In London the film did well, playing for nine weeks at His Majesty’s Theatre before moving to the 3,226-seat Empire Leicester Square (MGM’s flagship London cinema) for a further two. Out of the top 100 most popular films during the year of its release, it ranked fourteenth, undoubtedly supported by the appeal of its stars. (In the previous season A Midsummer Night’s Dream had failed to make the list of the top 100.)42 The critical response was overwhelmingly respectful, with some reservations. Variety’s verdict that it was ‘a faithful and not too imaginative translation [of the play] to the screen’ was reiterated many times in similar words. For Douglas Gilbert in the New York World-Tribune (21 August), it was ‘a handsome, dignified and reverent production . . . It is stupendous, when it need only have been colossal.’ Frank S. Nugent in the New York Times (21 August), found it ‘ornate but not garish, expansive but never overwhelming’ in comparison with the Warner Bros. Dream, which had been ‘pretentious and overstuffed’. Eileen Creelman in the New York Sun (21 August) was disappointed: ‘It remains simply interesting, solid and interesting, not a film to haunt quiet moments like Katharine Cornell’s stage production of last year.’ The New York American (21 August) reassured readers that ‘there is nothing deep, or classic, or highbrow about it. Nothing to frighten you away.’ John Mosher’s New Yorker review shares a general sense of relief that the film was not brash, together with a regret that it was not more lively: ‘all the business of the schoolroom and the exact replica of Renaissance art and the like have rendered the film somewhat cumbersome, removed the possibilities of something fresh and exciting’ (22 August). The Brooklyn Daily Eagle (23 August) suggested that the blame for the film’s sluggishness lay with Cukor, ‘a strict continuity-follower with no feeling for tempo or mood’. After the New York opening, the same paper’s regular movie columnist, Winslow Burdett, headed his notice ‘Notes on an MGM Museum Piece’ and complained that ‘the effect of it all is to convert a romantic tragedy into a sort of fashion parade of the Italian Renaissance’ (18 October). John Mason Brown in the New York Post (10 September) objected to Messel’s ‘intensely unbecoming and over-fussy’


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costumes: ‘These tend to be the clothes of an exaggerated kind which, while appropriate enough for a court masque or a period scene in a Cochran revue, are not fitted to real people in a tragedy that must seem genuine.’ The overall effect was a film that ‘ha[d] a purse-proud air about it’. Like the 1934 David Copperfield, this was a ‘British’ – or at least ‘Hollywood British’ – film, and the reception in London was especially important for the studio.43 Some British newspapers emphasised the ‘Thalberg story’ in terms at once crass and romantic. The Morning Advertiser (8 October), unsubtly reminding its readers that Shearer had inherited her husband’s wealth, headlined an article ‘Millionairess takes lead in Picture’. For the Evening Standard (14 October), this was a ‘Monument to Thalberg’ and the Sunday Pictorial (18 October) answered its question, ‘Why ‘‘Romeo and Juliet’’?’ in a romantic vein worthy of the best ‘women’s picture’: [Thalberg] had been told by the greatest doctors of Europe and the United States that his health was precarious. At that time he had achieved everything that any man in his world could desire. He was the acknowledged head of his profession. He was ideally happy in his marriage to Norma Shearer. He had, as we say, everything to live for. He knew his life would be short. In the stress of this emotion it was natural that he should turn to the story of Romeo and Juliet as the most beautiful and the most poignant tragedy of untimely death . . . It is not his monument. It is something far greater. It is his gesture of resignation. It is a picture of a man facing death.

‘Whatever happens to Romeo and Juliet at the public’s hands,’ the Daily Telegraph reflected on 19 October, ‘[Shearer] will have the satisfaction of knowing that at least she has not let down the husband who had faith in her and backed it with £400,000.’ Reviews addressed or at least glanced at the now familiar question of the popular audience’s response to culture: ‘the late Irving Thalberg, who produced, and George Cukor, who directed, have brought Shakespeare to the scoffing masses by their clever pictorial underlining of the speeches’ (Evening News, 19 October). Picturegoer Weekly (31 October) confident that ‘Irving Thalberg has left a memorial in this beautiful production which will ensure his name being handed down to posterity as one of the vital forces in the progress of the kinema [sic]’, moved to the familiar question of popular taste (cinemagoers, scoffing or otherwise) and high culture: ‘If this production is not appreciated, the chances of Shakespeare being appreciated at all are negligible.’ Graham Greene refused to join in the praise of the producer: ‘Unimaginative, certainly, coarse-grained, a little banal, it is frequently saved – by Shakespeare – from being a bad film. The late

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Irving Thalberg, the producer, has had a funeral success second only to Rudolph Valentino’s, but there is nothing in this film to show that he was a producer of uncommon talent’ (Spectator 23 October). Greene’s choice of class distinctions was unusual, as he reflected that ‘[i]t may very well be a social duty to teach the great middle-class a little about Shakespeare’s plays. But the poetry – shall we ever get the poetry upon the screen except in fits and starts . . . unless we abjure all the liberties the huge sets and the extras condemn us to?’ In this formulation it is the ‘middle classes’ for whom the cinema may not be the right means of access to ‘poetry’, a term which seems to stand for more than simply literary values. The Birmingham Post’s critic, admitting that ‘Hollywood has overlaid Romeo and Juliet with magnificence’, insisted that the film had ‘this virtue: those who come to gaze may stay to listen, and for many the cinema may be Keats’s ‘‘peak in Darien’’’ (22 October). Those who liked the spectacle tended to agree with the verdict of the Yorkshire Post (20 October) that ‘it is the feuds and duels and crowd movements in the square, under a blaze of sunshine, which seem . . . to add something to the play by emphasizing its atmosphere of Renaissance pride and Southern warmth of temperament. All this is a reminder that the story belongs to Italy and could scarcely have happened in Scandinavia.’ Those who did not were represented by the headline of Sidney Carroll’s article in the Sunday Times, ‘PLUTOCRACY RUN RIOT’: ‘Wonderful and magical as the settings are, they often arouse ridicule by their sheer splendiferousness. They are too spacious, too startling. They lack simplicity . . . Juliet leads a crowd of young women in the ballroom after the fashion of a Ziegfeld folly’ (18 October). On both sides of the Atlantic, the reception of the two principals was respectful but muted. In Britain the film opened as the groundbreaking production with Peggy Ashcroft, Edith Evans, John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier, after a record run in London, was finishing a triumphant provincial tour.44 In the United States Katharine Cornell’s production, first seen in 1934 and revived and toured in the following year, was still a recent memory. Shearer and Howard suffered in the comparisons. The majority of reviewers, in both countries, echoed Carroll’s complaint in the Sunday Times that Howard showed ‘nothing of the Italian youth, nothing of the passionate warmth and fire, and no regard for verse, but there was intense sincerity, vivid naturalness, and much sweetness of disposition’. This Romeo was ‘a sedate person who gives . . . the impression that he considers acting rather bad form’ (Sphere, 24 October) and savoured ‘of subtlety and intellect rather than the romantic impetuosity of youth’ (Daily Telegraph). Burns Mantle in the New York Daily News (30 August) found ‘more of the


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melancholy of approaching middle-age than [. . .] of the fire and irresponsibility of love-smitten youth back of it’. The Philadelphia Inquirer (31 August) was disappointed by ‘an ascetic, middle-aged and slightly tired Romeo’. Shearer was handled tactfully and kindly by many reviewers, with Carroll, usually acidulous, a surprising convert: ‘The Juliet of Norma Shearer had a radiant loveliness, very little akin to Shakespeare’s creation, but so utterly charming, so gracious, so pervasively picturesque as to dominate the senses and leave us uncritical. Her voice is low, mellow, caressing. Her features angelic. Her rendering full of understanding and sensitive address. A fascinating performance.’ Others found her too selfconscious, though paradoxically Variety suggested that ‘because she never conveys the impression that she’s getting a great kick out of the part’ the restraint ‘aides [sic] her conception of the characterisation of the daughter of Capulet, a child of 14’ (26 August). Mantle felt that she ‘chilled’ in comparison with the ‘better Juliets of the stage’ (such as Cornell) but suggested that this might be put down to the medium itself: ‘the screen is a chilling medium where the classics are concerned, an arbitrarily mechanical medium with definite limitations’. For whatever reason, the actress seemed to be working too hard: ‘The smile and the sweetness of youth seems to me a little too persistently stressed throughout Miss Shearer’s early scenes. The balcony scene, presenting the first test, is carefully posed from all angles even though read without much feeling.’ As for the rest of the cast, Barrymore’s Mercutio seemed stagy and affected to some (‘haggard with the greasepaint of a thousand Broadway nights’ in Graham Greene’s phrase), while Oliver struck a number of critics as insufficiently amiable, but Rathbone’s Tybalt was generally admired. Devine’s accent, variously identified by British reviewers, was deplored: ‘American comedy at its worst’ declared the Glasgow Evening Times (19 November). The promotion and reception of the 1936 Romeo and Juliet engages with topics that recur in comment on other Shakespeare Films of the early sound era – the 1929 The Taming of the Shrew, the 1935 A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Paul Czinner’s 1936 As You Like It: the compatibility of the originals’ predominantly verbal medium with the cinema; the ability of ‘mass’ audiences to understand or appreciate the dialogue; the incongruities of cinema actors in unfamiliar ‘legitimate’ roles and their ability to deal with the language. Discourses of high and low culture permeate the promotion as well as the reception of the films, from the campaign books for exhibitors to the response of metropolitan critics, and are also present in the decisions made in production. The issue of nationality and

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cultural heritage was also persistent, not only among the more possessive British reviewers but also in the studio itself: all the principal actors (except Devine) in Romeo and Juliet either are English or have the English accent then considered appropriate for Shakespeare on the American stage. At the same time, the known and admired personal qualities of the stars – on and off the screen – had to be negotiated by audiences and producers alike. Producers had to take into account the inability or indeed unwillingness of male actors to be seen in period romantic roles where poetic temperament and emotional vulnerability would predominate. In a ‘costumer’ there was a distinct preference for ‘action’ and romantic roles (such as those favoured for Errol Flynn and before him Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.) in which the final scene’s romantic and erotic resolution was achieved by acts of physical and unequivocally ‘masculine’ daring. As for the age factor, in the case of Romeo and Juliet actors twice the age of their characters would be treated mercilessly by the intimacy of the medium as then constituted, with its unavoidable demand for close-ups at moments of emotional intensity. Given this consideration, it is hardly surprising that the editor Margaret Booth had so many different cuts of the balcony scene. The least kind reported observation came from Joan Crawford, not one of Shearer’s admirers and irked by the studio’s relentless promotion of her: ‘Christ, I couldn’t wait for those two old turkeys to die, could you?’45 Despite the fact that Czinner’s film of the play was already in production in Britain, in the autumn of 1935 MGM had announced its intention of filming As You Like It (Shearer was tipped by the press to play Rosalind and John Barrymore Jaques) but nothing came of the project. Like Reinhardt’s Twelfth Night for Warner Bros. it seems not to have moved beyond the earliest planning stage.46 In the event, Hollywood produced no more fulllength Shakespeare Films for more than a decade. Shearer went on to make the overblown Marie Antoinette (1938), another of her husband’s longcherished projects, and, more successfully, The Women (1939, directed by Cukor), in which she plays a wronged wife who triumphs over a hated rival – appropriately enough, Crawford. Howard’s theatre production of Hamlet, financed partly by his fee for Romeo and Juliet, opened in New York in 1937 opposite Gielgud’s triumphant performances. It was a critical disaster, compounded by an ill-advised, truculent-seeming curtain speech on the first night.47 From the reviews of ‘Thalberg’s monument’, two suggestions point towards the next attempts to film Romeo and Juliet. In the Sunday Times Carroll anticipated the impulse that in the 1950s would bring an Italian neo-realist to the play: ‘had [MGM] taken the old, old story of these

Visions of Renaissance Italy: Giulietta e Romeo, 1954

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tragic lovers, borrowed it, in fact, just as Shakespeare himself borrowed it, constructed a script in sympathy but without any reference to Shakespeare and his poetic genius, the result might even have been an improvement’. In the Spectator Greene suggested an approach that would not be tried until the 1960s but which may have been latent in Thalberg’s reported notion of casting teenagers as the lovers: ‘one still waits to see lovers hot with lust and youth and Verona fevers, as reckless as their duelling families, ‘‘like fire and powder which as they kiss consume’’’. In 1938 Cukor wrote that Norma Shearer, for all her appearance of self-confidence, was ‘a nervous, selfcritical woman’ who required careful support but was capable of looking at her own work and criticising it ‘with a penetrating, almost unfeminine, impersonal judgement’ – which may explain her over deliberate performance of youthfulness in the film’s earlier scenes.48 Looking back in 1972, he observed that MGM’s Romeo and Juliet had both the advantages and disadvantages of being the product of a major studio in its heyday. He wished he had been able to defend Messel’s position against the studio’s bullying and regretted that Thalberg ‘sat like Solomon and never committed himself’ in differences of opinion between the newcomer on the one hand and Gibbons and Adrian on the other. The result was ‘original at moments – like the ball scene, with Agnes De Mille’s choreography – and conventional at others’. Until he directed Camille with Greta Garbo (also in 1936), Cukor ‘never got [his] way about how a costume picture should look at Metro’. But there is no indication that a Verona designed in its entirety by Messel would have been other than idealised, albeit in a more determinedly stylised way. Casting remained the key: neither Shearer nor Howard was a ‘really passionate’ actor. Comparing his own work with Zeffirelli’s, Cukor commented that ‘It’s not desperate enough. Zeffirelli got that very well.’ Asked by Gavin Lambert whether he agreed that the film was ‘more concerned to be a classic than find[ing] the essence of a classic’, Cukor replied, ‘It’s one picture that if I had to do over again, I’d know how. I’d get the garlic and the Mediterranean into it.’49 2. REALISM AND ROMANCE: RENATO CASTELLANI’S GIULIETTA E ROMEO, 1954

On its release in 1954, Renato Castellani’s Romeo and Juliet was able to claim a level of authenticity not attained by the 1936 version. The lovers were young (she was seventeen, he was twenty-six) and most of the settings were genuinely Italian. In the Rank Organisation’s promotional material, the Italian locations and the Technicolor photography of Robert Krasker

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(the cinematographer on Laurence Olivier’s Henry V) were given pride of place: ‘Capturing the glorious colours of its natural settings for the very first time, Romeo and Juliet has a richness and wealth of atmosphere that could never have been secured inside studio walls.’50 ‘All Italy was its studio’, and the film afforded ‘the throbbing beauty inherent in Shakespeare’s famous tale’ amid ‘the towering buildings and shadowcloaked backgrounds against which he set his star-crossed lovers’. The claim to be fulfilling the playwright’s ‘inherent’ intentions is hardly new, but in the case of the director there was some unconscious irony in the suggestion that the ‘real’ locations realised Shakespeare’s vision: Castellani had started out with a plan to sidestep Shakespeare altogether. So far as the distributor’s publicity was concerned, the director seems to have kept his counsel until after the film’s release, but from other sources it is evident that he regarded Shakespeare as a means to an end. Reflected in the title given to the film in Italy, Giulietta e Romeo, this was not something that would have appealed to English-speaking critics or to Rank. In Castellani’s case (as with Franco Zeffirelli’s in 1968), it is possible to speak with confidence about the director’s vision of the film, and the shooting script gives a sense of the performances Castellani wanted from his actors and the points at which these aims differed from the results achieved. The resulting film has not been highly regarded – typical is the summary of it in a current film and video guide as ‘good-looking but extremely boring . . . with quite unacceptable leads’ – and it has not been widely available for some years.51 Overshadowed by the brio and glamour of Zeffirelli’s version, and the hectic neo-romanticism of Luhrmann’s, it can hardly be claimed as influential and is unlikely to attract younger audiences. Nevertheless, it is especially interesting as an attempt to make a film of the play in the light of an understanding of Renaissance society and art and as a work positioned midway between the Italian cinema of its time and the demands of the Anglo-American market. In so far as a coherent neo-realist movement can be identified, Castellani cannot be said to have been a fully committed member of it or follower of its principles and practices: his work is more broadly humanist than commitment to a particular political programme would allow. Castellani had always been a stylish director who did not subscribe to the movement’s vows of cinematic poverty. In the fascist regime of the early 1940s, he had been one of a group of filmmakers known as the ‘calligraphers’, careful artists who favoured period subjects and mannered, self-consciously artistic design, camerawork and lighting.52 In his three recent successful films, Sotto il Sole di Roma (Under the Sun of Rome, 1948), E` Primavera (It’s Spring,


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1949) and Due Soldi di Speranza (Tuppence’ Worth of Hope, 1952) he had been preoccupied with the conflicts between youth and age, the passage from adolescence to adulthood, and the problems of authority in postwar Italy. But by the early 1950s the ‘neo-realist’ cinema was a storm-centre of fierce theoretical and political debate. The popular success of Castellani’s films was attributed by hostile critics to the director’s allegedly superficial use of neo-realist practices (location filming, partly nonprofessional casts, unobtrusive camerawork and editing) for optimistic stories that went against the dominant left-wing demand for a critique of grim social conditions: they were ‘pink neo-realism’.53 In the Rank publicity brochure for Romeo and Juliet, the director was quoted as insisting that ‘the only difference between my last three films and Romeo and Juliet is the title – the theme of conflict is the same’. In certain respects, then, for this (partly) neo-realist director the story of Romeo and Juliet provided a logical follow-on, this time with the possibility of international backing, which was becoming indispensable for Italian cinema. However, Castellani favoured a more radical treatment than British or American producers might be prepared to finance. He wanted to base his film on one of the sources – or analogues – of Shakespeare’s play, rather than the play itself. (He also proposed an Otello based on Geraldo Cinthio’s novella rather than Shakespeare, but Orson Welles’s project made any other film of the play even less likely to attract funds.54) He favoured Luigi da Porto’s version of the story, which would be updated from the fourteenth to the fifteenth century and set in Ferrara rather than Verona, to capture a sense of the transition from medieval to Renaissance society. The lovers would meet at a festival that had been arranged to effect reconciliation between the factions, their marriage would not be consummated, and their suicide would be specifically motivated as a gesture of revolt by the young people against the despotism of the families.55 This would make social awareness rather than despairing love the mainspring of the catastrophe, arising from a mutual realisation on their part of the injustice of the social order. Castellani also hoped to minimise the mechanical nature of the accidents which cause the deaths of the lovers. Having made a draft screenplay, he put it to one side. At this point an old friend, Joseph Janni, arrived from England, where during his years of exile from Italy he had become an influential producer. Janni encouraged Castellani to propose a Romeo and Juliet film, but insisted that only a more thoroughly ‘Shakespearean’ version would find favour. It seems likely that Rank was attracted by the prospect of a sufficiently ‘English’ Shakespeare film to follow the success of Laurence Olivier’s 1948 Hamlet, especially if it

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were to be made in colour (essential now for the American market) and could take advantage of the financial inducements offered by the Italian government to foreign producers employing a quota of native talent. A second script was written, adhering more closely to Shakespeare and more likely to find finance, but the efforts taken to prepare a film script rather than a mere translation of the play, and the Italian title’s reversal of the lovers’ names, reflected Castellani’s continuing ambition to return the tale from its Elizabethan reworking – however dominant and illustrious that might have been – to its Italian roots, ‘immersing it in an atmosphere of the Renaissance and of realism’.56 From remarks quoted by a number of journalists, it seems that Castellani had seen the MGM film, though he did not make great play with the differences between his intentions and those of lrving Thalberg, George Cukor and the studio. Implicitly, though, he would be offering a different kind of authenticity from that aimed at by Cedric Gibbons, Olivier Messel and their assistants, qualified as it had been by the habitual production values of MGM and the preferences (in Messel’s case) for indulging fancy within a ‘Renaissance’ framework. The choice of the fifteenth as against the fourteenth century was partly to do with the greater variety, richness of colour and worldly dimensions of the later century’s paintings, which were to provide the reference point for reconstruction. This was to be a painterly film, but it would draw on art in order to achieve an accurate sense of life in the period and its political dimensions through adopting its ways of seeing. Evoking the Renaissance would be a means of access to understanding life in the period, but this would have to be done thoroughly and with a due observance of its aesthetic. In this respect, with its quest for historical and social understanding, Castellani’s work on Romeo and Juliet is comparable to the meticulous and ‘epic’ realism typified by such historical films as Luchino Visconti’s melodramatic love story set in the Risorgimento, Senso (1954), the same director’s Il Gattopardo (The Leopard) (1965) and his own subsequent work on television biographies of Verdi and Leonardo da Vinci. In the fusion of neo-realism with historical subject matter, the past would not be glamorised in the Hollywood manner, but at the same time its aesthetic appeal would not be discounted. In some quarters the approach was controversial – Visconti’s Senso was criticised as a romantic betrayal of political and aesthetic principles – but it can be regarded as an attempt to reclaim popular costume drama for the socially committed cinema. (The title itself, not easily translatable into English, announces ‘feeling’, desire and emotion as the film’s topics, rather than politics or history).57


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For all its hyperbole, Rank’s publicity brochure for Castellani’s film was on the right track in its claim that Italy (if not ‘all’ of it) had been the film’s studio. Castellani put together his ‘ideal city’ from a range of locations, together with a few studio sets, adapting and disguising where necessary, and moving his unit from place to place to compose a coherent urban environment. His Verona was composed of elements from several cities, including the walls of Montagnana (with a trick shot to restore damaged crenellations and absent towers), the steps of Siena cathedral and (in Capulet’s house) a room in the Ca’ d’Oro in Venice. Stelio Martini’s book on the film, published in 1957, describes as an example the different locations used for the route taken to the feast by Capulet’s guests.58 As for the paintings, the roll call is equally impressive: interiors from Carpaccio, Ucello and Leonardo da Vinci; character costumes from Pisanello (Rosaline), Piero della Francesca (Lady Capulet), Fiorenzo di Lorenzo (Tybalt and Benvolio) and even Holbein (Capulet). Every figure, including the market traders, had a reference. Such use of art by designers is common practice: as we have seen, MGM boasted that exhaustive research in the field had been undertaken by designers who wanted to see paintings in situ. Castellani’s emphasis, however, was different from that of the Hollywood studio. He was not merely seeking sources for the architecture, clothing and properties: the lighting, colours and ethos of the period would also be evoked. To achieve this required a particular attitude on the part of the actors, and Castellani shared the preference of neo-realist filmmakers for nonprofessionals who would look right and could be taught to move appropriately – and would in any case be dubbed as necessary. He maintained that Italy had no true acting ‘profession’ with approved entrance qualifications of any significance: ‘When a boy or a girl, encountering the cinema for the first time, has stood in front of the camera for ten minutes, they are already professional actors.’59 Because the finance was to come from England, not only would the script need to use Shakespeare’s words, but the principals would include English actors with some degree of recognition, preferably in Shakespeare productions. In Italy, for publicity purposes, there was a nationwide ‘search’ for a Juliet. It was even announced that the director had consulted a magician, who after swinging a pendulum over a map of Rome, declared that Juliet would be found somewhere in the Trastevere district.60 In any case, the chosen actress would have to be capable of speaking the original lines in her own voice. Castellani eventually found his Juliet in a London restaurant. Susan Shentall was the only nonprofessional leading actor he was able to cast according to his preferred

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18. Romeo and Juliet, 1954. Juliet (Susan Shentall) in determined mood, in front of the Annunciation fresco in Friar Laurence’s cell: production still.

method. He persuaded her to interrupt her chosen career path – marriage and a career in journalism, according to the publicity unit – and come to Italy. It was not merely her age (seventeen), but her look that attracted him: she seemed to have naturally ‘that sense of the justice of her own cause’ that he wanted for Juliet (see Figure 18).61 (Shentall seems never to have acted again, however.) The director may not have had much say in the choice of the other English actors in principal roles, and in two cases – Laurence Harvey as Romeo and Flora Robson as the Nurse – there appears to have been some friction. Martini, who seems to have had access to Castellani’s private thoughts, reports that he considered Harvey, whose RADA training and Old Vic experience were vaunted, as ‘an actor not without the vices of


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recitation and a little inclined to ‘‘sing’’ when speaking Shakespeare’s verse’. True to his ‘pick-up’ habit, Castellani chose an English member of the technical crew for Friar John. Once again, publicity made a virtue of what might seem an exotic oddity to British audiences: the film was ‘startlingly unorthodox in concept and casting’. Noting that a gondolier played Montague, an architect Mercutio and a novelist the Prince, the brochure boasted that ‘this is not photographed theatre but a film peopled with real characters’, which is at least to some degree a fair reflection of the director’s personal approach. He had a freer hand with the young men around Romeo, minimising Mercutio’s part (there is no Queen Mab speech and no encounter with Romeo’s friends and the Nurse the morning after the ‘balcony’ scene) and characterising the group as swaggering, stylish young townsmen.62 Castellani’s working strategies were described by a journalist visiting the set. The film would be given ‘an added touch of realism, made more believable, more popular, more ‘‘basic’’ according to the director’, and the characters ‘based on Italians, would become . . . Italian once more, after years of stylization have made them into something quite different’. To this end, Castellani was going to have his English players ‘mingle often with the Italian people they are to mirror, to catch the heart and pulse of their character.’ As for his methods on set: ‘Castellani dominates, is everywhere. He moves scenery, lights an actor’s face, acts out his scene, in English and in fluent French, checks the camera signals, then coaxes a performance from the sidelines, checking each word or tonal fluff with amazing accuracy.’63 This process called for ‘time and independence of action’, which his producers had supplied, but his methods may not have been congenial to the seasoned professionals among his English-speaking cast members: judging by their performances, neither Harvey nor Robson seems to have spent much time absorbing the appropriate Italianate characteristics. This reluctance undermined the director’s strategy of constructing a picture of social behaviour rather than allowing theatrical custom or national habit to dictate it. By implication, the script suggests some of the tensions resulting from this. In this historical film the ‘reality’ of life would have to be developed rather than simply taken (in neo-realist fashion) from the streets, but it would be difficult to develop it when the actors were trained professionals from an alien theatrical tradition. As in some notable and uncontestedly neo-realist films – such as Vittorio De Sica’s Ladri di Bicicletti (Bicycle Thieves, 1948) – the image of the individual set against urban life and architecture would be achieved by the location filming and the skilful deployment of extras.

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Shakespeare Films in the Making SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR IN A

(NEO)REALIST

VERONA

As we have seen in the cases of Max Reinhardt’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Olivier’s Henry V and the MGM Romeo and Juliet, directors have been much exercised by the manner in which they introduce an audience to a Shakespeare Film. Castellani opts for a declaration of Shakespearean status and authenticity – perhaps enhanced at the bidding of his producers. John Gielgud, dressed and made up to resemble the playwright, gazes at the title-page of the First Folio and then addresses the audience, lending the film the joint authority of Shakespeare and himself. The director’s script suggests a different, more sober emphasis. After the Chorus, ‘a gentleman dressed in Elizabethan costume’ had begun to address the audience from an unspecified place, ‘a heavy curtain’ would go up behind him, and: On the words ‘In fair Verona’ the curtain has disappeared and we can see a full view of this city of Verona in the distance. It is a winter landscape; the trees are bare and the wind is blowing away the last leaves (and fills the curtain as it opens). It is a very early morning. A mist envelops the lower part of the town. The sky is grey.

Verona would be ‘a medieval city surrounded by red brick walls with red towers; on one side the walls are built on a hill, so that behind them we can see the houses and the palaces’ (scs. 1–2).64 Typically for Castellani, this image would have introduced the story in terms of its time and place, but arguably this is done more economically by the first shots after the prologue.65 These show market traders arriving in the city through a gate labelled (perhaps too helpfully) ‘Verona’, and bantering with the guards. The camera follows them through a series of arches, implicitly towards the market square. In the opening brawl the emphasis is on the two families, rather than the kind of general riot favoured by Cukor and other directors. Two Capulet servants, one older and dressed more formally, are buying melons when Montagues arrive on the scene. The ensuing fight is rapid, intense and bloody, and one of the Capulet men (Abraham) is bludgeoned to death. His body is carried back to the Capulet household and we hear a voice crying out ‘Where’s my man’ as a woman rushes down the stairs to his side. Capulet is seen arming himself – ‘Give me my long sword’ is a response to the offer of two shorter ones – and brushing aside his wife’s entreaties, but now the fight effectively comes home to the Capulets, with a compact but energetic mob battering at their gates in a narrow alleyway. The camera is close and the fighting intense and brutal. The Capulets seem to be prevailing when Montague arrives at the


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end of the alley with a band of armed retainers, and a hasty retreat is made. As the door is shut there is a swift cut to the Prince’s courtyard, to where the heads of the family have been summoned. When Tybalt and Mercutio fight, they are surrounded by a throng of market people, and when Romeo rushes in pursuit of Tybalt he soon finds him on a steep flight of steps between towering walls, where only a handful of passers-by can be seen. Again, the Prince’s judgement is delivered in private, this time in a more formal court of justice set up in a courtyard. In the crowd scenes the dubbed English voices of the extras seem incongruous, but Castellani has elicited convincingly ordinary behaviour from them. Verona is clearly a businesslike community, as is the town on the road to Mantua where the plague interrupts Friar John’s journey. Castellani seems to have hoped for a few more extras in some places. Juliet’s funeral, though elaborate, is a private affair, with no watching crowds, and in the final scenes the lay population of Verona are not visible. The shooting script calls for onlookers as the bodies are carried from the vault to the Cathedral, and also indicates their presence in the final moments: ‘The PRINCE, ahead of the others, walks towards the main doors of the Church, which are wide open, revealing a silent crowd’ (sc. 1,119 – the script’s final shot). Even without these additional glimpses of its citizens, Castellani evokes a convincingly active and thriving, sophisticated city rather than an open space ready for romantically violent action. The Capulets’ feast takes place in a spacious but relatively compact chamber. Unlike the grandeur prepared by Cedric Gibbons for MGM, the effect is of wealth and comfort but not extravagance. The dominant colours come from the guests’ costumes, mostly subtle variations of red, with the occasional use of green and a white dress for Juliet. Guests are welcomed outside the house by a band playing on a little platform to the side of the entrance, and by servants with trunks for their cloaks – a simple, historically authentic practical detail – but Romeo, trailing behind, makes his way through empty rooms and corridors towards the sound of the party. In a shot characteristic of the film’s camerawork, we follow him down a corridor towards a door, but hold back as he opens it, glimpsing the light on the other side. A quick cut takes us, ahead of Romeo, into the room. Meanwhile, Juliet has been making her own progress towards the feast, and in a corresponding shot the camera has seen her hurry from her room (where her mother has broached the question of Paris’s courtship) into a lobby then run down a corridor. Castellani achieves a sense of two young people moving towards a momentous event, whose importance they cannot yet suspect. (Romeo is, after all, in quest of Rosaline.) The party

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is a relaxed mixture of formality and informality: Capulet passes among his guests, very much at ease in his own house, his wife presides formally, and the company seem to enjoy a set of conventions in which they can be confident of the effect of good manners. Juliet is presented to her mother, who hands her to Paris, and they join the galliard which has been announced by the (unseen) Master of Ceremonies. The dancers at first circle back to back holding hands, then form a chain which moves sinuously around the room. Juliet is clearly enjoying the experience, though she dances as though for the first time and she is not sure just how much she should allow her pleasure to be seen. This is an aspect of Juliet’s behaviour which will be discussed later, but for the moment it is important to note that here she is seen taking her place – quite literally – in polite Veronese society, and that she does it in a dance whose movements and gestures imitate conventional expressions of regard and courtship. She may be the only daughter of the household, dressed in white and ‘coming out’, and (even better) in line for one of the prize bachelors of the city, but everything is contrived to prevent it going to her head. Juliet comes past the pillar where Romeo is standing without seeing him, but he has seen her and turns away towards the camera. Rosaline now comes up with one of the white masks that have been distributed to the guests for the next dance, urging him kindly (and in a passably ‘Shakespearean’ line) to ‘Put on the mask and leave this place at once.’ In the shooting script ‘as she relinquishes the mask, she slightly squeezes ROMEO’s fingers with a tacit signal of understanding’ (scs. 213–14). The unmasked Romeo has been noticed by a few of the guests, but apart from Tybalt no one seems to think it good manners to make anything of his intrusion. Romeo, struck by the sight of Juliet, moves to another pillar and exclaims, ‘O she doth teach the torches to burn bright.’ As he speaks this, for a moment she is seen in the background (but not in focus) ‘framed’ by a candelabra on the left and Romeo on the right of screen. As he moves away from the pillar, the movement of the dance brings her opposite him – she notices, and casts her eyes down. The women now move off on their own, taking Juliet with them to the other end of the hall while the camera stays with Romeo. She moves to Paris, then turns to see Romeo as the dance moves into a more intimate figure. She is distracted, seems bewildered and is left thoughtful. Paris, who notices this but takes it in his stride as a sign of her inexperience, asks ‘Shall we rest?’ The Master of Ceremonies announces the ‘Ballad of the Masks’ and Juliet takes her place among the dancers, who hold white full-face masks in front of them. Romeo slips into the line of dancers from the side of the hall and she is startled to see him. At this


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point we get the first shot of Romeo from her point of view, and the background noise and music have faded completely. Castellani’s plans for this sequence were more ambitious, effectively anticipating the dreamlike devices used in Zeffirelli’s 1968 film (and also in the film of West Side Story, 1960) to separate the lovers from their surroundings. The action would have required a loggia and a small roofgarden adjoining the ballroom, so that the dancers could progress out into the open air. As Romeo speaks ‘O she doth teach the torches to burn bright’, the script reads: JULIET dances gracefully along the loggia. Her white gown stands out luminously against the background of the dark sky (from this moment the colour of the other guests will gradually lose tone and vivacity, becoming naturally uniform, and the SOUND will fade to the background, having the effect of isolating ROMEO and JULIET in the midst of the ball. The effect will also be obtained by using long focus lenses, putting the background completely out of focus.) (sc. 224)

When she comes back into the hall, ‘little by little, imperceptibly, the scene once more becomes more realistic’ (scs. 226–7). Other details differ: having noticed Romeo but then been taken by the dance, Juliet turns to where he was but sees only an empty chair, then sees him standing against a door (scs. 227–8); the masked dance is accompanied by the choir singing ‘a jocular madrigal in four parts in which there are imitations of noises made by animals’ (sc. 236). In the sequence as filmed, the movements of the dance provide a context for Romeo’s first move. The other couples behind them touch palms, but Juliet holds her hand at the appropriate angle without touching Romeo’s. As they circle, the dance requires him to put his arm across hers, and he suddenly seizes her hand (in close-up) with ‘If I profane with my unworthiest hand . . .’ and pulls her to one side, away from the dance floor. She is about to kiss him as the Nurse comes up (‘Madam . . .’) and we see Juliet has been called to accompany her mother in accepting the leave-taking of some guests. She then comes back to look for Romeo. When she returns, looking for him, the Nurse tells her who the mysterious young man was. Left alone against a pillar, she murmurs, ‘My only love, sprung from my only hate . . .’ in close-up, and the screen fades to black. Romeo is seen making his way back down the corridor by which he arrived in the hall. The music modulates from its dance strains to a more solemn mode, and we fade up on Juliet in her room at prayer. Castellani’s management of the feast, and in particular of the dances, provides a context of courtesy and decorum, and at the same time of civilised enjoyment, from which the more passionate behaviour of the

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lovers will emerge but with which it is consistent. His direction of their exchange seems to follow the shooting script’s outlines: Romeo starts out being cynical but is taken over by emotion, and there are elements of surprise and then playfulness in Juliet’s responses. On ‘Have not saints lips . . .’ Romeo, ‘having dominated his earlier emotion . . . is now swept by a new and different emotion’. Although another optical and aural effect was anticipated, corresponding to that planned for Romeo’s first sight of Juliet, the scene works perfectly well without it (the script’s sc. 245 has: ‘The choir boys singing. Again the sound fades away into the background and everything, by imperceptible degrees, acquires an unreal quality’). The succession of dances makes it clear that in this society the decorous imitation of courtship, combined with a sense of occasion, the exercise of skill and a modest degree of physical exertion, can be very enjoyable – and may lead naturally to courtship itself. Above all, the ‘old accustomed feast’ is pleasurable, an occasion for the hosts to welcome and include friends and relatives rather than simply to impress them. The room is richly but simply decorated, the cut of the clothes graceful and flattering, and the music is of the highest quality.66 The decision – for whatever reason – not to use any special visual effects to indicate their heightened consciousness keeps the young lovers’ feet firmly on the neo-realist ground. RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCE, PERSONAL AND SOCIAL

The film’s opening title is at first accompanied by a choir singing Roman Vlad’s plangent Miserere, which modulates into music later associated with the Capulet’s feast and, consequently, the lovers’ first meeting.67 The choice is not inappropriate, of course, for a story that includes a marriage, features a Friar and ends in a tomb, and the Miserere is heard again as accompaniment for Juliet’s funeral. In Castellani’s film, though, religious observance is woven into the narrative – and the behaviour of the characters – very thoroughly. (This is something he shares with Zeffirelli, whose comparable use of these motifs will be discussed later.) The reflexive gestures of Roman Catholic observance are present, far more fully than in the MGM film. The Nurse crosses herself when she thinks about her dead husband (‘God be with his soul’); Friar Laurence blesses the guards at the gate as he enters Verona after his herb-gathering expedition and does the same when he greets Romeo with ‘Benedicite’; Friar Laurence sings a hymn to himself as he waters his garden while Romeo lies despairing in his cell, and crosses himself when Romeo and Balthasar ride away from the monastery; Friar John crosses himself as he passes through the town gate and,


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being a Franciscan, later refers to ‘my brother donkey’; Friar Laurence genuflects when he passes the main altar of the cathedral and crosses himself when he sees the body of Paris. In addition to these realistic details, however, Castellani also makes specifically symbolic use of religion. In some instances the script suggests that he wanted a particular religious image to be evoked: after the death of Tybalt, the Capulet henchmen ‘carry [him], with great difficulty (it is like the picture of the deposition from the cross) towards the House of Capulet’ (sc. 475). Most of the references, though, are indirect. By drawing on paintings of religious subjects – such as Leonardo da Vinci’s Annunciation and Carpaccio’s Saint Ursula sequence in Venice – for domestic details and the body language of characters, the film frequently evokes them by association. Juliet, in particular, with her formal gestures and cast-down eyes, sometimes seems too ready to receive the word of the Lord, and at times Castellani’s script (if not always the film) makes this explicit: when Romeo first sees her, ‘he gazes at her as one gazes at a Madonna’ (sc. 221). The gesture with which Juliet humbles herself before her father, crossing her arms across her breast and bowing her head, not only corresponds to her subsequent appearance on the bier and in the tomb, but also suggests religious humility – perhaps, one could argue, because painters observed such gestures as common to social and (as they imagined them) scriptural occasions.68 Acceding to one’s father’s wishes and declaring oneself the handmaid of the Lord (‘Ecce ancilla Domini’) would amount to the same thing in a well-ordered patriarchy. The fresco of the Annunciation in Friar Laurence’s cell shows both the angel and Mary adopting the same gesture. In an intriguing extension of this combination of the social and the religious, Castellani’s script anticipates a similar effect for a scene that was not included in the finished film, Juliet’s encaptured anticipation of her husband’s arrival, ‘Gallop apace you fieryfooted steeds . . .’ Having closed the shutters to darken the room, Juliet ‘lies on the bed and crosses her arms on her breast’ at ‘leap to these arms’. She ‘keeps her eyes closed and stays motionless at the end of her speech, breathing deeply’ (scs. 481–2). In the film’s closing sequences, Juliet’s arms as she is carried on the bier are in the same position, though in the tomb they rest horizontally across the lower chest and she holds a rose in her hands. Immediately after her encounter with Romeo, as has already been noted, Juliet is seen in her room at prayer, somewhat distracted by the experience she has just had. In his script Castellani has her praying by the side of her bed (reminding the reader that it resembles that of Carpaccio’s Saint Ursula) and suggests that she has risen from an attempt to get to sleep,

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but even without the direct evocation of Ursula, the sense of interrupted devotions is clear. This short scene also takes the place of the first forty-one lines of the play’s II.i, with Romeo hiding from his friends and Mercutio ‘conjuring’, an abbreviated version of which follows the scene in Juliet’s room. Juliet’s prayer is recalled in the potion scene, which begins with a dissolve from Friar John to the Nurse, who is lighting the lamp in front of her charge’s shrine. Juliet looks towards it as she says that she has ‘need of many orisons,’ and she sits on the bed with the shrine to the right of the screen and the wedding dress on its wicker stand to the left. The cupboard containing the potion has lilies stencilled on its doors and is on the wall midway between the two: it is to this that she turns when her mother and the Nurse have gone. In the Friar’s monastery religious observance is of course the order of the day, quite literally as the Friar arrives late for a service and passes his brothers on their way to the chapel. The Friar’s cell is predominantly plain, but one wall is decorated with a fresco of the Annunciation, which is directly behind Romeo as he explains his early rising and asks for the Friar’s cooperation. Arriving for the marriage, the Nurse and Juliet enter the chapel, where monks are singing before an altar; the Nurse remains in the nave while Juliet hurries to a grille in the wall of a side aisle (see Figure 19). As she approaches the grille, we see one of the Stations of the Cross (in fact, the crucifixion) in the foreground to the left of the screen. Typically for Castellani’s film, this chapel is an old building, Romanesque in architecture, and the carving is simpler and more medieval than the period of the action. The Friar has plucked a lily from his garden (the script indicates that it is his only lily) and this is handed to Juliet through the grille, so that she stands holding it as if she were indeed a saint or the Madonna herself with the flower symbolising chastity. The Friar remains with Romeo on the other side of the grille, and we see a plain wooden cross on the wall behind him. He speaks the words of marriage – ‘Ego coniungo vos in matrimonio in nomine Patri, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti’ – and with great difficulty the lovers exchange a kiss through the bars, as we hear the background chanting move into a more solemn and insistent mode. Juliet manages to touch Romeo’s hand through the grille, and then he moves away. She goes to whisper to the Nurse, who is still kneeling, and after the Friars sing their ‘Amen’ the two leave the chapel. This juxtaposition of religious solemnity with the lovers’ progress through the film, and the sense of their threatened separation and vulnerability, are strong enough, but Castellani’s original plan for the sequence was even less subtle, suggesting an element of sacrilege in the scene by


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19. Romeo and Juliet, 1954. Romeo (Laurence Harvey) and Juliet (Susan Shentall) at the grating: production still.

having Juliet enter a confessional to meet her lover in secret (scs. 384 ff). It is in any case made clear that the Friar is in a monastery, to which women have only limited access, and when the Nurse comes to see him she can go no further than a passageway that leads to the cells (the script identifies it as ‘the parlour’). The later sequence (the play’s IV.i), in which the desperate Juliet rushes to consult Friar Laurence, has her invading the monastery’s precincts, passing through a door marked with the English word ‘Sanctuary’ (in both the English and the Italian versions) to the astonishment of Friar John, whom his fellow brother placates with the admonition ‘Mundia omnia mundi’ – not altogether convincingly, as he seems (rightly) puzzled by the dubious grammar of this authoritative-sounding phrase. (Juliet does not encounter Paris in this scene). The chanting heard here is a

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‘realistic’ touch, appropriate to the circumstances, but is also used in symbolic relation to the lovers’ situation. At Juliet’s funeral the full panoply of religious observance is brought to bear. To the sound of the Miserere, in a version with female voices and music that can only be outside the diegesis, the funeral procession makes its way to the vault, crossing a large cloister. The corte`ge includes two cardinals and at least half a dozen mitred figures as well as other officiating clergy, and four of the bishops are pall-bearers. A corresponding number – possibly more – attend the film’s second funeral, in which the bodies of both lovers are carried to the Cathedral. One wonders whether the burial of a citizen’s only daughter, however great and rich the family might be, would merit such a formidable ecclesiastical presence, but Castellani’s direct source is again Carpaccio, and it is Saint Ursula’s funeral that is being imitated. The script indicates the aesthetic effect aimed for by the inclusion of so many bishops: The bier is preceded and followed by a small crowd of prelates, with their magnificent vestments. At the head of the procession some are wearing tall white mitres. As the procession moves the mitres sway and advance slowly. They stand out cold and hard with their crude geometric shapes against the shadows of the evening which is drawing in. (sc. 895)

Having occupied a facsimile of a saint’s bedroom, Juliet is being buried like a saint, though again the appeal is to the Renaissance painter’s use of contemporary dress and manners in his depiction of the legendary figure. In the film’s concluding scene, when the lovers lie in state in the Cathedral crypt as the attendant prelates file in on either side, the staging allows the couple symbolic status akin – but not equal – to that of saints. No statues of pure gold are promised in this film, but the significance of Romeo and Juliet for the city is made clear.

FAMILY FEELINGS

In Castellani’s Verona, much more than in MGM’s, people have a living to make and things to do. The opening scene, with Capulet servants shopping in the market rather than simply waiting around in the square, is typical of the way the film makes the household business seem real. Capulet is seen in his study, where he evidently casts up his accounts and writes letters, when Paris comes to seek Juliet’s hand and, later, when Juliet angers him with her refusal to marry. The impression of a busy, efficient household is achieved by an accumulation of domestic detail, and of everyday tasks, in particular


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those performed by women. One consequence of this is a development by association of Juliet’s relationship with the Nurse. When we first encounter them, Juliet is getting ready for the feast, and her feet and calves are being dried by one woman servant while others tidy up the bedroom. Later, when Juliet is waiting for the Nurse’s return with news of Romeo, she is working, somewhat preoccupied, at embroidery in a room where other women – again, servants – are mending linen and weaving on a large loom. The same room is seen when Paris is paying court to Juliet on the eve of their wedding, but this time the women are preparing the wedding dress and Juliet is sitting apart in a small alcove, pensive and anxious. (Even Lady Capulet is getting on with her sewing as she sits in her husband’s study while he discusses bringing forward the marriage to Paris.) In this context Juliet’s Nurse is part of a community, even if she takes a supervisory role and has privileged access to the mistress of the household. (We see her at Lady Capulet’s side during the feast.) The Nurse’s physical behaviour is exuberant and tactile: she kisses her young mistress impulsively during the discussion of marriage in their first scene, uses her handkerchief to wipe the kissed spot, and then blows her nose with it. Although Juliet and Lady Capulet both find the Nurse’s prattle overwhelming, they put up with it affectionately and there is an easy intimacy between mother and daughter rather than the distance that some productions (including Zeffirelli’s film) have preferred. At the same time, Robson does not give any performance of infirmity and maintains a sense of dignity. (The actress voicing her in the Italian version makes her sound more energetic and voluble, but of course Robson’s demeanour does not change to match this.) In Castellani’s script the Nurse’s habit of kissing Juliet is more intrusive and persistent, and Juliet’s mixture of amusement and annoyance at it is marked. The first kiss is elaborated, and explained in terms of the Nurse’s feelings: NURSE takes JULIET’s head in her hands and gives her a big noisy kiss on the cheek. [‘Peace, I have done.’] JULIET cannot help a smile. With the back of her hand she dries the kiss from her cheek. The NURSE then also rubs the cheek with the towel which she was holding and, with a beginning of tears in her eyes, reveals that all her jocularity was emotionally near to tears. (sc. 125)

The business is repeated a few moments later, establishing it as part of the Nurse’s regular repertoire of endearments. As Juliet, ready to go to the feast, is hurrying out of her room, ‘The NURSE is about to take hold of JULIET’s head and kiss her in the usual way, but JULIET is able, with a slight gesture, to prevent her’ (sc. 177).

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The kissing recurs (again, only in the script and not in the film) at the end of the balcony scene when Juliet is trying to stop the Nurse looking out of the window. She obstructs her with ‘innumerable charming gestures’ and then, in a decisive move, ‘JULIET places her head on the shoulder of the still protesting NURSE. She wins. The NURSE takes JULIET’s head in her hands and kisses her in the usual way on the cheek. JULIET laughs happily; then, taking advantage from the fact that the NURSE turns and precedes her in walking across the room, she childishly dries her cheek with the arm of her nightdress’ (sc. 298). The script also shows that Castellani intended the audience’s first sight of Juliet to be more arresting than it is in the finished film – more of this later – and that the Nurse rather than an anonymous servant would be helping her bathe. The Nurse would be seen ‘leaning forward and washing with affectionate roughness the girl’s legs’ and ‘chid[ing] her maternally when she twists and turns and tightens her legs and makes it difficult for the NURSE to complete her work’ (sc. 106). Later, when Juliet is cajoling her to give her report about Romeo, the script has her kiss the Nurse and ‘The NURSE is filled with her own importance. With dignity, she dries the cheek which JULIET has kissed . . . JULIET is standing in front of the NURSE and, still imitating the NURSE, mischievously dries the NURSE’s cheek with her sleeve’ (scs. 346–7). This detail from the script was not used, but instead Juliet kisses the Nurse impulsively when she hears the good news, the Nurse rubs at her own cheek vigorously, and Juliet then strokes it affectionately. After the couple’s marriage, Juliet crosses the chapel to the Nurse, leans down and kisses her on the brow, then strokes her cheek: the Nurse takes Juliet’s hand and kisses it. The script suggests a degree of impatience on Juliet’s part with the physical warmth of the Nurse, as though distaste for these old-established intimacies is part of the girl’s growing-up process. It may be that neither Robson nor Shentall found this appropriate, especially given an element of reserve in Robson’s performance. In the film (but not in the script), the gesture of affection following her marriage indicates that Juliet, for all her impatience on occasion, is genuinely fond of the Nurse. The scene with her angry father is managed so that Juliet is sent out into the corridor with the Nurse while Capulet rages (throwing things about his study) and Lady Capulet placates him. Juliet is ensconced in a windowseat while the Nurse tells her that she should ‘marry with the county’. Castellani provides a motivation for the Nurse’s advice: ‘The NURSE obviously thinking that JULIET wishes to be talked into accepting PARIS, rushes vehemently into a homily [sic] of him’ (sc. 674). It is hard to see this in the film itself, but


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Robson and Shentall make the moment of Juliet’s shock very clear. In due course the film shows Juliet’s ultimate rejection in terms of another piece of everyday etiquette. When Juliet goes to marry Romeo, she is accompanied by the Nurse, as would be appropriate for a young woman of good family, and on her later visit to the Friar after her father’s ultimatum Juliet still has to be chaperoned, but this time she leaves the Nurse outside. (In the film this is in a long shot and we cannot see the Nurse’s reaction, but the script indicates her apprehension at her charge’s behaviour and her suspicion that Juliet’s acceptance of her counsel was not what it seemed.) THE LOVERS AND THEIR IMAGE

Harvey’s Romeo remains one of the chief obstacles to an English-speaking audience’s enjoyment, and his stagy speech removes any vocal sense of ardour and animation from his physically restrained and self-conscious performance. The lighter, less mannered voice of the young actor who dubbed the film for Italy transforms the role and plays well against what now seems a graceful, refined body language. Only in the rapid killing of Tybalt, his commandeering of Balthasar’s horse to ride back to Verona from Mantua and the energetic attempt to gain access to Juliet’s tomb (which has to be prised open with a broken-off church candlestick as a jemmy) does Romeo become credibly adolescent in physical energy. He seems better suited to the elegant and dauntingly poised Rosaline. Because even Mercutio also adopts this almost balletic deportment for his ‘conjuring’ performance, it seems as though Castellani was anxious to let the elegant, slim lines of the close-cut tunics and hose and the evidence of contemporary painting dictate the elegance and decorum among his fashionable young men. Only fighting seems to break this down, and then within limits. Paris, the acceptable alternative as a suitor for Juliet, is the stolid, earnest and excessively mature Norman Wooland, who seems twice Juliet’s age and imperturbably British. The script envisages an altogether different person: ‘a gentle looking youth, with delicate features, his long hair held in a velvet cap. (He might well be the portrait of a student of humanities, as seen in portraits, holding an ancient medal in his hands.) He is listening with a courteous smile upon his lips’ (sc. 132). Benvolio (Bill Travers) is as pleasant, as decent and almost as undemonstrative as Paris. With these conventionally ‘English’ and understated performances, the burden of embodying Renaissance spirit falls on Shentall as Juliet. Although the gestural language and demeanour associated with Juliet throughout the film connects her with conventional Renaissance images of

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sainthood, the director’s intentions with regard to the character were subtler than this might suggest. It is possible that Shentall’s performance, too, goes beyond the limitations this implies: Juliet is, after all, courageous and determined, for all her strong sense of the proprieties of family life. Partly because Castellani did not want a ‘poetic’ manner from his actors, even if Shentall had been capable of a virtuoso performance of the Shakespearean verse it would not have been appropriate. In the event, this produces for English-speaking audiences a somewhat flat and colourless effect, compounded by Harvey’s stilted speech. In Castellani’s script Juliet is introduced with what would have been a remarkable sight. Juliet’s chamber would have been a larger room, with a bed (resembling that of Saint Ursula in Carpaccio’s painting) visible in the background. In the foreground Juliet would be standing in a hip-bath: ‘She is quite naked and has her back turned to us. Her tall, slim, adolescent body, the very way she stands, give us a strong impression of modesty and chastity. Her white body has a strange translucent quality against the semidarkness of the room’ (sc. 103). Juliet’s reaction to the Nurse’s efforts to dry her has already been noted: the script goes on to specify the young woman’s anxiety about her body. When Lady Capulet comes in ‘JULIET wraps the bathrobe around herself because she does not wish her mother to see her without clothes’ (sc. 117). The moment of anxiety is preserved in the film by Juliet’s haste to put on an underdress over the shift she has been wearing while a kneeling servant dries her feet, but there is no sight of her naked body. Castellani may have been ahead of his time – and demanding too much of his demure English seventeen-year-old – but the emphasis in his direction is on Juliet’s vulnerability and modesty, and on the image of the pale white body. The visual effect recurs throughout the script and is to some extent present in the film, albeit less thoroughly carried out. Some moments when a religious image is evoked in the script have already been remarked on – Juliet seen by Romeo as if she were a Madonna and the effect of her white dress in the dance; her standing with a lily in the chapel; the position she takes on the bed in the unused ‘Gallop apace . . .’ scene. The script indicates the cumulative effect the director hoped to achieve. When Juliet prays after her first encounter with Romeo, ‘she is wearing a long white, childish nightgown, which reaches down to her feet, and which barely allows us to make out the contours of her adolescent body’ (sc. 277). As she makes her way to the feast, we see that ‘her head and neck bear no jewels and they stem up out of a heavy brocade gown, not unlike a slender flower in a large and ungainly vase’ (sc. 176). When she and Romeo have woken up after their wedding night, she goes to the window


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and her ‘slight tender figure is silhouetted against the light’, an effect in the script which is rendered impossible in the film by Shentall’s ampler figure and the substantial material of her nightdress (sc. 571). In the script as in the film, at the beginning of the potion scene Juliet sits on the edge of her bed, with the wedding dress, ‘which acquires a ghostly substance in its whiteness’, on the dummy to the left of the screen (sc. 818). This is emphasised again later: ‘The spectral wedding dress looming up against the shadows’ provokes the thought of Tybalt’s ghost (sc. 834). Finally, the script specifies that when Romeo has levered the stone from the entrance to the tomb and looks down, ‘JULIET is directly underneath him and appears to ROMEO, still clad in her white wedding dress, as if she were at the bottom of a well.’ He ‘breaks down and turns his head away’ at the sight (sc. 1,011–12). This was not included in the completed film. For all her spectral or saintly quality, though, Castellani wanted (and to some extent obtained) a degree of slyness in his Juliet, that ‘sense of the justice of her own cause’ that he had discerned in the actress. The script refers to a few moments when we glimpse an undercurrent of humour and independence. When she gives her mother the slightly equivocal but dutiful-sounding answer to the question of Paris’s wooing – ‘I’ll look to like, if looking liking prove’ – ‘A slight smile has appeared on JULIET’s face, which reveals an undertone of mischief in her natural modesty’ (sc. 141), and she goes to the dance ‘with a modest smile on her face’ (sc. 175). As we have seen, at the feast she is openly curious about Romeo and seeks him out, and although she holds her palm back from his, at the conclusion of their shared sonnet, after he has seized her hand, she is ready to kiss his lips when the Nurse intervenes. In the balcony scene, after her troubled attempts at prayer, Juliet sits disconsolately in a windowseat, pondering the obstacle presented by her lover’s name and family. After climbing the wall, Romeo has made his way slowly through the garden to the steps which lead to the loggia. An iron grille near the top bars his way on to the loggia (see Figure 20). There is no music on the soundtrack as he notices a light, and speaks ‘But soft, what light from yonder window breaks?’ and the camera pans across to the right towards the bedroom door at the end of the loggia. Juliet cannot yet be seen from this point of view (which is not in fact Romeo’s, but is close to him). He hears her sigh, and then she comes out on ‘O Romeo, doff thy name’ giving him his first sight of her in the scene. He hides behind the gate on the staircase, then leans round to then reveal himself on ‘Neither, fair maid, if either thee dislike’ (sc. 103) in answer to ‘Art thou not Romeo, and a Montague?’ Juliet’s declaration alarms her and when she

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20. Romeo and Juliet, 1936. The lovers kept apart by architecture in the balcony scene: production still.

explains that he must not ‘impute this yielding to light love / Which the dark night hath so discovered’ (lines 146–7) she is upset at the thought, and looks down. The phase ‘light love’ seems especially worrying. Throughout the scene, she repeatedly looks down and to one side. Romeo at times looks sheepish – or perhaps sly – but gradually they begin to relax. Juliet’s anxiety not to go too fast is clear as she insists that time will tell, and that ‘summer’s ripening breath’ may bring ‘this bud of love’ a ‘beauteous flower’ by their next meeting – she is looking away, and he follows her look. ‘What satisfaction canst thou have tonight?’ betrays no idea of any other meaning than a simple one: she has no inkling of its sexual connotations. They are both amused by the thought of his remaining below until she remembers why she called him back (II.i.216ff), but as she thinks of the ‘wanton’s bird’ she puts her hand tenderly to the side of her face, in a gesture that the


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script suggests was to be more graphic and less mannered than Shentall achieves. Although the film’s Juliet is less impulsive than her counterpart in the script, Shentall carries out much else that it indicates. She is amused and excited but always conscious of the danger of what appears to be happening, and her relationships with her parents and the Nurse, while acknowledging the effective power of the former and the claims to affection of the latter, are changing. At this point she is innocent of the sexual aspect of what she is beginning to experience, but this is in line with the general lack of sexual humour elsewhere in the film: the opening bawdy talk among the servants has gone, Mercutio’s humour has been almost completely removed, the Nurse’s earthier remarks have been cut back (her late husband’s joke has a very brief airing), and when Romeo and Juliet meet to be married there is no indication that Friar Laurence will have a problem keeping them apart until ‘Holy Church’ has united them. For the scene of their wedding night and parting (the play’s III.v), Juliet is at the end of the loggia outside her room when Romeo arrives, and he goes and buries his head in her lap. The Nurse is present and Juliet speaks lines taken from III.ii (105–7: ‘My husband lives . . .’). With ‘Wherefore weep I then?’, as Romeo is still kneeling in front of her, the screen fades to black, there is a choral crescendo, and we fade up on the morning sky and a mounting lark – a much simpler effect than MGM’s elaborate montage. A cross-fade to the bedroom reveals Romeo by the side of the bed, and Juliet lying on it in her nightgown (a very modest, enveloping creation). She shivers in the morning air and goes to the window, then turns to help Romeo lace up his doublet. He puts his arm across her back – ‘One kiss, and I’ll descend’ – and they kiss passionately then step into the loggia, where he adjusts the knotted rope she had lowered for him the night before. They both bend down to pick it up, and as they rise their eyes meet and they kiss again, more passionately. He kisses her hand on ‘I will omit . . .’ then places his hands round her face on ‘all our woes’ and kisses her again before descending. With ‘Adieu, adieu’ Romeo walks out of the frame, leaving us with a close-up of the rope. Juliet breaks down, and a dissolve takes us to the monastery, where Romeo meets Balthasar. IN AND AROUND THE MONUMENT

The final sequence – from the moment when Romeo arrives back in Verona to the concluding scene with the dead lovers in the Cathedral’s crypt – makes the most of the ecclesiastical architecture chosen for the

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film. As Kenneth S. Rothwell observes of the film’s overall strategy, ‘graphic images of confinement, separation, and suffocation replace the emotional content lost by textual deletions’, and here these images reach their fullest expression. The sequence also exhibits a degree of independence from the constraints of the play’s text.69 The dialogue is reduced to the barest minimum, but a good four minutes of screen time are occupied by Romeo’s progress from the monastery to the ‘main church’ (as the English line inelegantly calls it) where Juliet has been taken. Arriving just as the massive doors have been closed against him, and knocking in vain against them, Romeo pauses for a moment to think of a plan. He goes round to the side of the building, along a narrow alleyway in which he has to take care not to be noticed by several passers-by, and finds the door to the cloister. When he arrives at the monument itself, he cannot move the heavy stone lid over the sarcophaguslike entrance, and has to go back to the church to find some means of dealing with it. He takes a candlestick from a side altar, breaks the top off it to make a crowbar, picks up a candle and heads back to the tomb. He begins to lever the stone lid, but his cloak hampers him and he has to take it off before again trying to introduce the end of the candlestick into the narrow fissure. We cut away twice to brief scenes in which Friar John arrives at the monastery and tells Friar Laurence of his failure to deliver the letter. At the tomb Romeo is interrupted by Paris, and after attempting to dissuade his rival from hampering him – a speech in which Harvey seems convincingly halfcrazed – he fells Paris with the candlestick in a brutal if not altogether convincing blow. Finally, Romeo succeeds in shifting the stone: he pauses before making his descent into the vault (he does not look down and see Juliet below him, as the script had indicated) then as he descends the metal rungs the light from his candle casts a shifting shadow across the tomb on which Juliet is lying – we see her before he does, and when he turns the sight unmans him for a moment. Castellani insists on the hard physical work that has to be done, the bewildering problems faced by Romeo in gaining access to the monument and the sudden shock of seeing the dead Juliet. It is only when he contemplates the possibility that he will have to kill Paris, and when he looks at the entrance to the vault before descending that Romeo has time to reflect, but the effect is one of determined effort rather than frenzied energy. Unlike most other Romeos (including Leslie Howard and, in Zeffirelli’s film, Leonard Whiting), Harvey does not simply arrive at the tomb, break open the door and go inside. He has something difficult and perplexing to achieve before he even reaches the heartbreaking


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confrontation with his fate. The church and the cloister and even the lid of the tomb are real and impassively ordinary obstacles to be negotiated. Once the discovery has been made, Romeo has all the time in the world to contemplate Juliet’s ‘dead’ form, run his hand over hers, caress her and kiss her on the lips before the moment when he stabs himself (there is no poison). We see him take out the dagger, then we cut to the Friar, who is arriving in the cloister and finds the body of Paris. The dagger blow is not shown, and when we cut back to the interior of the vault it is to a low-angle shot of Romeo falling to the floor at Juliet’s feet. The Friar’s repeated cries of ‘Romeo!’ echo as the camera moves slowly in to a close-up of Juliet as she awakens, her hands moving up her bodice towards the single rose on her chest. It is not until she is climbing out of the vault in response to the Friar’s insistence that he ‘dare no longer stay’ that Juliet looks down and sees Romeo for the first time. She descends and kneels beside him, then closes his eyes, strokes his face tenderly and kisses him on the lips (‘Thy lips are warm’). To the distant sound of the madrigal from the ball scene, she sits back and slowly raises the dagger so that its point is towards her chest. The blow is not seen. A close-up on the Friar as he realises what has happened cross-fades slowly to the rose window of the church. We then hear a slowly tolling bell and the sound of footsteps as the Prince, accompanied by two files of ecclesiastics, enters the nave and walks unhurriedly towards the camera. Capulet and his wife are present, as are Montague and Benvolio, and it is Capulet who makes the gesture of reconciliation. The Prince’s final lines are spoken to Benvolio as they ascend the steps into the nave, and as they walk away from the camera the scene fades out to the sound of an off-screen choir singing the bleak admonition ‘Justitia, justitia, non est justitia’ – there is no justice, at least on earth. In this radically simplified version of the play’s conclusion, the Friar does not rush out of the tomb, there is no Watch, no sign of Balthasar or Paris’s page, no extended combat between Paris and Romeo and no arrival of the Prince, no explanations and no golden statues. In the script Friar Laurence gazes on the couple, ‘bows his head in prayer’ and exclaims ‘O God . . . merciful God!’ (sc. 1,068). Even this is omitted in the final version, and much of the action is silent, achieving a restrained visual and aural eloquence that focuses attention on the physical obstacles. Without bringing more of Veronese society on to the scene (though in his script he had anticipated something of the kind), Castellani manages to suggest the oppression of circumstances: Romeo’s arrival at the tomb is not the occasion for a display of romantic élan. The film’s final image – the


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spacious, empty interior of the cathedral, looking towards the door and the window above it – may promise some liberation from the confinement that has prevailed around the lovers until now. ‘NEW

LAURELS FOR BRITISH FILM-MAKERS’

In Britain Rank issued luridly coloured posters (Krasker’s delicate cinematography was not reflected in them) boasting that Romeo and Juliet had been ‘Filmed amid the colour and vivid beauty of Italy’. ‘Magnificent in its setting’, the production promised ‘all the spectacular action, colour, excitement and romance of an adventurous age’. There was no reference to Shakespeare. As far as the trade papers and some of the general press were concerned, this might as well have been a British film that happened to have been made on location. Today’s Cinema (2 September 1954) praised it as ‘a most distinguished film, reflecting high credit on the British industry’, while in New York Variety (8 September) commented on its ‘all-British cast’ and reported that ‘the Rank studios have made a motion picture which will bring prestige to the entire industry and earn new laurels for British film-makers’. In London the Daily Mail (8 September) reported the film’s success at the Venice Film Festival with the headline ‘Romeo Voted Best at Venice. Another British Shakespeare Film wins festival prize’. (This was a strong year, and not everyone was happy: second prizes went to La Strada, On the Waterfront and Seven Samurai.)70 It would need ‘roadshow presentation instead of the more conventional and rigid general release pattern that prevails in Britain’. The British exhibitors’ journal, the Daily Film Renter (2 September), gave a summary of the plot and indicated the market aspects in its usual terse form: Audience appeal. Box-office value.

Familiar title, impressive cast names, picturesque Italian locales and tasteful interiors Sumptuous production of many excellencies for art houses

The well-known arguments about mass appeal were sparked by the distributors’ strategy of omitting the playwright’s name from advertisements. The Oldham Evening Chronicle (22 September) noted that ‘cinemagoers are still considered morons who wince at the name’, and the Kensington News (24 September) thought it ‘clearly evident’ that Castellani was ‘secretly aiming at removing the too, too complex relationship between the teenage Juliet and her lover, in other words, he was adjusting Shakespeare to the minds of the masses’.


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A few reviewers were confident that the film had youth appeal, though not of the kind its director might have expected: the Daily Mail (22 September) reflected that it was ‘a poem of the springtime of love: a poem for schoolgirls to weep over at that age when English schoolboys are discovering that their heritage includes Keats as well as cricket’. However, for the most part the British reviewers were unenthusiastic, and in some cases there was a degree of nationalistic hostility. The Daily Telegraph (25 September) suggested that ‘this Anglo-Italian pot-pourri’ would ‘appeal most to people unaccustomed to a high standard of Shakespearean acting’, and opined that ‘it won the Grand Prix [in Venice] partly because the jurors were men capable of appreciating beauty when they saw it; partly, perhaps, because most of them were incapable of understanding English when they heard it’. For the Financial Times (27 September), this ‘prodigious attempt at Anglo-Italian mutual aid’ had resulted only in ‘a prodigious Anglo-Italian mess’. There seemed to be a confusion of styles – ‘Signor Castellani’s timid see-sawing between the prosaic and the purple’ – and the failure to make enough of Mercutio and Tybalt was a major flaw: ‘I found them almost indistinguishable until they slew each other.’ Under the headline ‘Colour Print’ Caroline Lejeune, in the Observer (26 September) admired the ‘charming portfolio of reproductions, prints of natural and architectural beauties of Italy’, but was disappointed that ‘unfortunately, Castellani’s lovely pictures are progressive only in the sense that they follow one another. There is little dramatic development in their sequence.’ The British press treated the film as a failure to make the kind of Shakespeare Film they expected, and they were puzzled by its failure to provide a fuller Shakespearean text or have it spoken by seasoned British professionals. The element of realism (‘neo-realism’ was not mentioned) seemed to get in the way of eloquence: ‘the Shakespeare speeches are treated often like musical numbers: every now and then one of them is as it were played against a background of half-heard everyday talk’ (Punch, 6 October). Across the Atlantic, Castellani’s intentions seem to have been better appreciated. In the New York Times (22 December) Bosley Crowther hailed ‘a brilliant and exciting action film that answers fairly closely to the playscript’. This was ‘drama that spurts with brawls and blood and sets up a new dynamic climate for the playing of this age-old tragedy’. The message seemed to have been received that Castellani wanted ‘a film drama in the violent, smashing uncompromising style of the Italian neo-realist school’. Otis L. Gurney, Jr., in the Herald Tribune (22 December), reported that ‘the picture is gorgeous and headstrong, and intolerant of any tradition that does not suit its style and purpose’. Although ‘the weight of classic tragedy’

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was missing, there was ‘the eerie excitement of a thriller spiked with sex and daggers and poetry’. Above all, the story seemed to have been told in a fresh, exciting manner: ‘if you are not careful you will find yourself wondering what is going to happen next and how the feud between the Montagues and the Capulets is going to turn out’. In the New Yorker (1 January 1955), John McCarten, while regretting the ‘lack of oral fervor’ on the part of Harvey and Shentall, praised the ‘robustious fights’ between the factions: ‘what with swordplay, sex and pageantry, it winds up as a kind of thriller’. ‘None of the actors is permitted to interfere much with Mr Castellani’s compositions, though, and the cast frequently appears to be simply added as an added touch of decoration in tableaux representing all the beauties of Italian cities.’ Paul Jorgensen, surveying the American reception of the film a year later in Film Quarterly, expressed disappointment at this general tendency to regard the emphasis on setting as responsible for a loss of rhythm and pace and to conclude (as McCarten had) that ‘at any rate, the scenery is wonderful’. Jorgensen argues that although ‘some of the poetry does inevitably become less meaningful, the background of irresponsive, age-old sculpture and architecture serves even more poignantly than darkness to set forth the isolation, the temporariness, the fatal passions of the young couple’. More radically, Jorgensen suggested that ‘for those spectators who could silence Shakespeare’s words in their mind long enough to give Castellani a fair hearing, the result was as deeply and beautifully disturbing a love tragedy as film artistry can produce’.71 For all their complaints about inadequate verse-speaking and a filleted text, the British reviewers cannot be accused of wanting something less animated than Castellani delivered. At first sight, it would seem that the New York reviewers quoted above had seen another film, but apparently they did not (there is no evidence of a different cut for North America) and the most likely explanation of the difference of response lies in diverging expectations of vocal skill and energy. Campbell Dixon, reporting on the Venice showing for the Daily Telegraph found that ‘the want of drive and urgency [was] emphasized by the playing’, and Lejeune’s Observer review commented specifically on the relation between verbal and physical rhythm: Castellani’s film has little sense of impact. It lacks rhythm, either visual or aural. One slow, monotonous pace monopolises it, flatly setting down word after word, picture after picture. The deliberate break-down of speeches is paralleled by the break-down of lines, with sighs, grunts, pshaws, tut-tuts or merely pauses. ‘But soft – what light – through yonder window – breaks?’ . . . The poetry of Romeo and Juliet should be tossed rainbow-high like jets of water from a fountain.


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Philip Hope-Wallace in the Manchester Guardian ( 22 September) ascribed the lack of ‘passion and warmth’ to Castellani’s general reluctance ‘to let the scenes, even the great love scenes, take their rhythm or shape from the spoken words. A famous line, a famous exchange, and then it is the camera which takes over to comment or make the point.’ Paradoxically, it seems that whatever subtleties of rhythm the director may have achieved were undermined by the vocal delivery – especially that of Harvey – and that this was especially evident to British critics. Harvey spoke his lines ‘like a man struggling unsuccessfully for air and their meaning in equal parts’ (Sunday Express, 26 September). The response of The Times (22 September) is representative of the many other reviews that found him self-conscious and studied: ‘this Romeo lacks virility and the gift of speaking verse; he is somehow trivial, and there is little to suggest that he was, after all, a man who could speak with Hamlet on terms of something like equality’. The Financial Times diagnosed a case of excessive modernity: ‘his mooning simulation of ‘‘soulfulness’’ – rather like a troubled misfit trying to get into the good graces of his probation officer – is unfortunate rather than convincing’. The mournfulness of Harvey’s voice gave the Glasgow Bulletin (27 September) ‘the impression that he has read the last act and is gloomily awaiting the end’. Shentall’s appropriateness to the period style did not go entirely unappreciated. The Yorkshire Post (22 September) observed that ‘though not beautiful by modern standards, her face has the contours, the pallor, the simplicity of those models from whom Italian painters took their inspiration’. The general verdict was condescending. She was ‘a blonde, wideeyed, open-mouthed schoolgirl, who looked as though she had come fresh from her homework and was hoping to pass the school certificate’ (Daily Herald 22 September); she had ‘an attractive natural girlishness, the domestic bearing of a well-bred domestic science student having an interesting experience and trying to remember to put more expression into what she has to say’ (Daily Mail). The Evening News (23 September) made an inference that recurs in many reviews, in which she figures as Trilby to the director’s Svengali: ‘She is no more and no less than a very pretty and highly obedient creature through which the brilliant Renato Castellani himself has played one of the greatest heroines in the history of literature.’ The Birmingham Mail (24 September) suggested that such sleight of hand could only achieve so much: But nothing [Castellani] can do can put true feeling into her eyes. You may have heard how he stood Miss Shentall in a great hall with hidden cameras to capture her look of bewilderment; or blew smoke into her eyes to bring tears, but in the

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eyes of a young Juliet there must be first a hint of the dormant passion which is to blow hot when Romeo appears. The dark warm eyes of any brown Italian girl might have done. But Susan’s eyes are light and clear and cold as glass.

At least one American reviewer discerned a quality that escaped the British critics. Time magazine (20 December) noted ‘a delicate haze of sensuality that clouds the clear child face with passion’s promises’. Her lack of vocal training and the restraint that Castellani seems to have cultivated in her performance were judged fatal flaws, though: ‘In lyrical ecstasy, her voice remains flat and earthbound – though with intuition she gives sensitive effect to the (much shortened) balcony scene . . . ‘‘My only love sprung from my only hate . . .’’ . . . is the play’s most poignant, most tragic lament. Miss Shentall voices the lines with mild regret’ (Daily Sketch 22 September).72 In the all-important matter of casting, the director’s methods were firmly rejected. Dilys Powell’s verdict was sympathetic but firm. For her, Shakespeare’s text needed more skilled and practised delivery: ‘it is all very well to use non-professionals in Italy, where every man is an actor, and in the realistic, colloquial film, where emotion need not be discovered in the artificial cadences of verse’ (Sunday Times, 26 September). For the rest, Capulet (Sebastian Cabot) and his wife (Lydia Sherwood) were considered adequate, Wooland as Paris too mature and the Italians good-looking but merely acceptable or (in the case of Mercutio) puzzling and perverse. Robson was treated with respect and commiserated with over the loss of many of her lines, and Mervyn Johns as Friar Laurence seemed oddly fussy and eccentric. In the wake of the criticisms, Castellani let his views be known. He told the Sunday Express (26 September): ‘If I had tried to photograph the play . . . that would have been dull,’ and defended his reduction of Mercutio’s role (‘a great figure . . . but he does not fit into the realism of the story under my sharp, brilliant Italian sun’). He insisted that ‘Juliet’s was a chaste love.’ ‘They were young and innocent. . . . All the time I, an Italian, was afraid of making it too hot. Now they say it is too cold.’ After an interview, the Oxford Mail (8 October) announced that ‘Renato Castellani is a tough independent little Italian who makes films to please himself. He is quite indifferent to the opinions of critics.’ What interested him above all was the story, ‘and for a time he thought of going back to the sources. He studied the text for 18 months. Filming took another seven.’ Castellani described Mercutio as ‘a beautiful flaw in the play. If the audience weeps over Mercutio, it will not weep over the lovers.’ According to the reporter, Shentall herself had described Castellani as ‘the Napoleon of the unit’. ‘He is a perfectionist, endlessly rehearsing and acting out the parts himself until he moulds his human clay into the shape he wants.’


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In the context of conventional, mainstream filmmaking, the Oxford Mail’s report makes Castellani appear dictatorial, unwilling to lose control over his actors. In terms of the Italian cinema of the late 1940s and early 1950s, with its predilection for casting ‘real’ people rather than ‘actors’, the methods might not have seemed heavy-handed. As has been noted, Castellani had always stood to one side of the identifiable movement of neo-realism. By 1953, when the seven months of shooting on Romeo and Juliet began (after three years of planning), the Italian cinema had moved on from the austerity of the neo-realist practices that had begun as a reaction against the dominant codes of cinema in the fascist regime and in response to the real deprivations of the immediate postwar period. The poetic quality of the film occupies a ground midway between reality and the familiar story. In Gian Piero Brunetta’s words, ‘the real background melts away and the characters, or rather their feelings, remain’.73 However, the greater expressive licence taken by the new generation of Italian directors would offer visions of a kind foreign to Castellani’s outlook: in particular the extremes of fantasy and dislocation of narrative that became the hallmark of such filmmakers as Federico Fellini were not congenial to him. In the event, though, the next film version of Romeo and Juliet would be by another Italian director whose engagement with the avant-garde was equally limited. 3. SHAKESPEARE’S ‘DREAM OF ITALY’ AND THE GENERATION GAP: FRANCO ZEFFIRELLI’S ROMEO AND JULIET, 1968

A showing of Laurence Olivier’s Henry V arranged by the British armed forces’ Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA) in Florence in 1945 was a decisive experience for the 21-year-old Franco Zeffirelli, uncertain about his feelings towards his father, his choice of career and – a matter on which his first version of his autobiography is not explicit – his sexuality. ‘Architecture was not for me; it had to be the stage. I wanted to do something like the production I was witnessing.’74 As a junior assistant to the scene painters at the Teatro della Pergola in Florence, Zeffirelli met Luchino Visconti, already established as a director in theatre and films: Ossessione (1942) had been a groundbreaking work of the new Italian cinema. Zeffirelli’s film career began with what was effectively an apprenticeship with Visconti, with whom he worked on La Terra Trema (1948), Bellissima (1951) and Senso (1954). Zeffirelli’s films do not share Visconti’s paradoxical combination of nostalgia for an aristocratic past and Marxist analysis, but his Shakespeare films set in Italy, The Taming of the

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Shrew (1967) and Romeo and Juliet (1968), and his version of Verdi’s Otello (1986) recreate images of the country’s past which evoke and are rooted in its visual art. However, whereas the historical films of Renato Castellani (including his remarkable 1982 television biography of Verdi), Visconti and Roberto Rossellini use such images to recreate the mentality of a distant epoch, and tend towards a degree of austerity and restraint – not least in the duration of shots and meticulous slowness of pace – Zeffirelli’s offer a more melodramatic vision. It is hard to imagine Zeffirelli lingering as long in the ballroom as Visconti does in the extended climactic sequence of Il Gattopardo (1965), or allowing his camera to move as slowly across a richly decorated and populated hotel salon as Visconti’s in Death in Venice (1971). Zeffirelli, in Jill L. Levenson’s words, ‘relied on instinct and fantasy’ as much as on intelligence in interpreting the verismo operas and in his films: ‘He analysed musical or dramatic texts into images, which he composed in a synthesis determined not only by his understanding, but also by his emotional response to the work.’75 Critical responses to the director’s films tend to combine a degree of embarrassment at the way that (as Jack J. Jorgens puts it) they ‘veer out of control’ into sentimentality and ‘splashy’ effects, but admit that ‘when he has things under control, Zeffirelli’s images embody interpretative truths about the play very well’.76 His films are rapid, the action often precipitate, the organisation of emotional climaxes supported by music that underlines them relentlessly and emphatically. Nino Rota’s score for Romeo and Juliet is less ‘authentic’ in feel than Roman Vlad’s for Castellani’s Giulietta e Romeo and more sensual and ardent than Herbert Stothart’s 1936 effort, for all its Tchaikovsky quotations.77 Visual richness and vivid, emotionally charged acting conjure up a version of the past in which life is colourful and often violent. As a stage designer and director, particularly in the opera productions that established his name in Italy and abroad, Zeffirelli favoured colour, movement, heightened ‘visionary’ effects and strong situations, often going beyond those prepared for him by the composers and librettists. Like his 1983 film of the opera, his first stage production of La Traviata began during the ‘Overture’ with the dying Violetta in her shadowy bedroom and then brought her back to life in flashback with the arresting phrases of the first act’s opening. Zeffirelli is proud to admit that his work in opera houses has been ‘lavish in scale and unashamedly emotional’.78 The invitation to direct Romeo and Juliet at the Old Vic in 1960 was prompted by the success of his productions of Cavalleria Rusticana and I Pagliacci at Covent Garden, in which the realism of operatic verismo had been given a renewed sense of authenticity. Zeffirelli


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felt able to draw on the experience of working in Sicily on La Terra Trema, but also claimed that the English singers were less inhibited than Italians in taking on ‘the spirit of [his] interpretation’ because ‘the British have an instinctive yearning for Italy, for sunshine and the Mediterranean’.79 For the Old Vic Romeo and Juliet, Zeffirelli started from the idea that the play represented a ‘dream of Italy’ by a playwright who he was convinced had never been there: I took along [to rehearsals] books of paintings, postcards, so that they would know what I was seeing in my mind’s eye. I told [the actors] I didn’t want make-up, no gilded columns, no balconies with dangling wisteria. This was to be a real story in a plausible medieval city at the opening of the Renaissance. So no wigs, they would have to grow their hair long – girls and boys.80

Hair was at first a problem – ‘This was 1960, before the Beatles [‘‘Love Me Do’’ was released in 1964], and at first the boys were embarrassed’– but by the end of the run long hair was in fashion, ‘so our curious cast came to seem more in tune with the youngsters who packed the gallery and the gods’. Among the challenges to received ideas, the most significant were the ruthless cutting of the text to increase the play’s momentum, the casting of two relatively untried young actors (Judi Dench and John Stride) as the lovers, and the evocation of dust, heat and incipient violence in the street scenes. Many of the reviewers were hostile or at least sceptical. The turning point in the play’s reception was Kenneth Tynan’s enthusiastic notice in the Observer: ‘The production evoked a whole town, a whole riotous manner of living: so abundant and compelling was the life on the stage that I could not wait to find out what happened next.’ As Michael Blakemore recalls, the play was revealed as being ‘specifically about adolescents, young males with too much testosterone, hanging out in a dusty Italian square, closeted girls shyly yielding to sexual curiosity and to passion.’81 Zeffirelli’s other productions of Shakespeare for the English stage were a disastrous Othello, burdened with cumbersome sets more suitable for an opera house, at Stratford-upon-Avon (1961) and a lively, stylish version of Much Ado About Nothing in the manner of a ‘Sicilian comedy’ (1965) for the newly established National Theatre at the Old Vic. Among other possible projects he contemplated a film of The Taming of the Shrew with a modern Italian setting, but was persuaded that an English version with star actors would be more likely to attract finance. An initial meeting with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor on one of their many ‘bad’ days was unpromising, but by the summer of 1965 Zeffirelli was working

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on a script with Paul Dehn and well advanced in preparations for what was to be a Burton-Zeffirelli production. Shot entirely on the sound stages of Dino de Laurentiis’s studio in Rome, The Taming of the Shrew (1967) offers the image of a relentlessly comedic community with characterisations drawing partly on commedia dell’arte, partly on the broadest traditions of English stage and film comedy. The film articulates an important dimension of Zeffirelli’s sense of Renaissance Italy, as mediated through Shakespeare. In its comic version this world is festive, colourful, passionate and ultimately benign. The richness of the visual culture lends an unusual degree of authority to the community we see on the screen, while at the same time the expression of common, recognisable emotions reassures the audience that ‘human nature’ has not really changed. One effect of the neo-realist movement was, as Andre´ Bazin suggests, ‘to give back to the cinema a sense of the ambiguity of reality’. Zeffirelli’s film might be said to infuse a sense of reality and its ambiguities into a seemingly romantic view of history and the emotions.82 The Taming of the Shrew also plays on the other ‘reality’ of the leading actors’ off-screen relationship, a factor not lost on its publicists, the press or subsequent commentators.83 Zeffirelli’s autobiography (both the 1986 English edition and the revised Italian version of 2006) is an absorbing and fascinatingly egotistical journey through Italian society as it moves from the deprivations and conflicts of the wartime and postwar years to the more sumptuous if at times insecurely funded artistic world of the late 1950s and the 1960s. It documents the uneasy relationship between the artist and the upwardly mobile, extravagant world of international celebrity – in which opera and its enthusiasts play a major role – but there is no analysis here or in his films of the kind articulated in, for example, Federico Fellini’s I Vitelloni (The Young Men, 1953) and La Dolce Vita (1959), Visconti’s Rocco e i suoi Fratelli (Rocco and his Brothers, 1960) or the later, more deeply conflicted work of Pier Paolo Pasolini. In his desire to make ‘classic’ texts popular and accessible, he has often freely rearranged the order of the narrative of the plays, as is commonly necessary in adaptation for the cinema, but emotional situations are singled out and underlined, sometimes with additional dialogue, and ‘difficult’ words may be changed. After his experience at the Old Vic, Zeffirelli insisted that a film of Romeo and Juliet must have young actors in the title roles, and that mature, well-established stars would not be acceptable. George H. Ornstein, the head of Paramount’s productions in Europe, was enthusiastic about the prospect of repeating the stage production’s success on film, and persuaded


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the studio to back the project: ‘They only agreed to let him have his way as long as the film was a no-risk low-budget affair that could recover its costs with an art-house audience and television sales.’ Initially planned as a co-production with the Italian state radio and television (RAI) with a budget of $400,000, after the deal the budget was doubled, and the film became a Paramount co-production in Technicolor and widescreen with British Home Entertainment (Anthony Havelock-Allan and John Brabourne) and de Laurentiis. The American studio’s participation ensured theatrical release worldwide.84 Zeffirelli then set out to find suitably youthful actors for the lovers. After a false start, he settled on the sixteen-year-old British actress Olivia Hussey and a teenage actor in the National Theatre Company, Leonard Whiting. An intensive period of rehearsal was organised at a villa in Artina rented by Zeffirelli: ‘There we all were, during the hot summer, living as if in a cheerful, busy commune . . . It was a dream world.’85 Once filming began, he was reported to have secluded his young cast away from the main location in an attempt to keep them from the distractions offered by even Tuscan small-town nightlife, and, more successfully, to be making sure that there was no selfconsciously ‘classical’ acting. According to a report in Variety (2 August 1967), ‘after take 13 of an early scene in the script, the director bluntly ordered Whiting to ‘‘stop thinking about your granddaddy Shakespeare and speak the lines naturally!’’’. A version of this advice is probably reflected in a note that Whiting jotted down on the back of his script: ‘Don’t quiver voice sounds phoney.’86 The director worked closely with Hussey and Whiting, while giving less detailed instructions to the more experienced actors (see Figure 21). A Guardian journalist, who interviewed Zeffirelli during a hair-raising drive from Rome to Artina in the director’s Mustang, was told: ‘I don’t think it’s useful to discuss with actors, who are very simple creators. They work on simple, basic images. They should be given an image which is clear and not confused.’ He expressed his impatience with the method acting that had been ‘the disaster of American theatre’: ‘I am very matter of fact and very essential.’ (At this point, the interviewer writes, ‘we shaved a line of trucks’.) Zeffirelli described his view of Tybalt – ‘in the position of being a villain, but he has a lot of justification . . . He’s the golden playboy of the period’ – and Mercutio, ‘a rebel, fascinating and charming, but very unpredictable’. He also intimated the overall intention: ‘The central idea is that of a puppeteer, Destiny, who handles all the characters. They are all puppets on a stage and no one is fully responsible. The whole tragedy is permeated with the idea of fate. There is nothing to do. Juliet is the only

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21. Romeo and Juliet, 1968. Franco Zeffirelli directing Olivia Hussey (Juliet) and Leonard Whiting (Romeo).

valuable opposition to it’ (Guardian, 5 March 1968). Destiny (a recurring theme in Zeffirelli’s account of his own life) appears in Whiting’s notes in his script, just above the reminder to avoid a quiver in the voice: Romeo is very depressed Meeting Juliet fills the emptiness He hates life. No purpose in life ‘Not having that which having, makes them short’ Romeo is warmed up at the Ball, he feels he is living Rosaline is not the image he thought of Romeo – creative spiritual. Juliet – business of living, practical Romeo – intellectual, sensitive. After meeting Juliet becomes just like an ordinary boy of his age. Destiny again, when Romeo finds out that she is a Capulet

Mercutio (Zeffirelli told the journalist) was ‘the character nearest to our time. He has everything, alienation, humour, and the conception of a black answer to life.’ From this point of view, the lovers become victims of fate rather than – as Castellani had thought – of their social circumstances. In this respect the film’s message is contained in the lyric of the song by Rota which came to dominate the film’s soundtrack, with its emphasis on the transitory nature and inevitable death of youth.


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By stressing the vulnerability and youth of its protagonists, Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet may be more faithful to its original than either of the earlier versions discussed here. Given the maturity of MGM’s lovers, after all, it is hard to understand why they – and Romeo in particular – are so readily victimised by circumstances or their families. Castellani had placed his lovers in a context of social and ethical constraint against which their suicide was to some extent a principled revolt. In Zeffirelli’s case a romantic death-in-love is achieved in circumstances hostile to the lovers and with which they are ill-equipped to cope. However, as in the play, in Zeffirelli’s version ‘Destiny’ has to rely on the accident of a letter not arriving in Mantua, and Zeffirelli, choosing to leave out the problem of the plague, throws responsibility as the agent of fate on Friar John’s slowness as messenger. The ‘realistic’ detail of his pausing on the road (‘in a lay-by’ as one British reviewer put it) while Balthasar thunders past merely emphasises the circumstantial ironies of the device. It is one way in which the realism and the romance in the director’s approach clash. Realism, however, in the sense of a convincing representation of human behaviour, is one of the film’s principal means of appeal to its audience: these Veronese citizens behave in a more immediately recognisable way than their counterparts in either of the other two films. The director had announced his project as ‘a cine´ma-verite´ documentary . . . on Renaissance Verona’.87 In social behaviour, festivity, fighting and religious observance, Zeffirelli’s Renaissance Italy seems closer than George Cukor’s or Castellani’s to the experience of the audience. This version of Verona is somewhere we might live – or at least visit – with just a few adjustments of costume. MANNERS IN ZEFFIRELLI’S VERONA

In Zeffirelli’s Verona citizens of all classes behave towards each other with a degree of informality not seen in the two earlier films. Religious observance is as evident as in Castellani’s film, its habitual everyday gestures more pronounced, but in Zeffirelli’s the demarcations between religious, domestic and public, secular spheres are more permeable. On the simplest level the characters tend to express themselves by touch as well as tone of voice, and there is much physical contact of all kinds. On a scale of relative formality, the Prince is at the top, but Mercutio is closer to the bottom than in either the 1936 or 1954 films. Among the rest of the characters, the most formal in demeanour are Paris (young, dapper and almost embarrassingly deferential) and Lady Capulet, the most casual are the young men who

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‘consort’ with Romeo and Mercutio. The Capulet ‘gang’ seem to match Michael York’s Tybalt in being more elegant and self-assured than the Montagues, and they wear hose and doublets in the range of colours associated with the family. Capulet himself, the Nurse and Friar Laurence are less inclined to stand on ceremony than any of their earlier counterparts. Affection is readily expressed by look and gesture: people get closer and are more ready to touch one another, in love or anger. In the aftermath of the brawl, Zeffirelli establishes a sense of family feeling among the Montagues, as Lady Montague is seen tending the injured. When Benvolio tells Romeo’s parents that he will find the cause of their son’s melancholy ‘or be much denied’, she puts her hand on his cheek tenderly, with an expression of love and concern, and this is matched by the gentle tones of Montague. Relationships among the Capulets are (as the play suggests) more complicated: Capulet is a tactile, ebullient, generously proportioned figure, with a mobile face. His wife is aloof and preoccupied with her appearance and dignity. His observation to Paris that many who marry too soon are ‘too soon marred’ (I.ii.13) is accompanied by a glance across the courtyard to a window opposite where we see his wife looking ill-tempered. Lady Capulet clearly has no idea how to talk to Juliet, who nervously tidies herself before the meeting to which she has been summoned. She finds her mother in her dressing room, being prepared for the party by two servants. What might be thought the all-important question of her only daughter’s marriage prospects is interrupting her toilette, and she continues to dress. The Nurse, by contrast, pats Juliet’s cheek. Amused and affectionate, Juliet sits on the Nurse’s lap as she entreats her to stop talking, while her mother is nervous not only about the subject of marriage but about any physical contact: she touches Juliet’s arm (‘Now Juliet . . .’ – the words are added) and brings herself to hold out her hands to her, but seems so anxious to bring matters to a conclusion and to get to her guests that she takes Juliet by the shoulders and propels her through the door, holds her fingers under her chin to focus her daughter on the matter in hand (‘What say you . . .’), and waits impatiently while Juliet, choosing her words carefully, assures her that she will not ‘endart [her] eye’ more than is appropriate. She then pats Juliet’s shoulder and moves off down the corridor, glad to be done with the business and anxious to get to the party. Juliet seems surprised at her mother’s lack of interest, but the Nurse leans towards her and with a pat on the behind sends her off to ‘seek happy nights’. Questioned by Romeo at the feast as she takes a glass of wine from a buffet, the Nurse does not stand on her dignity but is easily confidential.


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She is frankly and happily having a good time. When Juliet is impatient to know the result of her errand, she is clearly teasing Juliet with her enquiries about her mother’s whereabouts and the time for dinner, and there is no sense of any genuine annoyance on her part. Out of doors, the Nurse does stand on her dignity, but not always successfully. For her errand to Romeo she has evidently decked herself out in as much finery as she can muster, which makes her an easy prey for John McEnery’s bullying, physically aggressive Mercutio. Having made Romeo follow her into the church, she gives a display of what she considers elegant piety, crossing herself when she mentions marriage. Despite this, she cannot restrain her enthusiasm when she tells Romeo about his rival Paris, patting him on the cheek and pulling him on to her lap. Romeo plays along with her performance of gentility, and sends her off towards the door with a courtly and deferential gesture. Both Juliet and the Nurse are reduced to near-hysteria – on the floor – by the news of Tybalt’s death and Romeo’s banishment. When Juliet is thrown down by her father after refusing to marry Paris (III.v) she cowers in a corner and clings to the Nurse’s skirts, and the Nurse embraces her as she weeps. The moment of realisation that comes with the Nurse’s advice to marry Paris is underlined by a telling domestic detail: as she gives her opinion, the Nurse is tidying the sheets of Juliet’s ‘marriage bed’. She is shocked by Juliet’s coolness and by the solemn ‘Amen’ with which Juliet responds to the Nurse’s insistence that she speaks from her heart and her soul – ‘else beshrew them both’. For the first time, we see her take formal, respectful leave of her mistress, turning to bow as she closes the doors quietly. Juliet has implicitly insisted on the Nurse’s status as a servant, enforcing a distinction that has been barely noticeable until now. In Milo O’Shea’s performance Friar Laurence becomes a point of intersection between intimate, warmly expressed feeling and religious consciousness, almost as informal as the Nurse with his young charges. Meeting Romeo while he is gathering herbs, he tousles his hair and jostles him as he teases him about Rosaline. As they enter the church, it is the sight of the crucifix that suggests a possible benefit of Romeo’s proposed plan. When Juliet arrives for the marriage, he pats her cheek (‘So smile the heavens . . .’) and he is amused by the couple’s desire to hold and kiss each other, pushing between them and holding her chin up with his fingers as he insists that ‘Holy church’ must ‘incorporate two in one’ before there is any further lovemaking. For his part, Romeo treats religion with an impetuous familiarity not inconsistent with respect. After receiving the Nurse’s news in the church and ushering her out of the door, he turns

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and blows a kiss in the direction of the crucifix that hangs in the chancel. As Friar Laurence and Juliet move towards the altar for the ceremony, Romeo is about to run forwards but stops himself and looks up at the crucifix before joining Juliet in prayer. The focus is on the vulnerable and dutiful young lovers and the Friar’s kind complicity. Unlike Castellani’s, this Juliet does not marry Romeo through an iron grille alongside a low relief of the crucifixion, still less hold a lily by its stem, and she is not shown at any point in a composition or with properties recalling the Annunciation.88 Juliet’s bedroom does have a shrine, however, seen in the background when the couple are in bed together and when she is refusing to marry Tybalt, and there is room for an altar in the Capulet vault, but these remain in the background. So far as the religious life is concerned, there is no indication here of the activities of a monastery, no ‘sanctuary’ to be protected from the outside world, and (apart from Friar John) no glimpse of the brotherhood of which Laurence is a member. The funeral ceremony for Juliet is simple compared with those in the earlier films, being attended by family members, a group of choirboys, musicians and eight young women seen previously at the feast, who step up to cast flowers on the bier before Lady Capulet places three roses on her daughter. Friar Laurence – who has to remind himself to look appropriately solemn – is the only officiating priest. The funeral of both lovers at the end of the film contrasts with this: to the sound of a tolling bell the procession of mourners, with four priests, two nuns and three hooded monks makes its way across the square, now as empty as it was in the film’s first glimpse of it before the market traders took it over. The painted crucifix is visible inside the church behind the Prince as he stands in the doorway. As the mourners make their way into the church, there are gestures of reconciliation between some members of the families; the Nurse puts her hand tenderly to Benvolio’s head and crosses herself.89 The film’s most conventionally decorous character is Lady Capulet (though possibly outdone by Paris), its least polite, most disruptive element Mercutio. Not only is he evidently disturbed and unhappy, he is also physically dangerous. He is aggressively invasive with his friends as well as his enemies, kicking, cuffing and jabbing at them, usually too close to their bodies for comfort. When he counters Romeo’s announcement that ‘’Tis no wit to go’ to the feast with ‘Why, may one ask?’ (I.iv.49), there is an uncomfortable feeling among the companions that he is putting one of them on the spot. The ‘Queen Mab’ speech takes him into areas of imagination over which he seems to have little control, and, alone in the


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centre of the empty square, he seems to have reached a disturbing impasse, repeating ‘This is she’ (I.iv.94). Romeo puts his hand on his shoulder and Mercutio whips round. Romeo then takes his head in his hands and, forehead to forehead, comforts him. For once Mercutio speaks simply and without an acerbic edge. The space and silence given to this moment emphasise the connection between Mercutio’s state of mind and Romeo’s premonition. Romeo in turn is left alone in the square, so that ‘I fear too early . . .’ becomes a soliloquy. A bell tolls and Romeo looks up at the moon as he speaks ‘He that hath the steerage of my course / Direct my sail!’ Zeffirelli uses a handheld camera for shots in the first part of this sequence, showing Mercutio from the point of view of his companions, with torches and figures crossing between him and the viewer. Similar camerawork is used in the fight at the beginning of the film, in Mercutio’s taunting of the Nurse in II.iii (showing both his and her points of view as he circles her, holding up the end of her veil), and in the combat between Mercutio and Tybalt and Tybalt and Romeo. Even when blades are not being used, Mercutio displays his dangerous and volatile temperament. The phallic gestures with which he illustrates his bawdy jokes (the ‘prick of noon’ and the sword raised from beneath the water as a ‘fiddlestick’ as he sits in the fountain) are part of a repertoire of eccentric and more or less disturbing physical effects. The second part of the film opens on a screen-filling close-up of his face, grotesquely covered with a wet kerchief as he mumbles ‘blah, blah, blah, blah’, and rejects Benvolio’s plea to leave the streets. His friends take his death throes as a comic performance consistent with his general desire to entertain and shock. Ironically, the combat between Mercutio and Tybalt, performed at first as an almost theatrical display of skill – in which Romeo’s first attempts to intervene are an illusion-breaking intrusion – becomes more dangerous when Tybalt is angered by the taunts of the Montagues and ends with Tybalt the only person to realise that he has stabbed his opponent. The script indicates that this is a turning point in Romeo’s development: ‘It takes another moment before the truth dawns on Romeo and all his friends. Then the boy suddenly becomes a man. A cloud passes over the sun, and a long silence precedes the monologue that sweeps away good resolutions, youth and happiness all at once. Now the true tragedy begins’ (p. 114). When Romeo pursues and finds Tybalt, their combat is far from any rules of performance or decorum. The final struggle, in which both are left half-naked in the dust and Tybalt falls on top of Romeo, may have a homoerotic dimension, but its sheer messiness is the strongest effect. Romeo has come a long way from being the neatly turned-out, flower-wielding noncombatant of his

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first appearance. In the script’s words Romeo ‘stabs his enemy with his dagger, brutally, with all the fury of the ex-pacifist who has renounced his cause’ (p. 117, sc. 30). GOLD IN THE AIR: CAPULET’S FEAST

As in the 1936 and 1954 films, the Capulets’ ‘old accustomed feast’ is not only the context of a major event – the lovers’ first encounter – but also the occasion for conveying impressions of the society of Verona. Notions of courtesy, hospitality and taste are in play, together with the economy of the household and, beyond it, the city. Entertainment is provided by professionals (the musicians) and accomplished amateurs (a singer) as well as by the guests. Although the script indicates that ‘the atmosphere is heavy and vulgar, of ostentated [sic] riches’ (p. 51, sc. 18), this is not the eventual effect, which seems more like a celebration of the ‘zest for life and love’.90 (MGM had managed ostentation, but for thoroughgoing vulgarity chez Capulet one would have to wait for Baz Luhrmann’s film.) Zeffirelli does not mark the contrast between the de´butante and the other more experienced guests as clearly as Castellani, though Juliet is still tentative in executing some of the movements of the first dance. In many respects the film’s version of the scene derives directly from the 1960 Old Vic staging, while taking advantage of the opportunities for separating the lovers from the other guests and managing the ‘traffic’ of the scene. As Jill L. Levenson observes, in the theatre Zeffirelli tended to create ‘moving pictures that superseded verbal effects’.91 The hall is spacious and warmly lit but not improbably grand. This is a family celebration, with a part of the hall set aside for older guests, and children are seen in the background. The musicians play at the rear of the hall and are glimpsed occasionally. A lively dance is going on in the far part of the hall, and we approach the dancers from Romeo’s point of view as he seeks out Rosaline. The first sophisticated-looking, well-dressed woman he sees may be her, but then he and the camera catch sight of a woman in blue surrounded by men. (The filming of the scene is characterised by fluidity of camera movement and frequent shifts of point of view.) There are no lines to identify her: the script indicates that this is indeed Rosaline, and that she is not for him.92 She dances towards the camera with a sense of assurance and then, as she moves out of frame to the right, Juliet is revealed in her distinctive red dress taking part in a slower dance which is just beginning. Closer shots keep her central, and then a further close-up shows her anxiety as she concentrates on the moves. Her eye catches Romeo’s as he exclaims


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22. Romeo and Juliet, 1968. Gold dust in the air: production still showing Olivia Hussey (Juliet) during the first phase of the Moresca.

‘O she doth teach the torches to burn bright’ and the dancers are promenading past, but she does not get a chance to look at him for long. He bows to her, tentatively. When she looks again we see from her point of view that he still has his mask on. The camera then loses her but picks her up again as she moves with the dancers; it eventually lights on Tybalt, who is dancing with Lady Capulet and notices Romeo, who has briefly lifted up his mask. Tybalt tells Lady Capulet that this is a Montague and goes to complain to his uncle, who rebukes him and forbids any troublemaking. In the Moresca (see Figure 22) the dancers mingle, changing partners. To her surprise Lady Capulet finds herself momentarily face to face with the intruder before he arrives opposite Juliet. Tybalt, fuming as he sees Romeo dancing with Juliet, goes again to Capulet, who responds with some violence. Lady Capulet seconds Capulet’s rebuke, but with a smile that suggests appreciation of the younger man’s spirit. She tells her husband off even more harshly as she passes him (‘For shame I’ll make you quiet’) to return to the dancing. The camera does not linger on Capulet, so

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we do not see what he makes of this reproach, but the script suggests a clearer indication of what might be going on: Tybalt walks off with Lady Capulet, and ‘Capulet looks after the two of them as they move away with a strange expression. Perhaps he has seen in a flash the excessive affection and intimacy between his wife and nephew. But he pulls himself together at once and turns with a merry face to his guests’ (p. 56, sc. 18). As the dance picks up speed, the circles revolve in opposite directions with increasing rapidity. The camera (and through it the viewer) participates more fully: rapid pans across the faces of the dancers and onlookers, rapid shifts of point of view and direction of movement – edited to the rhythm of the music – convey their mounting excitement.93 Juliet becomes dizzy and goes into the courtyard before the dance ends. A singer, identified as ‘Bernardo’ by his admirers, is prevailed on to perform and, removing his mask, he takes the centre of the hall. Juliet runs back to the hall to hear him, but fails to find a place among the listeners, whose rapt attention she disturbs but who smile at her indulgently. These are unselfconscious, absorbed people and none of them seems to think of this as a time for selfdisplay. Romeo crouches behind a pillar and grasps Juliet’s hand, a moment registered by an involuntary gasp (surprising those near her) as Romeo draws her towards him and begins ‘If I profane with my unworthiest hand . . .’ On ‘the gentler sin is this’ (I.v.92), a giant close-up shows her startled eyes, wide open but suddenly closing. (The emphasis on her amazed reactions to kissing will continue throughout the lovers’ meeting and into the balcony scene.) On ‘with a gentle – kiss’ he kisses her hand and she looks down and into his eyes. They exchange looks in four alternating medium close-ups, and he then draws her towards him behind the pillar and away from the guests. With ‘Good pilgrim you do wrong your hand too much’ she withdraws her hand and offers him the palm as ‘holy palmers’ kiss’. The music now moves out of diegetic mode by adopting a symphonic orchestration of the singer’s theme, underscoring the lovers’ emotional experience.94 The singer’s voice is no longer audible, and the background noise fades as the pillar separates them from the crowd. According to York, the director had the ‘literally brilliant idea [. . .] of filling the air with gold dust that shimmered in the candlelight as the lovers came slowly, irresistibly, hand to hand’.95 As Romeo suggests that saints may also have lips, she gently pushes his palm away – ‘Ay pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer’ – and goes to get a drink. ‘Let lips do what hands do’ is accompanied by a repetition of the ‘palm to palm’ gesture, but Romeo, after making a prayerlike pair of hands with Juliet, locks his fingers


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through hers. She breaks away, to the other side of the table, standing in profile against a golden background, and he moves round to face her from the left of the screen before kissing her. This is achieved by his nervously playing on the conceit (‘Then move not, while my prayer’s effect I take’) and gently raising her face towards him with his fingers under her chin. The camera moves into an even tighter close-up with them both in the frame and the music rises to a climax as he kisses her and she steps back, astonished. Amused by his witty reply (‘Give me my sin again’), she now accepts him in an embrace (another musical crescendo). Juliet does not speak her line to cap the verse, ‘You kiss by the book.’ Instead, as they embrace and turn together away from the camera, Zeffirelli cuts to the singer, who is embarking (with the nondiegetic accompaniment, as it happens) on a reprise of ‘A rose will bloom’. Between this cut and the Nurse’s arrival to summon Juliet to her mother, the lovers have a good thirty-five seconds of kissing time behind the buffet, and from Juliet’s expression when the Nurse arrives it is clear that they have made very good use of it. As scripted, the final kiss following ‘Give me my sin again’ would have been on-screen – ‘this time it is a wild kiss, it is clear that Romeo knows neither technique nor art. When they break away, the two of them are breathless’ – and Juliet’s ‘You kiss by the book’, in the script but not the film, would have prompted Romeo to kiss her again, only to be interrupted by the Nurse’s summons (p. 60, sc. 20). The staging, camera set-ups and editing reinforce the sense of the occasion as a social event which is caught by the camera rather than staged for it. Nevertheless, the diegetic music for the song, at first appropriate for the resources of the musicians seen in the hall, is replaced by the fuller symphonic orchestration of nondiegetic music. This ties the lovers to the film’s commentary on their love, as represented by the score. The filming of elements of the Moresca with a handheld camera, like similar effects elsewhere in the film, induces a sense of participation (the cine´ma-verite´ promised by the director), but the music that accompanies the lovers’ experiences suggests engagement with feelings beyond the ken of the rest of the Veronese population – except, of course, Bernardo the singer. His singing style and appearance, like that of Romeo, are much more of the 1960s than the 1460s: a well-behaved Beatle. By contrast, Paris, to whom Juliet has been called away, looks as though he has stepped out of a contemporary painting. It is her cousin Tybalt who looks like the best catch in Verona, and his presence in the scene adds a disturbing element to the erotic economy: Peter S. Donaldson has commented on the significance of the looks he gives and receives – and the way the camera

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sees him – during the lover’s first encounter and elsewhere in the film.96 Zeffirelli’s script includes in the film’s opening sequence a glimpse of Tybalt in bed with a ‘blonde’ hurriedly getting dressed when the alarm is sounded for the brawl, and specifies that Lady Capulet, who is passing the door, ‘looks in as if prompted by an impulse of jealousy’ (pp. 10–11, sc. 3).97 The hint would have been followed up at the feast more emphatically than it is in the finished film (see p. 203). York’s mature, elegant presence makes him a formidable counter to the spindly, nervously energetic and aggressive Mercutio. Tybalt resembles a noble figure in a painting, Mercutio a grotesque from the commedia dell’arte, more Rolling Stone than Beatle. The Nurse’s arrival with Lady Capulet’s summons does more than provide Romeo with information. Her eager attention to the flask of wine, and her beaming, plump face as she stands by the buffet’s lavish display of fruit bring the film back to ordinary appetite. In this film it is natural and necessary for the Nurse to tell Romeo that whoever marries Juliet ‘shall have the chinks’ (I.v.114). At the end of the sequence, Juliet is seen in a close-up as she reacts to the news that she has been exchanging kisses with a Montague, and the extent to which she has been taken out of the world she thought she knew an hour ago is emphasised by the mysterious voices she hears as she crosses the courtyard: mingled with the Nurse’s call of ‘Juliet’ is the distant, repeated cry of ‘Romeo’, which she cannot know is his friends calling him.

FINE AND PRIVATE PLACES: BALCONY, ORCHARD AND BEDROOM

To escape from his friends, whose search is made briefer by the omission of Mercutio’s ‘conjuring’ (II.i.7–40), Romeo has to scale orchard walls that are indeed ‘high and hard to climb’. Once he has done so, he finds himself in what seems in the darkness to be a jungle of trees and bushes. The light that breaks from Juliet’s window gives him his bearings, and as the camera tracks to follow we see a substantial terrace, some fifteen feet above the ground, which leads from a lit doorway to the corner of the house. Donaldson observes that, like the director’s staging of the scene for the theatre, this allowed the lovers – Juliet in particular – an unusual degree of movement: ‘It sets the lovers free to make contact and to display their youthful energy in physical as well as verbal terms, as they traverse the space from the point at which Romeo gains entry to the far-off door to Juliet’s chamber, crossing and re-crossing it, joining and separating with each


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verbal exchange.’98 Donaldson has analysed the lovers’ gazing and the camera’s participation in this dimension of the scene, particularly its sharing of Romeo’s point of view and his (and our) appreciation of her sexual attraction. Juliet is clearly lit throughout, from invisible and unspecified sources (this is neither moonlight nor lamplight) and no reference is made to ‘the mask of night’ hiding her blushes. The MGM film lit the scene with obtrusive brightness, while Castellani (with Robert Krasker) achieved a convincing effect of shadows and of the onset of dawn. Zeffirelli’s cinematographer, Pasquale de Santis (who won an Academy Award for the film), provides a warm, revealing light that does not draw attention to its improbability. Nothing of the emotions is hidden from us in this ideal world of the lovers, and in Juliet’s case a good deal of the body is also visible. When she places her hand across her cleavage as an ineffective but appropriate attempt to cover herself, and when she is startled by his complaint at being left ‘unsatisfied’, it is clear that Juliet is not unaware of her body. With Norma Shearer in her high pulpit and Susan Shentall on the loggia protected by a caged staircase, both covered in substantial nightgowns, there was no question of sex: neither the physical situation nor the couple’s modesty would suggest it. For Zeffirelli’s lovers, it is a distinct possibility, and the restraint that keeps Romeo on the garden side of the balcony is sorely tested. The lovers’ body language is characterised by yearning (arms outstretched) and a degree of energetic frankness. The pleasure of kissing is a revelation to Juliet: at one point we see her eyes widening with the realisation of a new sensation as she comes up for air, and eventually she has to stop them both when she realises what might come next. Romeo’s ‘O, wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?’ takes her by surprise, and with a relieved ‘Ah!’ (this Juliet knows what he might have meant) as he asks for the exchange of vows she holds up her hand towards him then leans forward along the wall for a repetition of the ‘palm to palm’ gesture, which moves quickly to the linking of fingers. Subsequently, when the declarations and promises have been made and she has called him back but cannot remember why, Romeo’s readiness to forget ‘any other home but this’ prompts her to hold out her arms to him, breathless with undisguised longing, and giggling (off-screen) as he climbs back up. As they kiss hungrily there is a cut to a view of the dark blue sky through the trees, which is held until a cock crows. After their last kiss, she holds his hand as she speaks ‘Good night, good night. Parting is such sweet sorrow / That I shall say good night till it be morrow.’ Romeo does not reply. She retreats in silence, holding his hand for as long as possible, and

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the camera first zooms slowly out, then pulls back as we move from a close-up of their outstretched hands to a long and wide shot of the terrace wall. On the last plaintive note of the theme from the film’s song, Juliet kisses her hand to Romeo and he responds. A quick cut to him running downhill through the orchard is accompanied by a lively dance tune, which gathers pace with him as he runs. The scene’s dynamic between passion and restraint is complemented by Juliet’s unselfconscious behaviour when she thinks she is alone: with ‘Ah me!’ she is stretching, she rocks backwards and forwards with her head in her hands, and she sits on the parapet with her hands clasped round her knees. She embraces herself ecstatically on ‘And for thy name – which is no part of thee – / Take all myself.’ The sexual meaning of ‘take’ is unmistakable, the text itself rather than a subtext and a frank invitation that makes Romeo’s sudden ‘I take thee at thy word’ doubly alarming. The dynamic is also enhanced by the architecture and clothing. The wildness of the ‘orchard’ enhances the effect of naturalness, and the terrace is made of rough stone rather than being an exquisitely carved architectural feature. Juliet’s costume is not exactly a nightdress – she is too tightly held in by a bodice that displays her bosom alluringly, and in any case her hair is still held back by a thin silver chain. Rather, it seems to be the underdress for her earlier gown. In the 1960s fashion confused the boundaries between under- and outerwear and free-flowing ‘shift’ dresses became acceptable as daywear. In terms of ‘respectable’ teenagers of the late 1960s, the scene articulates the difference between behaving well and being on your best behaviour. They might go quite far but not all the way on the next date. However, such behaviour is out of the question: this Romeo and Juliet may be more frankly passionate and uninhibited than their film predecessors, but they still have to marry rather than cohabit, and their rebellion against their parents’ wishes is neither emotional nor (so far as either of them is aware) generational. Neither of them expresses or indicates dislike of their parents and when she tries to defy her father Juliet shows no signs of sharing a modern audience’s understanding of her situation as a consequence of living in a patriarchy. Zeffirelli’s lovers are at first impatient and ultimately pathetic victims of circumstances, but they have no insight into what is going on beyond anger and frustration at the impediments to their love. In this respect Romeo and Juliet are far removed from the more activist members of the generation of 1968. What is ‘contemporary’ in Zeffirelli’s version resides in the couple’s frank expression of sexual desire and their haircuts, and in a fundamental ordinariness. Romeo is poetic enough, but not too poetic or elocutionary.


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When they do reach the bedroom, Hussey and Whiting do not have to make do with a tactful or ecstatic montage. We do not see them making love, but their morning after is unequivocally postcoital. The cut from the Friar’s satisfied smile after Romeo has made his peace with him and left his cell takes us to the lover’s heads on a pillow. Organ music bridges the cut, and also suggests a degree of ‘holiness’ to the new scene. At the same time (and allowing for the constraints of censorship and certificate ratings), although we see parts of them naked, the selection is gender-specific. We see a fulllength back view of the naked Romeo as he lies on the bed and subsequently when – having woken before Juliet and kissed her – he rises and opens the curtain. The upper curve of her breast is visible, but for the time being that is all, and in the next few shots her nipples are tastefully covered by her long hair. She stirs in her sleep and pulls the sheet up to her chin, trying not to wake. Having persuaded him that the sound he heard was the nightingale, she holds out her arms to Romeo, who lies with her on the bed, but at the point when they might be about to make love we see her eyes over his shoulder as she realises that it is indeed day and pushes him off. With ‘It is – hie hence – away’ she turns towards the camera and briefly her breasts are visible before she pulls on her nightgown. Castellani, it will be remembered, envisaged a back view of the naked Juliet bathing in her first scene and a sense of her body beneath the nightgown in this one, but the effect would have been to bring out her modesty and vulnerability. Here the sight of Juliet’s bare torso functions in a scheme of naturalness: we see it because that is what we would see – assuming we were crouching by their bedside. Critics have not failed to point out the homosexual gaze represented by the camera’s having dwelt on Romeo’s neat backside.99 This may have been a safely nonerogenous zone in the conventionally heterosexual terms of the censorship regimes of the time, but to accept the queer dimension of the film is to recognise a valuable asset. Donaldson’s exploration of the film’s homoerotic dimensions points to the way this and other sequences sophisticate rather than simplify the effect: ‘Zeffirelli creates a spectatorial position neither simply male or female nor simply identificatory or detached. The bisexual identifications suggested by the camera position also work to inscribe a sense of loss in the presentation of heterosexual intimacy.’100 The lovers’ conversation in bed is simple rather than heightened in tone, the religious painting in the background neither comments on nor colours the action. Ordinary things must be done; he has difficulty getting into his hose and sits on the bed. When she realises that he must leave, she helps him to pull on his shirt, urging him to go as she does so. There is no reference to ‘the pale reflex of Cynthia’s brow’ (III.v. 20) or Juliet’s


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digression on the lark and the ‘loathe`d toad’ (lines 31ff) – but these have been cut in many stage productions. More significant is an omission at the end of the sequence, when in the play Juliet admits to having ‘an illdivining soul’ and imagines that she sees Romeo ‘As one dead in the bottom of a tomb’, and Romeo agrees that ‘Dry sorrow drinks our blood’ (lines 54–9). (The lines are included in the shooting script.) Like his intended audience, Zeffirelli’s young people do not have classical learning at their fingertips, and Juliet does not apostrophise Fortune, rebuking her for fickleness (lines 60–4). Instead, their parting is mute, and she simply utters an ‘Oh God!’ before breaking down in tears. ‘HERE

COMES THE PRINCE!’

–

LAW AND DISORDER

IN VERONA

In Zeffirelli’s Verona the fights are violent and dangerous: even though the beginning of Mercutio’s encounter with Tybalt has an element of comedy and showmanship (and an almost professional rivalry between evenly matched opponents), its aftermath is brutal. The script has a detail that would have suggested aggression passed on from one generation to the next. On the morning after Capulet’s feast, Benvolio and Mercutio are wondering where Romeo got to last night: ‘It is a fine sunny day, and at the bottom of the cathedral steps, two groups of children, Capulets and Montagues in miniature, are fighting with great uproar, brandishing wooden swords’ (p. 86, sc. 24). There is violence in less public places, too. When Romeo is frantic with despair, the Friar strikes him and throws him across his cell.101 Mercutio, as has been noted, is physically aggressive with his friends to the point of bullying. The script suggests a general mood of aimless aggression that makes the whole group threatening. As they go to the feast, they are ‘moving vaguely in the direction of Capulet’s house, not yet quite decided how to behave. They throw stones, break lanterns, insolent, in search of amusement’ (p. 44, sc. 16). Capulet’s geniality is impulsive, but so are his other moods, and he slams Tybalt against the wall when insisting that he should be quiet (‘He shall be endured’). It is thus hardly surprising that he should throw Juliet to the floor when she refuses to marry Paris. Lady Capulet maintains her distance from Juliet in this sequence: in the script, though, she resists the effects of her husband’s temper – he does not succeed in dragging Juliet from the bed, and she and the Nurse ‘have formed a barrier protecting Juliet. Capulet can no longer reach her. He is panting; his face is purple as if he were on the point of having a heart attack’ (p. 149, sc. 46).


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When the Prince intervenes in civil strife, he keeps his distance from the crowd, either on horseback (the first fight) or on a flight of steps (after the second). This is a sensible precaution: even when the bodies of Mercutio and Tybalt are brought before the Prince, a Capulet henchman steps forward and punches Benvolio in the face and an affray seems likely. The first fight begins as a crass piece of bullying: Abraham is an older servant, whom the Capulets trip up for their amusement. In the ensuing action the handheld camera, with its sense of actuality filming, is part of a repertoire of effects that suggest that chaos is barely restrained. The self-conscious use of film conventions, even when they convey ‘authenticity’ and access to a ‘real’ event ‘as it happens’, contributes to the dual sense of stylisation and naturalism that several critics have identified.102 On ‘Here come the Capulets’ we see their feet, then pan up to faces, suggesting the point of view of the Montagues. Images of Capulet and his faction rushing out after arming themselves include a handheld shot of Capulet. The script goes even further in images of brutality: ‘hooligans’ wreck a shop and beat the shopkeeper, Capulet supporters throw down rubbish on passing Montagues, who retaliate by setting the house on fire, and Capulets throw a man down a well (pp. 18–20, sc. 7Aff). Even without these details, the brawl is deadly, and one shot has a sword being plunged down into an unseen opponent – though we do not see the result of this, the message is clear. After the vicious and bloody fight, which terrifies the populace (women clutching babies rush for cover, market produce is scattered), the Prince’s arrival is shown with a rapid zoom to him as he rides into the square and a headlong handheld view as if from horseback. A whip pan, tilting up from ground, gives a combatant’s-eye view of him, and there are shots of the crowd from his point of view as his horse stamps and turns. Both here and in the long, brutal fight between Romeo and Tybalt, the overall effect is not only to enhance the fight’s violence and chaos, but also to indicate that the film will show events that are ‘caught’ on camera rather than being carefully set up for it. Passion in Verona seems to be one step ahead of most of the inhabitants and of us, the witnesses. These effects, suggesting the point of view of a bystander barely able to keep up with the action (and including a shot of blurred Capulet legs rushing past the camera as Tybalt escapes from the square) are interspersed with rapid glimpses as if by a participant, most notably a shot along his sword from Tybalt’s point of view as he holds it to Mercutio’s throat, the blurred image of Romeo as Mercutio begins to lose consciousness, and Romeo’s view of Tybalt as he rushes towards him before the final, mortal blow. When Romeo reaches the end of a lane and

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sees Tybalt, a zoom in to Tybalt gives his point of view and conveys Romeo’s state of mind. The use of these techniques before and during Mercutio’s ‘Queen Mab’ speech and at the dance has been remarked on already. The desperate combat with Paris outside (and inside) the tomb was filmed but omitted during editing, which removes what would have been one further violent episode. In any case, although Romeo does not threaten Balthazar that he will strew the churchyard with his limbs if he betrays him (V.iii.35–9), there is no doubt that Romeo’s ‘looks are wild’ as he batters open the door of the tomb with a rock. In this context the Friar’s desertion of Juliet in the tomb, with his repeated ‘I dare not stay’, may seem less reprehensible, being part of a general mood of anxiety that can tip over into panic. (The repetitions are not in the shooting script, which unfortunately sheds no further light on the moment.) In the midst of this, the stillness and determination of the lovers is emphasised: the cut to the solemn procession, omitting the discovery (let alone the explanations) is entirely appropriate. A final moment of handheld camera, with torches passing between us and the bier, is steadier than its predecessors, suggesting our ‘bystander’ position once more, before the Prince delivers his speech (again, from steps) and the camera assumes a position inside the church to watch the mourners file past. The fixed camera position and the superimposition of the rolling end credits return us smoothly to our own world. SHAPING AND FRAMING THE STORY

The completed film follows the shooting script closely, though there are differences in detail and emphasis. Some details, as usual, seem to have come in rehearsal or ‘on the day’: Tybalt smelling his hand and then washing it after Romeo has shaken it, the Nurse’s formal exit after her advice to marry Paris, the choice of lines from the Friar’s first speech.103 Some scenes originally scripted were omitted, notably the encounter between Romeo, Benvolio and Peter, the opening of III.ii (‘Gallop apace’); Romeo’s visit to the Apothecary; and his fight with Paris.104 Some visual effects were modified. Thus the directions for the opening of the scene at Capulet’s feast indicate that ‘the first image that strikes us at the feast is a sea of masks: masks of all kinds, including the mask of Death’. (In the film Mercutio’s half-mask represents a skull.) Another dark touch was included as planned at the beginning of the second fight scene: ‘Mercutio’s face is covered with a handkerchief; this protection from the stifling heat gives, for a moment, a somewhat sinister evocation of a shroud’ (p. 106, sc. 9).


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Sometimes the order of events has been altered. In the sequence from Juliet’s confrontation with her father to her being placed in the tomb, Zeffirelli planned to use parts of Friar Laurence’s lines explaining the stratagem (the play’s III.v: the script’s pp. 89–120) as a voiceover while Juliet was seen preparing to take the potion, and when Friar John was seen departing for Mantua. Her potion speech in IV.ii would have been included (and was indeed shot, but not used).105 The discovery of Juliet in her bed would have followed, more or less as filmed, and the Friar’s voiceover would have been resumed during the funeral. A direction for this suggests that ‘It is all rather like a dream, a dream of Juliet’s’ (p. 166, sc. 53). The scene ends as ‘Young Balthazar, as if waking up from a dream, steals from the crowd, and then begins to run towards the way out of the graveyard.’ Some of this dreamlike quality survives in the film’s rapid transition through the elements it uses of Shakespeare’s fourth act. The script, like the film, makes no reference to the plague: Friar John is asked to tend to a dying man, and so fails to see Balthasar as he rides past (p. 168, sc. 54). The two major scenes cut from the film’s last movement – the Apothecary, and Romeo’s fight with Paris – would have marked stages in Romeo’s emotional career. The first was not filmed, the second filmed but dropped from the final cut. With the Apothecary, Romeo’s desperation would have produced another moment of violence: ‘Afraid, the man is about to withdraw’, but Romeo ‘seizes him by the arm with desperate energy, this grip is so violent that the apothecary falls to his knees groaning’ (‘Art thou so bare . . .,’ p. 173, sc. 59). After killing Paris, Romeo ‘clasps Paris’s hand impetuously, as if he were taking the hand of some one alive. Then he takes his other hand, and crosses it on his breast. He closes his eyes delicately, almost with tenderness’ (p. 181, sc. 61). According to Whiting, the director told him that he had two pieces of news for him: the good news was that this was the best acting he had done in the film, the bad that he was not going to use it. The cut was necessary to save time. The most important difference between the shooting script and the completed film, however, is the manner in which the two versions begin and end. In the film the camera pans across a misty early morning aerial view of Verona as the prologue is spoken. Zeffirelli describes how he seized the opportunity to have it spoken by Laurence Olivier, who was working at Cinecitta` at the time and who subsequently voiced Montague and provided enthusiastic street cries and voices off for a number of scenes.106 The significance of this endorsement by the actor whose film of Henry V inspired the young Zeffirelli has not been lost. At this point in the film,

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though, it is the vision of the city, with its red roofs, campaniles, domes and ochre walls that is most impressive. By opening with a bird’s-eye view, the film announces its ability to offer the ideal viewpoint for the action that is to follow: from distance we will move to particularities. It is an element of Zeffirelli’s characteristic combining of romantic atmosphere and wholehearted emotion with ‘ordinary’ life. The shooting script offers a different approach. In it the film opens with a view of an ‘ancient wall, full of cracks and flaked, where innumerable generations seem to have left a mark, a message. In this first image there is just a fleeting glimpse of the red and ochre of Verona, mingled with the dark green of moss and damp patches. Here and there large blocks of marble are visible under the layers of plaster, revealing the Roman origin of the city’ (pp. 1–4, sc. 1). Presently the title appears, ‘carved on the wall in a childish, faltering hand’. The view of the city is sombre: ‘this opening scene seems a symphony of greys, whites and blacks. The wind sweeps over the paved street, driving shavings of wood before it in whorls.’ We hear ‘soughing of the wind and the sinister tolling of bells’. The prologue begins, its first lines spoken off-screen, but the speaker turns out to be a boy (Balthazar). As the speech ends, ‘the wind drops, the sun begins to shine again, and colour flows back into the whole scene, as if all the lights had suddenly been turned on. And we hear . . . THE CHEERFUL SHOUTS OF THE SELLERS’ (p. 4, sc. 2). The effect of the story emerging from the fabric of the city, and the prologue’s authoritative address being that of an adolescent boy, would have been different from the ‘omniscient’ camera, the superimposed title and the mature English voice – possibly recognisable as Olivier’s – in the final version. Something of the bleak city remains in the sight of the bare market place before the camera pans left to see the market beginning, and in the stark image of battlemented walls with which the film ends. However, the script’s ending offers a more complex effect, which brings the story full circle, emphasises its dreamlike dimension and adds an important thematic element. The funeral procession would have been accompanied by a stronger statement of the city’s sense of shame in which silence would be broken only by the sound of a tolling bell and ‘the people, moved, feeling guilty’, would be ‘closed in their houses; and peep out from closed windows, or from doorways.’ Now the sky is grey. ‘Black rain clouds hang low over the city, and the crows are flying low, cawing’ (p. 192, sc. 67). After the Prince’s rebuke, the square would have been seen deserted once more, except for Balthazar, who would turn toward the camera to speak the final lines: ‘For never was a story of more woe / Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.’ The


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square would now be ‘as we saw it in the first shot of the film, with the high grey wall in the background, under a grey sky’. At the end of the epilogue, over a shot across the deserted square, would be heard, ‘unsubstantial, fleeting’, various sounds of children talking and laughing, snatches of Romeo’s speeches, a sentence spoken by Juliet, and ‘more clearly than the others, as if wafted by the wind,’ Mercutio’s ‘True I talk of dreams . . .’ The voices would ‘intermingle, soft, mysterious, happy; and then . . . die away into nothingness’, and the words ‘THE END’ would materialise on a wall in the background. This would have returned the story to one of its youngest characters before giving the last word to its most enigmatic. It would also have expressed the notion of a vision and a dream more explicitly than the version filmed. The sense that this is a story that has been written into the fabric of the city – engraved in its walls – is markedly different from the invocation of Shakespearean, high-cultural authority proclaimed by MGM and (possibly without much enthusiasm) Castellani, both of whose versions featured a dignified speaker, respectively a ‘wandering scholar’ and an ‘Elizabethan gentleman’. A

‘TOUGH

SELL’ DEFIES PREDICTIONS

Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet opened in London in March 1968 – it was chosen, like his The Taming of the Shrew the year before, for the Royal Film Performance – and received mixed reviews. The Daily Telegraph headline announced that it was ‘a humdrum affair’, the Daily Express went with ‘Too Young to be in Love’ (both 5 March) and the Observer’s sub-editor settled for ‘Hard on the Bard’ (10 March). The subheading of Variety’s report on the London showing (13 March 1968) seemed to confirm Paramount’s fears: ‘Inexperienced leads, or Franco Zeffirelli’s brash casting experiment, hampers classic tale of love. Kids don’t understand meaning of their lines. A tough sell.’ The body of the review spells out the detail. Neither of the lovers had ‘the experience, looks or vital personality to rise to the pinnacles of the star-cross’d lovers’. Whiting lacked presence, and ‘among his street friends there [was] really nothing to single him out as the male lead’. Boxoffice prospects were not good, and ‘rarely [would] audiences be moved to throat-gulping by the plight of the young couple’. The street fights were ‘lively’ but somehow had the effect of ‘the kind of punch-up all too frequent in routine TV series’. The New York premiere took place in September 1968. By the end of April 1969, when the film had been running at the 568-seat Paris cinema in midtown Manhattan for twenty-nine weeks, the New York Times was reporting gross receipts at the venue of $175,000,

216


$15 million from 773 cinemas in the United States and Canada and $6 million from showings in thirty-one cities abroad (29 April 1969). According to Zeffirelli, the overall negative cost of the movie had been $1.5 million, and its eventual gross was in the region of $50 million. With some satisfaction, he reports that he was made rich and felt vindicated.107 Whatever the grown-ups might think, Romeo and Juliet found its audience. On 13 January the New York Times carried a report on the ‘youth appeal’ of the film. Under a photograph of ‘sad-eyed schoolgirls’ (all with the same centre-parted straight hair as Hussey) leaving the Paris cinema, Harry Gilroy quoted such comments as ‘That movie is right for us’, and described ‘tears in the eyes of some girls and a lost-in-thought look among the boys’. During the screening there had been ‘a good deal of furtive eye-wiping’, and Gilroy observed distinct reactions from different sections of the audience: ‘When Juliet pulled away from Romeo’s first kiss and then came back for more there was a great shout of girlish laughter. And when Romeo, exalted by amorous success, swung one-handed in a tree like Tarzan, the boys roared.’ Reviewers on both sides of the Atlantic acknowledged the recognition factor, albeit often with condescension. This was ‘Zeffirelli’s Swinging Verona’ (The Times, 5 March), Whiting was ‘volatile and good-looking enough’ and ‘with a guitar in his hand he could easily lead a group on ‘‘Top of the Pops’’’ (Daily Express). For those who liked it, this was ‘a turbulent, hot-blooded film that brings the star-crossed lovers and their hate-torn Verona magically into the mood of our own swinging times’ (Birmingham Post). Journalists strove to find contemporary language to catch the ‘swinging’ spirit: in the New York Morning Telegraph, Leo Miskin’s interview with the obviously tired and distracted Hussey and Whiting – on their seemingly endless promotional tour – was headlined ‘Star-Crossed Lovers? Groovy!’ Others who appreciated the film offered appropriate analogies. According to Maurice Rapf in Life magazine (2 September), the Veronese youths were ‘much like the way-out boys on a college campus today’. On Tybalt Rapf seemed to be writing a headmaster’s report: ‘we can see how his bullying could give way in a few years to decent qualities of leadership’. The more knowing review in the New York Villager, by Donald J. Mayerson, thought Zeffirelli had made the lovers ‘pitiable and sad, rather than tragic’, and suggested that ‘one waits for them to smoke marijuana or the Veronese equivalent’ (14 November). Renata Adler, in a welcoming but somewhat equivocal notice in the New York Times (9 October), wondered whether the ‘prose’ (by which she seems to mean the verse) might sound ‘more like West Side Story than perhaps it ought to’ but found it ‘the


217

sweetest, the most contemporary romance on film this year’. The analogy with modern disaffected youth seemed straightforward to most British critics: these were the equivalent of the mods and rockers who had been terrorising seaside resorts on summer weekends, and had ‘the casual, bored insolence you can see between gangs loitering on street corners today’ (Daily Express). Nina Hibbin in the communist Daily Worker (9 March) offered sharper social analysis. In trying to find ‘a with-it equivalent’, Zeffirelli had ‘got his class wires crossed’ by choosing ‘young mods’. His Romeo was ‘a sensitive, drop-out youth in a tough and brutal society’ and Juliet ‘a sexy sub-teenager giggling and come-hithering on her first real date’. The ‘lads’ were ‘like the street gangs inWest Side Story – the Monts and Caps of Verona, egging each other on with cool hipster arrogance until knives are suddenly drawn’. This worked well enough ‘at a lighthearted level’, but lacked understanding: ‘mods and rockers, or Jets and Sharks, are products of working-class conditions in an advanced industrial age’. The parallel with medieval nobility was superficial, ‘and because it has no depth it cannot survive the switch from high spirits to fatality’. The appeal to youth elicited outspoken hostility from Pauline Kael in the New Yorker (19 October) for what she interpreted as an act of cynical exploitation: ‘Apparently to attract teenagers, Zeffirelli loads on what academic bowdlerizers used to take out.’ To Kael’s mind it was ‘a bit ugly to see Shakespeare used for being with it’, and another opportunity for ‘moviemakers [to] drill into the ‘‘generation gap’’ as if it were an oil well’. The cutting of the play removed any sense of rhythm and poetic continuity, and ‘the lines just seem a funny way of talking that is hard to understand’. The leading actors had the uninteresting simplicity of ‘reasonably talented, blank young actors that is so familiar to us from television’, and their emotional range was melodramatic and empty – ‘weeping and lamenting and carrying-on’. Kael’s review attacks the direction as incoherent, insists that for all the use of locations there is no proper sense of place, and discounts the ‘realism’ of the production as operatic cliche´s, ‘horseplay, and opulent clutter, and dust’. Zeffirelli’s theatrical and operatic background prompts her to scorn the ‘operatic love-death’ of the ‘little childlovers, with their baby talk . . . The whole thing cries out for arias, but if it were an opera Zeffirelli might cast non-singers.’ Among the movie influences (or at least echoes) she detects is The Graduate (1967), with its story of young lovers challenged by the vanity, folly and lust of their elders. Like Adler, who remarked that there was a ‘softly homosexual cast over the film’ manifested in the tightness of Juliet’s bodice and ‘a kind of Greek

218


attention lavished on Romeo in the bedroom scene’, Kael hinted at a homoerotic dimension in the treatment of the lovers, especially the ‘rearview-nude Romeo’ and ‘shots that look like ads for The Boy’, referring to a volume of nude photographic studies widely advertised in the liberal press in the late 1960s.108 David Robinson in the Financial Times (8 March) noticed that Zeffirelli ‘uses young men as Busby Berkeley’s musicals used girls. As far as the eye can see, Verona is full of Apollos with Denmark St. Hairdo’s.’ These not very coded references to the director’s sexuality would reappear later in the franker discourse of academic commentary.109 Several other reviewers, less impassioned but no less critical, found fault with the director for trying to combine realism with the stylised language. Eric Shorter in the Daily Telegraph suggested that ‘perhaps romance and naturalism can only be blended efficiently on the stage rather than on the screen where we are so very much closer to things’. Richard Roud in the Guardian (5 March) revived an old argument from the first days of soundfilm Shakespeare: ‘Realistic film-making demands realistic dialogue.’ John Russell Taylor in The Times even suggested that because it was so ‘unreal’, the casting of Howard and Shearer in the 1936 film had paradoxically ‘provided a sort of endistancing convention, if not quite that envisaged by Shakespeare’. In a variation on the familiar argument that the part is beyond the capacity of any actress of the ‘correct’ age, Taylor argued that, being devised for a different kind of theatre, Juliet was a character ‘not conceived in such a way that it can work on the realistic level implied by casting an actress of anything like youth and beauty to play it’. In Films and Filming Michael Armstrong complained of a lack of emotional depth: ‘Olivia Hussey’s substitute for Juliet’s inner conflicts and laments is just one long loud wail of amateur hysterics.’110 In his long Financial Times review, notable for its earnest attempt to be fair, Robinson suggested another explanation for the uneasy sense of tone: ‘[Zeffirelli] costumes and directs his actors in an operatic convention which might substitute for the forfeited romantics of the text; only to undermine his own convention in a pseudo-documentary style of hand-held cameras and informal cutting.’ There was an element of snobbery (class consciousness of a kind not so welcome to the Daily Worker) in some of these responses, together with a hint of prejudice against an Italian director with unashamedly populist and operatic tastes, and the desire to question the credentials of ‘a culture idol and a commercial wow’ (in Robinson’s phrase). Zeffirelli’s film of The Taming of the Shrew had been a sport, a lavish production of a farce which was not to everyone’s taste but in which little of the language mattered:


219

there were lyrical moments, but it was not a ‘poetic’ play with a repertoire of familiar lines and speeches. Romeo and Juliet was another matter. Zeffirelli’s Old Vic production had been attacked by many of the critics for its treatment of the verse and what some regarded as the callowness of its young leading players. Alec McCowen had been accused of gabbling his lines as Mercutio. Now Taylor dismissed McEnery’s Mercutio as ‘an exercise in gutter camp’, but ruefully accepted that ‘the new ‘‘standard English’’ accent, with its suburban vowels’ might grate a little yet was now ‘unavoidable and must be put up with’. Harold Hobson was relieved to find at least one actor – Robert Stephens – able as the Prince to ‘give the impression that the play is about the Italian nobility’, while ‘too many of the others trail around with them the flat vowels of red-brick universities’ (Christian Science Monitor, 15 March). In many of the less favourable notices, complaints about the technical limitations of Hussey and Whiting shade into complaints about class, either specifically historical (they are not credible as Veronese aristocrats) or generally contemporary (youth and/or verse speaking are not what they used to be). Less concerned with the specifics of accent and technique than with a general principle, Adler was worried by ‘the business of locating Shakespeare so firmly in a place, some scenes, and bodies, but not in language quite’. Among left-leaning critics, such as Kael and the Daily Worker’s Hibbin, there appears to have been a suspicion that the filmmakers were simply cashing in on one of the ‘softer’ versions of radicalism, participating in what Theodore Roszak identified in The Making of a Counter-Culture (1969) as ‘a progressive ‘‘adolescentization’’ of dissenting thought and culture’.111 ‘Youth’ was becoming, in Christopher Booker’s words, ‘an almost universal symbol for the sense of innovation and awakening that was affecting every part of society’, especially in advertising, where ‘youth was identified with feverish excitement, novelty and change’.112 Since the mid-1950s, particularly in the wake of West Side Story (on stage in 1957 and film in 1960) but also as part of a general shaking up of the British and American theatre, productions of Romeo and Juliet had tended to emphasise the similarities between the play’s lovers and modern teenagers, rather than present them as ideal figures in a world of exemplary cultural achievement – the Italian Renaissance.113 Zeffirelli’s stage production had been an important contribution to this development, but his film was to be even more influential, if only through its wide distribution and commercial success. Like Castellani’s film, it signals a break with the tradition (reflected in MGM’s) of treating the play as a vehicle for accomplished performances of idealised Renaissance

220


behaviour on the part of established stars. But it also reflects, to a greater extent that Castellani’s more determinedly historical film, the internationalisation of popular (that is, youth) culture during the postwar period.114 The difference may be a consequence of the film’s own period as much as of divergent outlooks on the part of the directors. Whereas Castellani’s Romeo and Juliet are decorous and somewhat courtly lovers confined by an oppressive society, Zeffirelli’s seem to be representatives of modern youth – impulsive and tentatively passionate but amiable – caught up in a generational conflict which seems marginal to their view of the world. In one of the earliest academic articles on the film, Albert R. Cirillo interprets Zeffirelli’s direction as suggesting ‘that the means of communication between the young, or those who understand the young, is not essentially words, as it is for older generation, but gesture and action’, and supports this by reference to the filming of the lovers’ meeting with its emphasis on looks and hands.115 Sarah Munson Deats found images reminiscent of Vietnam (‘wailing women clutching babies while the maimed and wounded are dragged away’) in the first brawl in this ‘Shakespeare for the Sixties’, and decided that the film was designed for a ‘visually sophisticated, verbally na¨ıve audience’.116 Writing in the mid-1970s, Jorgens identified the innocence of the lovers as being of the film’s own era, the previous decade: ‘They are Adam and Eve in the Edenic greenery of Capulet’s garden and never lose the golden aura of innocence that isolates them from reality.’ At the same time, he recognises a different and specific dimension of the violent teenagers in Verona’s streets, from which even the flower-wielding Romeo was not immune: ‘They are reckless, bored, cynical – children of the feud, just as a generation of Americans were children of Vietnam. They are implicated in keeping the feud going. It provides an outlet for feelings of jealousy, insecurity, and rage not merely at the old and everything they are responsible for but at mortality in all its forms.’117 Jorgens’s formulation suggests how far the play’s capacity for reflecting contemporary social tensions and aspirations had developed since the 1930s, and even since the early 1950s. Rather than dignified figures in a dream of good manners marred by misfortune (like Howard and Shearer) or well-mannered victims caught up in an inimical world (like Harvey and Shentall), Hussey and Whiting seem unconscious of a purpose in life other than satisfying a desire that the film represents as innocent as well as authentically sensual. Both characters are somewhat simpler than they can be in performances drawing on more of Shakespeare’s script. Without the potion scene or ‘Gallop apace’, Juliet is less eloquent and


221

complex, and without his scene with the Apothecary or his fight with Paris, Romeo simply develops less in his final scenes. Both the earlier films take on the notions of training in eloquence and courtliness that are associated with Renaissance Italy, and offer lovers who are credibly the products of a sophisticated artistic and intellectual background. In Zeffirelli’s film they are appealing young people, following instinct. Together with the attractively picturesque surroundings, and the dust and heat and operatic emotions, this makes his film a dream of adolescence in Renaissance dress, reversing the polarity of both earlier versions. The planned opening and closing would have reinforced this effect, while at the same time suggesting continuity with the past – a story written into the fabric of a city, absorbed rather than studied, and one that is experienced as if it were a dream.

Appendix: Unpublished script materials

Scripts referred to in the text are listed in chronological order for each film, with page totals. After the initial stages of development, page and scene/ shot numbers are usually constant through a series of drafts, to ensure accuracy of reference during production. Additional pages and scenes/shots are normally indicated by letters (‘1A’, etc.). These are commonly issued on coloured paper by the script (or ‘continuity’) supervisor. Practice varies regarding the terms used by studios to describe the status of drafts (‘Complete’, ‘Final’, etc.): the classification here is that given on the document, with the exception of ‘shooting script’, which here indicates scripts used during filming. ‘Release’ scripts, or ‘cutting continuities’ are an account of the state of the completed film, used to check copies or (in the case of the Albany collection) issued for precensorship and certification purposes. Where copies are labelled, numbered, date-stamped or annotated by issuers or users, the appropriate details have been included. For the 1935 A Midsummer Night’s Dream and 1936 Romeo and Juliet, draft material not amounting to a full version of the script has been included. The following abbreviations are used for public collections: AMPAS: Albany: BFI: BSL: Folger: NYPL: USC:

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Margaret Herrick Library, Los Angeles New York State Education Department archives, Albany, New York British Film Institute Birmingham Shakespeare Library The Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC New York Public Library, Billy Rose Theatre Collection, Lincoln Center Department of Cinema and Television, University of Southern California, Los Angeles 222

Appendix WBA/USC: WCFTR:

223

Warner Bros. Archives, University of Southern California, Los Angeles Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, Madison, Wisconsin HAMLET,

1996

1. (Private collection): ‘Hamlet by William Shakespeare. Adapted for the Screen by Kenneth Branagh.’ ‘First Draft.’ 1 September 1995. 217pp. 2. (Private Collection) ‘Hamlet by William Shakespeare. Adapted for the Screen by Kenneth Branagh.’ ‘First draft’ [sic]. 20 September 1995. 194pp. Pink and blue replacement pages from 8 and 15 January. HENRY V,

1944

1. BSL: S322.8F. ‘Revised Treatment for Technicolor Film . . . Copy no. 7.’ Undated. 64pp. Donated by Laurence Olivier, March 1944. Does not include battle sequence. 2. BFI: S106. ‘Shooting script’ (identified thus on title-page). Undated. 150pp., 293 scs. Shows detailed camera positions, etc., and includes battle sequence. 3. Folger: Shooting script. 150pp. Undated. Inscribed on title-page ‘To the Folger Shakespeare Library / The Respectful wishes of / Its humblest servant / L. Olivier / 1946.’ Corresponds to BFI: S106. 4. NYPL: CTR File #1038. ‘Shooting script’ (identified thus on cover and title-page) in red paper covers. Undated. 148pp. Some pencil notes and queries, including deletion of scenes 101–3 (Fluellen, Gower, Pistol and the reference to Bardolph’s execution). Battle sequence includes references to ‘sketches’ for action. This copy was a gift from the BFI and is marked ‘dup’ (i.e. ‘duplicate’?) on top left corner of title-page. (The same number of scenes/shots – 292 – as no. 3.) 5. BFI: S107. Release script. Undated. 87pp. Shows lengths of footage and number of frames in each shot. 6. BSL: Release script. Undated. 87pp. (Corresponds to BFI script S107. Bound with ‘Revised Treatment’.) HENRY V,

1989

(Private Collection): ‘Henry V by William Shakespeare. Adapted for the screen by Kenneth Branagh.’ October 1988. 79pp. Pink pages added for alterations 24 October and on 4 and 17 November 1988.

224

Appendix A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM,

1935

1. Folger: Robert Hamilton Ball Collection (uncatalogued). Photocopy (from SUNY) of 113-page draft in German and English on facing pages. Dated ‘8/11/1934’ (i.e. 11 August 1934). Notes by Max Reinhardt. 2. WBA/USC: Undated nine-page typescript outline, corresponding to the above, in German and English versions. Includes Bottom’s wife (he is ‘married to a dragon’) and a version of the ending in which Puck ‘leads the various couples into their rooms’. 3. WCTFR: Box-folder 258/3. Undated. 296pp. Very full directions for emphases, motivations, etc., of a kind not represented in other drafts after 11 August (1). Possibly developed as a Regiebuch for the director(s), according to Reinhardt’s habitual theatrical practice. It includes full versions of the ‘Fog Dance’ and the ‘Nocturne’, with references to ‘Prof. Korngold’, which suggest that it was completed late in autumn 1934, at the same time as a series of less voluminous versions that led to the shooting script distributed on 6 December. 4. NYPL: MFLM þ (Midsummer). Title-page missing. Undated. [?October 1934] 113pp. Paper cover marked ‘FINAL’ in top right corner and numbered 98, with a stamped request for return to Stenographic dept. A pencil note attributes the script to Charles Kenyon and Mary McCall, Jr., on the evidence of their credits, but there is no internal evidence that this copy was theirs. Some pencil emendations of dialogue, and a music stave pencilled on the first page. The lovers’ quarrel scene is inserted out of sequence after page 67, and two inserted typed pages (following p. 74) give details of the lovers’ awakening scene. At the end in pencil, after ‘FINIS’, is ‘Aren’t you Glad. God Damn it!! This marks the end of a career! For all of us.’ On the verso of the final page is a pencil list of twenty-eight names, possibly guests for a party, including several film stars (Spencer Tracy, Jean Harlow, Jack Oakie, Will Rogers, Janet Gaynor), couples and families. 5. WCFTR: Box-folder 258/4. ‘Temporary’: no author shown. 3 November 1934. 115pp. 6. Folger: ‘Rev. Temp.’ ‘11/26/1934’ (i.e. 26 November 1934). 115pp. Copy number 53. ‘This script is not final and is given to you for advance information only.’ Bookplate of James Cagney. Some pencil notes. 7. WBA/USC: 2078. 113-page draft. ‘Rev.Temp.’ dated ‘11/26/34’ (i.e. 26 November 1934). Copy number 37. 8. WCTFR: Box-folder 258/5. ‘Rev Temp.’ 11/26/1934’ (i.e. 26 November 1934). 113pp.

Appendix

225

9. WBA/USC: 2078. ‘Final.’ ‘12/6/34’ (i.e. 6 December 1934). 113pp. Copy number 41. (Identical with BSL: S338.8Q). 10. WCFTR: Box-folder 258/6. ‘Final’: no author shown, 6 December 1934. 113pp. 11. BSL: S338.8Q. ‘Final.’ ‘12/6/1934’ (i.e. 6 December 1934). 113pp. 12. WCTFR: Box-folder 258/7. Undated (probably late March 1935). 119pp. This copy incorporates changes made during filming: pages have been renumbered and in some cases replaced with pages typed on a different machine from that of the base script. The ‘Amazon’ pages are omitted, as are Helena being told of Hermia’s planned flight, all scenes with Bottom’s wife and the payment of the craftsmen after their play. A full castlist is included, in the ‘newer’ typeface. 13. Folger: Robert Hamilton Ball collection (uncatalogued).Two dialogue transcripts, one from the fifteen-reel version (dated 1935) and another from the twelve-reel version (dated 1936) obtained from Warner Bros. by Ball. 14. Albany: ‘Dialogue Transcript’ of the fifteen-reel version deposited with the New York State Education Department by Warner Bros. (stamped ‘September 18 1935’).

ROMEO AND JULIET,

1936

1. AMPAS: 879. Conference notes. 27 May 1935 by Marian Ainslee. 4 pp. (Sketches an opening for the film.) 2. AMPAS: R82T. ‘Temporary Incomplete.’ 67pp. ‘From Talbot Jennings June 27, 1935.’ Copy number 0917. The copy is on yellow paper and is annotated in pencil by two hands: one annotates throughout with minor alteration and corrections of typos, etc., the other, beginning at p. 38, comments on dialogue and the time scheme, and notes the play’s act and scene at the top right hand of the page. A label inside the cover, ‘Prof. Murray’, suggests the second group of notes is by John Murray Tucker, employed as an adviser. 3. AMPAS: R830. Draft on yellow paper. 93 pp. ‘Talbot Jennings. September 4, 1935.’ 4. AMPAS: R831. ‘Temporary Complete.’ 93pp. ‘From Talbot Jennings. Sept. 23rd, 1935.’ Numbered 1114 and B2121. Notes in pencil under date stamp indicate September 27 and 30, October 1 and November 1. 5. AMPAS: R834. ‘Temporary Complete.’ 93 pp. Also labelled ‘Dia[logue] Cont[inuity] From Talbot Jennings. Nov. 13, 1935.’ In this script most of the verse dialogue is printed as prose for the first time.

226

Appendix

6. NYPL: 8-MFLM þ (ROMEO). ‘Complete’ 93 pp. Copy no. 3230. Pink pages with alterations on 23 and 25 December 1935, and white pages with alterations on 16 November, 12 and 23 December 1935 and 2 February 1936. The body of the script is identical with (7) below except that it lacks the alterations dated 12 February. This copy also has an autographed cover. 7. BSL: S345.8Q. ‘Complete’, with cast signatures on cover. ‘Script okayed by Mr Thalberg.’ ‘From Talbot Jennings, 13 November 1935.’ 93pp. A copy (no. 3236) of the ‘Complete’ script of 13 November 1935, bearing cast and production team signatures on its cover. Corrections (pink and white pages) up to 12 February 1936. This was acquired ‘per Mervyn McPherson Esq., Empire Theatre Chambers, Leicester Square’ in April 1937. 8. USC: fSP R763. ‘Complete.’ ‘From Talbot Jennings. November 13, 1935.’ ‘File Copy.’ ‘Complete.’ 93pp. Changes on pink pages dated from 16 November 1935 to 12 February 1936. 9. AMPAS: R835. ‘File Copy.’ ‘Complete.’ Copy no. 0578. ‘From Talbot Jennings. November 13, 1935.’ 93pp. With pencil annotation ‘Ok to MAR 4 1936.’ This has the fullest set of alterations to the ‘Complete’ working script of 13 November. 10. NYPL: CTR File #339. Mimeographed copy (ninety-three pages) made for use in the Department of Motion Pictures, Washington Square College of Arts and Sciences, New York University. A note on the front warns students that grades will not be given until it is returned. 11. NYPL: MFLN þ M59 [MGM Cutting Continuities. 1936 no. 22]. ‘Cutting Continuity’, by Margaret Booth (editor), recording the dialogue and soundtrack content of the reels of the released film, and noting footage, etc. ROMEO AND JULIET,

1954

1. BSL: S345.8F. Shooting script. Undated. [1953–4]. 129pp. Signature of Laurence Harvey (Romeo) on title-page. Some marks in red and black pencil. Bound with a collection of publicity material for the film, including posters. 2. NYPL: MFLM þ (Romeo and Juliet). Shooting script. Undated. [1953–4] 133pp. (Same number of shots – 1,119 – as 129-page script.) ROMEO AND JULIET,

1968

1. (Private collection). Shooting script. ‘Adapted for the screen by Franco Brusati and Franco Zeffirelli.’ Undated. [1967] 195pp. Used by Leonard

Appendix

227

Whiting (Romeo), with notes by him. The scene numbers represent whole sequences rather than individual elements of the action. 2. BSL: S345.8Q. Release script, unpaginated. Undated. [1968] Signature of Whiting on title-page. Records footage (1,244 þ 4), approximate running time (two hours and nineteen minutes) and shot-by-shot contents of the sixteen reels.

Filmography

For fuller details, see the filmographies by Luke McKernan and Olwen Terris, eds., Walking Shadows. Shakespeare in the National Film and Television Archives (London: BFI, 1994), and Kenneth S. Rothwell and Annabelle Henkin Melzer, eds., Shakespeare on Screen: An International Filmography and Videography (London: Mansell, 1990). Full cast and technical credits, identifying several cast members not credited on screen and in some cases supplying other bibliographical information, can be found in the American Film Institute’s catalogue, which can be consulted and searched online by members of the AFI via the website (http:// www.afi.com/numbers/catalog). These sources have been checked against DVD or VHS copies of the film. Where information is available, cast and crew members without on-screen credits are indicated with an asterisk. Each film’s duration is that of its first release. A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM USA

(WARNER

BROS.,

1935)

Dir. Max Reinhardt and William Dieterle; script Charles Kenyon, Mary MCall, Jr.; designs Anton Grot (sets), Max Reé (costumes); music Felix Mendelssohn, arranged Erich Wolfgang Korngold; choreography Bronislava Nijinska and *Nini Theilade; photography Hal Mohr. 132 minutes. CAST: Ian Hunter (Theseus); Veree Teasdale (Hippolyta); Hobart Cavanaugh (Philostrate); Dick Powell (Lysander); Ross Alexander (Demetrius); Olivia de Havilland (Hermia); Jean Muir (Helena); Grant Mitchell (Egeus); Frank McHugh (Quince); Dewey Robinson (Snug); James Cagney (Bottom); Joe E. Brown (Flute); Hugh Herbert (Snout); Otis Harlan (Starveling); Arthur Treacher (Epilogue); Victor Jory (Oberon); Anita Louise (Titania); Nini Theilade (First Fairy); Mickey Rooney (Puck); *Katherine Frey (Pease-blossom); *Helen Westcott 228

Filmography

229

(Cobweb); *Fred Sale, Jr. (Moth); *Billy Barty (Mustard-seed); *Sheila Brown (Indian Prince); [Sara Haden Bottom’s Wife]; *Angelo Rossito (Elf musician) HENRY V

(RANK/TWO

CITIES, UK

1944)

Dir. Laurence Olivier (‘in close association with . . . Reginald Beck’); script Laurence Olivier and Alan Dent; designs Paul Sherriff (sets), Roger Furse (costumes); music William Walton; photography Robert Krasker. 137 mins. CAST: Laurence Olivier (King Henry V); Robert Newton (Pistol); Leslie Banks (Chorus); Reneé Asherson (Katherine); Esmond Knight (Fluellen); Leo Genn (Constable); Felix Aylmer (Archbishop of Canterbury); Ralph Truman (Montjoy); Nicholas Hannen (Exeter); Harcourt Williams (King of France); Robert Helpmann (Bishop of Ely); Ivy St Helier (Alice); Freda Jackson (Mistress Quickly); Ernest Thesiger (Duc de Berri, the French Ambassador); Jimmy Hanley (Williams); Max Adrian (Dauphin); John Laurie (Captain Jamie); Valentine Dyall (Burgundy); George Robey (Falstaff); Francis Lister (Orleans); Niall McGinnis (Captain MacMorris); Russell Thorndike (Bourbon); Roy Emmerton (Bardolph); Michael Shepley (Captain Gower); Griffith Jones (Salisbury); Morland Graham (Erpingham); Arthur Hambling (Bates); Brian Nissen (Court); Frederick Cooper (Nym); Gerald Case (Westmoreland); Michael Warre (Gloucester); Janet Burnell (Queen of France); Frank Tickle (Governor of Harfleur); George Cole (Boy); Jonathan Field (French messenger); Ernest Hare (Priest); Vernon Greeves (English herald) ROMEO AND JULIET

(MGM,

USA

1936)

Dir. George Cukor; script Talbot Jennings; designs Cedric Gibbons (sets), Oliver Messel and Adrian (costumes); music Herbert Sthothart; choreography Agnes De Mille; photography William Daniels. 120, 127 or 130 mins. (The BFI copy is 123 mins.) CAST: Norma Shearer (Juliet); Leslie Howard (Romeo); John Barrymore (Mercutio); Edna May Oliver (Nurse); Basil Rathbone (Tybalt); C. Aubrey Smith (Capulet); Andy Devine (Peter); Conway Tearle (Prince of Verona); Ralph Forbes (Paris); Henry Kolker (Friar Laurence); Robert Warwick (Montague); Virginia Hammond (Lady Montague); Violet Kemble Cooper (Lady Capulet); *Maurice Murphy (Balthazar)

230

Filmography ROMEO AND JULIET

(RANK/VERONA 1954)

PRODUCTIONS, UK/ITALY,

Dir. Renato Castellani; script Renato Castellani; ‘architectural consultant’ Gastone Simonetti; Leonor Fini (costumes); music Roman Vlad; choreography Medy Obolensky; photography Robert Krasker. 138 mins. CAST: Laurence Harvey (Romeo); Susan Shentall (Juliet); Flora Robson (Nurse); Mervyn Johns (Friar Laurence); Bill Travers (Benvolio); Enzo Fiermonte (Tybalt); Ubaldo Zollo (Mercutio); Giovanni Rota (Prince of Verona); Sebastian Cabot (Capulet); Lydia Sherwood (Lady Capulet); Norman Wooland (Paris); Giuilio Garbinetto (Montague); Niette Zocchi (Lady Montague); Dagmar Josipovich (Rosaline); Lucian Bodi (Friar John); John Gielgud (Prologue); with Carla Diaz, Tom Nicholls, Pietro Capanna, Giovanni Gavagnin, Fausto Signoretti, Giovanni Testa, Anna Maria Leone. ROMEO AND JULIET

(PARAMOUNT/DINO

DE LAURENTIIS/ VERONA PRODUZIONE/ BRITISH HOME ENTERTAINMENT, UK/ITALY

1968)

Dir. Franco Zeffirelli; script Franco Brusati, Masolino D’Amico; music Nino Rota; designs Renzo Mongiardino (sets), Danilo Donati (costumes); choreography Alberto Testa; photography Pasqualino de Santis. 124 mins. CAST: Leonard Whiting (Romeo); Olivia Hussey (Juliet); Milo O’Shea (Friar Laurence); Michael York (Tybalt); John McEnery (Mercutio); Pat Heywood (Nurse); Natasha Parry (Lady Capulet); Paul Hardwick (Capulet); Robert Stephens (Prince of Verona); Keith Skinner (Balthazar); Richard Warwick (Gregory); Roberto Bisacco (Paris); Dyson Lovell (Sampson); Ugo Barbone (Abraham); Antonio Pierfederici (Montague); Esmerelda Ruspoli (Lady Montague); Aldo Miranda (Friar John); Dario Tanzini (Page to Tybalt); *Roy Holder (Peter); *Paola Tedesca (Rosaline); *Laurence Olivier (Prologue); with Roberto Antonelli, Carlo Palmucci. [Some sources, including AFI, credit Murray Head as speaker of the prologue, but this is presumably based on original casting rather than the completed film.]

Notes

INTRODUCTION

1. On ‘intensified continuity’, see David Bordwell, The Way Hollywood Tells It: Story and Style in Modern Movies (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 2006), pp. 121–38. 2. Erwin Panofsky, ‘Style and Medium in the Motion Pictures’, in Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, eds., Film Theory and Criticism, 6th edn (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 290–302; p. 291. 3. Colin McGinn, The Power of Movies: How Screen and Mind Interact (New York: Pantheon Books, 2005), p. 170, and Stanley Cavell, The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film (enlarged edn, Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1979), p. 67. 4. McGinn, The Power of Movies, p. 202. 5. Leo Braudy, The World in a Frame: What We See in Films (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1984), p. 73. 6. Laura Mulvey’s seminal essay, ‘Visual Pleasure and the Narrative Cinema’ (1975), is the starting point for most discussions of the psychology and politics of looking in and at films: it is conveniently reprinted in Braudy and Cohen, eds., Film Theory and Criticism, pp. 837–48. 7. On this aspect of Hollywood authorship, see Alan David Vertrees, Selznick’s Vision: ‘Gone With the Wind’ and Hollywood Filmmaking (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997). The landmark study of artistic agency in the studio era is Thomas Schatz, The Genius of the System: Hollywood Film-Making in the Studio Era (London: Faber and Faber, 1998). It builds on investigations of the working methods and techniques of Hollywood by David Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson in The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (London: Routledge, 1985). 8. The most influential account of the star phenomenon has been Richard Dyer’s work, in particular Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society (Houndmills and London: Macmillan, 1986) and Stars (1979; new edn, London: BFI, 1998). 9. Two exhibition catalogues edited by Jane Martineau are particularly informative on the Victorian ‘fairy’ mode: Victorian Fairy Painting (London: Royal Academy of Arts/Merrell Holberton, 1997) and Shakespeare in Art (London: Merrell Publishers Ltd., 2003). 231

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Notes to pages 6–12

10. In the mid- 2000s, as VHS has faded rapidly from the scene to be replaced by DVD, a film’s theatrical release is taking on the status of advertising for other channels of distribution. See Barbara Klinger, Beyond the Multiplex: Cinema, New Technologies and the Home (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 2006). 11. On more recent films, see Emma French, Selling Shakespeare to Hollywood: The Marketing of Filmed Shakespeare Adaptations from 1989 into the New Millennium (Milton Keynes: University of Hertfordshire Press, 2006). 12. Alison Castle, ed., The Kubrick Archives (London and New York: Taschen, 2005). 13. For details of the scripts referred to, see the Appendix, p. 223. In the sequences cited here, the draft of 1 September 1995 (‘1st draft’) and the script taken on to the studio floor (20 September 1995) are in agreement. Page and scene references are to the former. 14. The producers’ manipulation of gossip has often been discussed: a concise and amusing account is given by Leo Rosten in his invaluable sociological study of the studio system at its height, Hollywood: The Movie Colony, The Movie Makers (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1941), pp. 109–21. See also Samantha Barbas, Movie Crazy: Fans, Stars and the Cult of Celebrity (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001). 15. A major contribution to the use of such material is that of Rudy Behlmer; see the works by him listed in the Bibliography. 16. Michael Anderegg’s Orson Welles, Shakespeare and Popular Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999) gives a full account of the factors as they bear on Welles’s Shakespeare films. See also Simon Callow, Orson Welles: Hello Americans (London: Jonathan Cape, 2006), chs. 22 and 23 (on Macbeth), and Clinton Heylin, Despite the System: Orson Welles vs. the Hollywood Studios (London: Canongate Books, 2005). 17. Kenneth Branagh, ‘Hamlet’ by William Shakespeare (London: Chatto and Windus, 1996), p 36. This script was prepared on the basis of the continuity script at the end of principal photography; the textual decisions are summarised in my article ‘Kenneth Branagh’s Film of Hamlet : The Textual Choices’, in Shakespeare Bulletin 15.2 (Spring 1997), pp. 37–8.

1 Material in the Warner Bros. Archives at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, is identified by ‘WBA/USC’. For a summary of the script material, see Appendix, pp. 224–5. 1. The play’s part in Reinhardt’s career is summarised by Leonhard M. Fielder, Reinhardt, Shakespeare and the Dreams’, in Margaret Jacobs and John Warren, eds., Max Reinhardt: The Oxford Symposium (Oxford: Oxford Polytechnic, 1986), pp. 78–95; Gary Jay Williams, Our Moonlight Revels: ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ in the Theatre (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1997), ch. 8; and J. L. Styan, Max Reinhardt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982),


2. 3.

4.

5. 6.

7. 8. 9.

10.

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pp. 54–61. Responses to the 1905 production and some subsequent revivals are discussed in a valuable article by Gu¨nther Ru¨hle: ‘Der Sommernachtstraum Max Reinhardts’, Shakespeare Jahrbuch (West) 1976, pp. 100–14. See also Simon Williams, Shakespeare on the German Stage, Volume I : 1586–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 206–11, and Wilhelm Hortmann, Shakespeare on the German Stage: The Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 30–43. Estimates of the number of identifiably distinct ‘productions’ vary. Allowing for alterations during the life of a particular production and adaptations made for different venues and casts, the total is probably somewhere between twelve and eighteen. Lady Diana Cooper, The Light of Common Day (London: Hart-Davis, 1959) p. 20. The closest Shakespeare play to this total was The Merchant of Venice, with 363 performances. Statistics from the second volume of the work by Hans Rothe and Franz Horch: Max Reinhardt 25 Jahre Deutsches Theater: . . . In Verbindung mit einem zweiten Band von Franz Horch ‘Die Spielpla¨ne Max Reinhardts 1905 bis 1930’ (Mu¨nchen: Piper Verlag, 1930). Max Reinhardt, Ich bin nichts als ein Theatermann: Briefe, Reden, Aufsa¨tze, Interviews, Gespra¨che, Auszu¨ge aus Regiebu¨chern, ed. Hugo Fetting (Berlin (DDR): Henschelverlag, 1989) (hereafter referred to as Theatermann), p. 426. Ibid., p. 149. William Dieterle, Der Kampf um die Story: Die Hollywood- und Lebenserrinerungen des Schauspielers und Regisseurs William Dieterle ed. Willi Brennig (Ludwigshafen am Rhein: Vero¨ffentlichungen des Stadtarchivs Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Band 29, 2001), pp. 119–20. Dieterle reproduced the telegram and its translation in a two-page advertisement in the Hollywood Reporter coinciding with the New York premiere, on 9 October 1935. Williams, Our Moonlight Revels, p. 116. Quoted by Douglas Gomery in The Hollywood Studio System: A History (London: BFI, 2005), p. 133. On the studio’s working practices during the 1930s, the most informative sources are Nick Roddick, A New Deal in Entertainment: Warner Brothers in the 1930s (2nd edn, London: BFI, 1983), which quotes extensively from the WBA/USC material, and Rudi Behlmer, ed., Inside Warner Bros.: 1935–1951 (New York: Viking, 1985), which reprints many memos from the period (though none from this film.) See also Tino Balio, ed., The American Film Industry (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976); Thomas Schatz, The Genius of the System, Hollywood Film-Making in the Studio Era (London: Faber and Faber, 1998), chs. 9 and 12; and Tino Balio, Grand Design: Hollywood as a Modern Business Enterprise, 1930–1939 (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1993). On Hal Wallis, who figures prominently in the progress of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, see Bernard F. Dick, Hal Wallis, Producer to the Stars (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004), and Hall Wallis and Charles Higham, Star-Maker: The Autobiography of Hall Wallis (New York: Macmillan, 1980). Arthur Kahane, Tagebuch des Dramaturgen (Berlin: Verlag Bruno Cassirer 1928), p. 120.

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11. Herbert Ihering, ‘Reinhardt, Jessner, Piscator oder Klassikermord,’ in Ihering, Der Kampf ums Theater und andere Streitschriften, 1918 bis 1933 (Berlin (DDR): Henschelverlag, 1974), pp. 305–24, 310–11, and Alfred Kerr, review of the 1913 production in Gu¨nther Ru¨hle, ed., ‘Ich sage, was zu sagen ist’: Theaterkritiken 1893–1919 (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1993), pp. 534–8. 12. The classic study is Lotte H. Eisner’s The Haunted Screen, Expressionism in German Cinema and the Influence of Max Reinhardt, (rev. English-language edn, London: Thames and Hudson, 1969). See in particular ch. 3, ‘The spell of light: the influence of Max Reinhardt’. 13. Scott Eyman, The Speed of Sound: Hollywood and the Talkie Revolution, 1926–1930 (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), p. 167. 14. Review in the New York Times, 18 February 1913; reprinted in George C. Pratt, ed., Spellbound in Darkness: A History of the Silent Film (rev. edn, New York: New York Graphical Society, 1973), pp. 120–1. 15. Gottfried Reinhardt, Der Liebhaber : Erinnerungen seines Sohnes Gottfreid Reinhardt an Max Reinhardt (Mu¨nchen: Droemer Knaur, 1971), p. 257; unidentified clipping NYPL 1921. 16. Reinhardt, Der Liebhaber, pp. 249ff. 17. Max Reinhardt, ‘Screen Vision’, in Stanley Hochmann, ed., From Quasimodo to Scarlett O’Hara: A National Board of Review Anthology, 1920–1940 (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1982), pp. 373–5; p. 374. 18. Reinhardt, Der Liebhaber, p. 256: ‘Reinhardt machte Kasse mit Kunst, Hollywood machte Kasse mit oder ohne Kunst.’ 19. Dieterle, Ein Sprung auf die Bu¨hne, p. 106. 20. Reinhardt, Der Liebhaber, p. 254. 21. John Corbin, ‘The Miracle, fine Spectacle, Shown’, New York Times, 17 January 1924. 22. Edda Fuhrich-Leiser and Gisela Prossnitz, eds., Max Reinhardt in Amerika (Salzburg: Otto Mu¨ller Verlag, 1976). The relevant documents are on pp. 180–203. 23. Siegfried Jacobsohn, article in Die Bu¨hne on 14 November 1913, reprinted in Jahre der Bu¨hne: Theaterkritische Schriften (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt 1965), pp. 112–13. 24. Siegfried Jacobsohn, Max Reinhardt (Berlin: Erich Reiss Verlag, 1921), p. 3. 25. Styan, Max Reinhardt, p. 57. 26. Max Epstein, Max Reinhardt (Berlin: Verlag von Winckelmann So¨hne, 1918), pp. 88–9; Williams, Shakespeare on the German Stage, p. 210; and Karl Kraus, quoted by Michael Patterson, ‘Reinhardt and Theatrical Expression – The Fourth Wall Removed’, in Jacobs and Warren, Max Reinhardt: The Oxford Symposium, pp. 48–54; p. 51. 27. Extracts from the promptbook are published in Reinhardt, Theatermann, pp. 375–85, and in Knut Boeser and Renata Vatkova´, Max Reinhardt in Berlin (Berlin: Hentrich im Verlag Fro¨lich und Kaufman, 1986), pp. 171–7. 28. Felix Poppenberg, ‘Reinhardts Bu¨hnen’, Die Schaubu¨hne 2.10 (19 April 1906), pp. 462–72; p. 467: ‘Den Zuschauern wird dabei die echte


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Sommernachtstraumillusion [ermittelt], Sonntagskinder zu sein und alle Laüte der Nature mitschwingend zu verstehen.’ 29. Heinz Herald, Max Reinhardt: Ein Versuch u¨ber das Wesen der modernen Regie (Berlin: Felix Lehmann Verlag, 1915), p. 128. 30. New York Times, 17 November 1927. 31. Benno Fleischmann, Max Reinhardt: Die Wiedererweckung des Barocktheaters (Wien: Paul Neff Verlag, 1948), p. 178. Some of Ree’s designs are reproduced in Boeser and Vatkova´, Max Reinhardt in Berlin, pp. 172–3. 32. Ernst Stern, My Life, My Stage (London: Victor Gollancz, 1951), p. 63. See also Epstein, Max Reinhardt, p. 143. 33. See Appendix, p. 224 (script of 11 August 1934). 34. New York Sun, 22 January 1937. 35. Felix Felton, ‘Max Reinhardt in England’, Theatre Research/Recherches Theátraˆles 5.3 (1963), pp. 141–2. (Felton appeared in the Oxford production.) 36. A castlist and the daily reports (WBA/USC) show that Sheila Brown played the ‘Indian Prince’. In Anger: The Unauthorized Biography of Kenneth Anger (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), pp. 11–13, Bill Landis notes that Anger claimed that he had been present as the Indian Prince on set when one of the fairies’ dresses caught fire. His having played the role was ‘the biggest keystone of Anger’s personal mythology, and his permanent love-hate link to Hollywood.’ 37. See Williams, Our Moonlight Revels, p. 171, which reproduces a photograph of the final court scene. 38. Ru¨hle, ‘Der Sommernachtstraum Max Reinhardts’, pp. 107 (on the mortals’ costumes) and 104. 39. Gusti Adler, Max Reinhardt, sein Leben: Biographie unter Zugrundelegung seiner Notizen fu¨r einer Selbstbiographie (Salzburg: Festungsverlag, 1964), pp. 246–8. 40. Ibid., p. 196. 41. Dennis Kennedy, Looking at Shakespeare: A Visual History of Twentieth-Century Performance (2nd edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 59. 42. Dieterle, Der Kampf um die Story, pp. 107ff. 43. WBA/USC: Publicity file. ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Special Broadcast. One Hour’, p. 6. The pressbook (BSL) includes a half-hour radio script, ‘A Dream Comes True’, along similar lines. (The same title was used for a promotional short subject for use in cinemas.) 44. Gottfried Reinhardt (Der Liebhaber, p. 264) quotes a fee of $100, 000; the contract and budget in WBA/USC show that the original arrangement was for $75,000, with the proviso that Helene Thimig, Reinhardt’s wife, receive $25,000 as his assistant (WBA/USC: Legal file 12634). 45. Gottfried wished that his father had been given an American assistant, who would have been less likely to defer to him, but in the event this seems not to have been a problem. (Fuhrich-Leiser and Prossnitz, Max Reinhardt in Amerika, p. 208, citing an unpublished letter from Gottfried to his father.) 46. The relevant Hollywood Reporter issues are: 1 October, ‘Dieterle to direct with Reinhardt’; 26 November, ‘Warners casting ‘‘Dream’’’ (dancers and children);

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27 November, ‘Cagney, Powell and Brown in ‘‘Dream’’ leads’; 28 November, ‘Only one principal needed for ‘‘Dream’’’; 10 December, ‘Nijinska rehearsing dances for ‘‘Dream’’’; 19 December, ‘‘‘Dream’’ start put over till next week’. 47. Gottfried Reinhardt, Der Liebhaber, p. 264. 48. WBA/USC: Casting notes; memo, Wallis to Blanke, 1 November 1934. 49. Contract details in WBA/USC, Legal file 12690. Korngold returned to Austria after the completion of his work on the Dream; an offer to compose a score for The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) brought him back after a good deal of persuasion. 50. WBA/USC: Daily Production Reports, 2 and 4 January 1935. Helene Thimig notes that such thorough script rehearsals were unheard of in Hollywood, and that Reinhardt insisted on running scenes in full for the camera rather than splitting them into sections for short takes. See Thimig, Wie Max Reinhardt lebte . . . eine Handbreit u¨ber dem Boden (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1975), p. 185. 51. NYPL: *MGZTC3-1850, Nini Theilade interview, 28 April 1995, conducted by Monica Moseley. Theilade claims that Nijinska had started work on the film, having been engaged for her name, but she was unhappy and left. Theilade had to leave before the end of production, because of a prior commitment. She met Nijinska in the street in New York and Nijinska exclaimed, ‘Ha! Have they fired you as well?’ Reinhardt ‘wasn’t very pleased, as usual, with Nijinska’s work.’ On Korngold’s relationship with Nijinska, and on his work for the film in general, see Brendan Carroll, The Last Prodigy: A Biography of Erich Wolfgang Korngold (Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1997), ch. 16. Carroll provides full and informative notes to the CD release of the score, performed by Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Rundfunkchor Berlin and soloists, conducted by Gerd Albrecht (Georgsmarienhu¨tte: CPO, 1999.) See also Jessica Duchen, Erich Wolfgang Korngold (London: Phaidon, 1996), pp. 150–7. 52. Doug Warren with James Cagney, James Cagney: The Authorized Biography (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1983), p. 111; James Cagney, Cagney by Cagney (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1976), pp. 66–7; and Dieterle, Der Kampf, p. 121. 53. The dispute was over Reinhardt’s alleged failure to fulfil a contract to produce Die Fledermaus. WBA/USC Legal file 12690 includes contracts, opinions and other documents. A report of the delay caused by the suit appeared in the Hollywood Reporter. 54. Date in WBA/USC: Daily Production Report, 22 December 1934. 55. WBA/USC: Memo, Warner to Wallis, 27 December 1934. For Mohr’s account of the work, see Leonard Maltin, ed., Behind the Camera (New York: Signet Books, 1971), pp. 123–7. The pressbook (BSL) includes a photograph of one of Mohr’s screens placed in front of a camera, and a still shows fairies holding the frame with the spider’s web in place over Bottom and Titania. 56. WBA/USC: Copy of letter (in German), 23 December 1935, from Blanke to Reinhardt, outlining proposed cuts for the ‘popula¨re Ausgabe’ – the


57.

58.

59.

60. 61.

62.

63. 64. 65. 66.

67. 68.

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‘popular edition’. A 16-mm copy of this version is in the Media Center at NYPL’s Donnell Library. On the treatment of the text, see Jay L. Halio, Shakespeare in Performance: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), pp. 89–92. The dual-language script is in the archive at SUNY, Binghamton. See note 33, above. Memos from Mary McCall, Jr. to Wallis (22 and 24 October) and Blanke (3 November): WBA/USC. The script was sent to her by Wallis on 19 October. The memo of 24 October refers to her expecting twins. ‘I’m sending out the opening today – and more follows every day until the stork stays my hand.’ It is signed ‘Artistically and maternally thine’. WBA/USC: Telegram, 2 November 1934, from Wallis to Wills (one of the studio’s representatives in England). The message clarifies what is wanted and the kind of writer appropriate: ‘WOULD PREFER SOMEBODY NEITHER TOO MODERN OR TOO CONSERVATIVE STOP IT IS ESSENTIAL THAT BEAUTY OF VERSE BE PRESERVED AND UNDERSTOOD BY PICTURE AUDIENCES OUR SUGGESTIONS ARE THORNTON WILDER OR PAUL GREEN WHAT ARE YOURS AND WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT DON MARQUIS OR CHRISTOPHER MORLEY ADVISE’. Among those approached (undated telegrams) were the poet and critic E. V. Lucas and the playwright John Drinkwater. This script is now in the Wisconsin archive (Box 258/folder 3). See Appendix, p. 224. WBA/USC: Typed draft of the ‘Nocturne’; memo of 10 December 1934 from unit manager Al Alborn to Blanke and others, attaching copy of the ‘Nocturne’ – ‘as laid out by Mr Reinhardt’. Michael P. Jensen has identified stills from some unused scenes in a publication accompanying the film. See ‘Fragments of a Dream: Photographs of Three Scenes Missing from the Reinhardt-Dieterle Dream’, Shakespeare Bulletin 18.4 (2000), pp. 37–8. One of these photos shows Bottom escaping from his house, and two others show the proclamation hung on a tree in the ‘square’ (the ‘Dijon Street’ on the back lot) as craftsmen read it. A production still at AMPAS shows this scene being filmed. BSL: S338.8Q: 113-page shooting script. ‘Final’ dated ‘12/6/1934’ (i.e. 6 December 1934). 11 August script SUNY, p. 1. The text quoted is that given in the film script, with ‘you’ replacing ‘thee’. The August 1934 draft has an establishing shot of the whole landscape: ‘A Distant Shot revealing the island upon which the palace stands. The surrounding water is filled with boats approaching the palace. It is close to evening and every boat is lighted by a torch. On the bank before the palace the nobles of Athens are waiting to welcome the home-coming of Theseus with Hippolyta’ (p. 12). NYPL, undated script (October 1934?), p. 12 (see Appendix, p. 224). Although they are included in a list of ‘tricks’ sent by Blanke to Grot and Jackman on 24 October 1934, the likelihood of omitting these episodes had

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been envisaged from an early stage; a detailed breakdown of costs drafted on 8 November 1934 shows that pages 1–8 would require $3,700 for special effects (‘Jackman Department’) and $5,300 for work by the Art Department – including $2,500 for the Throne Room in Hippolyta’s palace (WBA/USC). 69. The sequence, including the serenade, was still in the film on 10 April 1935, when a set of notes on sound prepared for the editor Ralph Dawson advises: ‘At the end of the Serenade where Helena comes to Demetrius and shows him the way Hermia and Lysander have fled, Korngold will put four church bells in, and also a dog barking in the distance should be added to this’ (WBA/USC). 70. It also includes at an earlier stage a scene developing the conflict between the rival suitors: (71) INT. HERMIA’S ROOM IN THE PALACE Hermia is seated on a bench. Lysander is reclining on a cushion at her feet. On the floor beside him is a plate of sweetmeats and a lute. Lysander is just finishing weaving a bracelet of hair. Hermia watches him with fond amusement as she strokes his head. He holds up the completed bracelet for her inspection. Laughingly she offers him her hand. He slaps on the bracelet and kisses the tips of her fingers. Hermia holds up her hand to inspect the bracelet, then presses it to her lips. Lysander reaches up and draws down her hand. Selecting a sweetmeat from the dish, he rises on one knee and puts it between Hermia’s teeth. They laugh like children. Then Lysander sinks back on the cushion with his head against Hermia’s knees – picks up his lute and is about to play when the door is thrown open – Egeus and Demetrius enter. Seeing Lysander reclining against the knees of Hermia, Demetrius’s hand involuntarily goes to his sword. Lysander springs to his feet and confronts him belligerently. Hermia has risen and stares coldly at the intruder. (p. 14)

Theseus, hearing the quarrel, would have intervened. Notes and substituted pages in the script show that this was altered at an early stage. 71. The 1905 lighting effect as one by one the craftsmen enter with their lanterns is included in the Regiebuch: ‘At first complete darkness. When the lanterns come on, slowly brighter: footlights. When the lanterns are at the front, spotlight from the prompter’s box. Shadows on the wall. Finally the moon through the window’ (Boser and Vatkova´, Max Reinhardt in Berlin, p. 171). 72. The Production Code Administration (PCA) file on the film (at AMPAS) includes memos regarding a conference with Reinhardt and Dieterle ‘with regard to the costumes of the elves and fairies’ (30 November 1934); and, a few days later, anxiety about a sketch ‘in which an apparently nude figure was covered solely with revealing strips of cellophane’ and response to a test which was ‘definitely bad’ – but accepts that despite the Code’s forbidding ‘nudity in fact or silhouette’ agreed that ‘in this instance a certain amount of leeway was possible’(4 December). After a conference with Blanke, it was concluded that the scene on page 45 of the script – apparently Hermia’s insistence that Lysander ‘lie further off’ rather than share her pillow – should be shot ‘both ways to include cuts discussed’ and that the word ‘eunuch’ should be replaced with ‘minstrel’ (11 December). The film was reviewed and passed on 6 April 1935.


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73. Carroll, notes to CD, p. 24. 74. Jack. J. Jorgens, Shakespeare on Film (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977) p. 44. 75. Carroll, CD notes on interview with Jory. 76. Reinhardt, Der Liebhaber, p. 275. 77. Mohr Behind the Camera, pp. 124–5; WBA/USC: Memo from Wallis to Dieterle and Blanke, 4 March 1935. 78. NYPL, undated script (October 1934?), p. 76. 79. A memo from Jackman to Koenig, 7 February 1935, includes references to a number of trick shots planned but not included in the final cut (and possibly not executed at all): Oberon chasing fairies up a moonbeam, faces appearing in the forest trees, and the fish catching a pine cone. An undated list of sound effects, prepared in post-production, indicates that the ‘laughing’ dove was included in at least an intermediate cut. 80. The idea turned up again later in a memo from Warner, who had not necessarily seen the earlier draft. On 19 January 1935 he wrote to Wallis about the possibility of tinting the ‘dream’ portion of the film: ‘something of the order of a lavender or a light blue or a pink would be pretty. In other words, maybe it would give a complete contrast that we thought we could get by putting glycerine on the lens, which we ceased doing.’ The idea comes from ‘Berkeley’ – probably Busby Berkeley. 81. On Noel Paton and Richard Dadd, see Jeremy Maas, ‘Victorian Fairy Painting’, in Jane Martineau, ed. Victorian Fairy Painting (London: Royal Academy of Arts/Merrell Holberton, 1997), pp. 10–21. 82. WBA/USC: Jackman memo, 24 October 1934. 83. John Ellis, Visible Fictions: Cinema: Television: Video (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982), p. 91. 84. Treacher, an English actor, came to Hollywood in 1933 and appeared in MGM’s David Copperfield (dir. George Cukor) in 1934. WBA/USC production documents and his contract list his character as ‘Ninny’. 85. On Valentino and masculinity, see Gaylin Studlar, This Mad Masquerade: Stardom and Masculinity in the Jazz Age (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), ch. 3. 86. In a memo of 4 December 1934, Wallis wrote to Blanke expressing anxiety after tests about the ‘sing-songee’ voice of Anita Louise. Stanley Logan must work with her. ‘I think the more conversational the people are in their dialogue the better the picture will be, for it will be more down-to-earth. . . . Please read this letter to Dieterle and Reinhardt.’ On 16 January 1935 Wallis returned to the subject, warning Dieterle, Blanke and Logan that Louise was still too ‘lyrical and sing-songee’: ‘I insist that, in all future scenes, ANITA LOUISE speak the dialogue as she would in an ordinary picture without the fluctuations in the range of her voice, without rushing her words together and without trying to time it too much; and, if this is not done I am going to have you go back and retake it until it is done the way I want it.’ He added, ‘This is very important. As you know, the Shakespearean dialogue is a definite

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problem anyhow because of it’s [sic] poetic nature, and it is hard to understand it.’ 87. Halio, Shakespeare in Performance: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, p. 90. 88. Titania’s songs were performed by Carol Weisskopf. See Carroll, The Last Prodigy, p. 237. 89. Bottom looking at his reflection in a pond, and his jubilant running exit featured in the Oxford and Hollywood Bowl performances. See Williams, Our Moonlight Revels, p. 175. The film’s effect of a reflection was achieved by placing a mirror under the water in a shallow concrete basin. 90. There is evidence in the Daily Production Reports of an additional sequence in which Theseus and Hippolyta would arrive in the ‘town square’ and Hermia and Helena return to their houses. On 29 January 1935 Wallis writes to the editor, Ralph Dawson, that music will be needed for ‘[t]his new sequence which Dieterle has just completed, of the arrival of Ian Hunter and Teasdale in the town’s square’ – which suggests that it had not been included in any script seen by Korngold. On the same day he advises Blanke on the use of a location or a standing back-lot set for the return to Athens of the lovers, Theseus and Hippolyta, so as to avoid expense. 91. Again by coincidence, rather than from knowledge of Reinhardt’s unrealised intentions. Michael Hoffman’s film includes scenes in the ‘holding area’ (as the credits describe it), where a number of rival would-be performers are waiting. 92. WBA/USC: Memo from Ed Selzer to Herb Crooker, 16 February 1935. The role had not been cast until Haden was engaged on 18 January 1935 at $600 per week (Arnow to Wallis, 18 January). 93. WBA/USC: Memo from Wallis to Bilson (cc. Jack L. Warner), 24 August 1935. 94. Trailers from the film were included on the laser disc edition of the film issued in 1992: I am grateful to Michael P. Jensen for access to this material. 95. BSL: Pressbooks for US and British distribution of the film. 96. Facsimile copies of the two letters in the NYPL file on the film. 97. Letter of 17 October 1934. Photostat in publicity file 698 (press clippings), WBA/USC. 98. John Alfred Thomas, ‘Shakespeare a` la Cinema’, in Hochmann, ed., From Quasimodo to Scarlett O’Hara, pp. 207–10; p. 208. 99. Ibid., p. 210. 100. Graham Greene, Spectator, 18 October 1935, in Greene, The Graham Greene Film Reader: Mornings in the Dark, ed. David Parkinson (Manchester: Carcanet, 1993), pp. 37–9. 101. W. E. Williams, ‘Film and Literature’, Sight and Sound (1935), pp. 163–5; 164; 165. 102. Allardyce Nicoll, Film and Theatre (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1936), p. 181. 103. The figure of $615,000 is from an undated budget in WBA/USC. In a budget dated 18 December, the total costing for construction, operating labour, electricians, props labour, props, location, trick photography and ‘extra talent’ was $136,332.


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104. Harrison’s Reports, 26 October 1935, p. 43; 19 December 1936, pp. 201, 204. 105. The budget allows $3,534 for Kenyon and $2,275 for McCall. Total script costs, including secretarial work and the services of a ‘script clerk’, were $7,013 (undated budget, WBA/USC). Reinhardt was being paid $100,000 and Dieterle $19,000. Compare the costs for script work on Anthony Adverse (1935; released 1936), where the purchase of the story (a novel) called for $40,000, and scriptwriting fees (including added dialogue) amounted to $28,234 (Roddick, A New Deal in Entertainment, pp. 46–7). For Jezebel (1937; released 1938) the story (a play) was bought for $12,000 and ‘continuity and treatment’ were allotted a further $28,958, making a total of $40,958. See Thomas Schatz, ‘‘‘A Triumph of Bitchery’’: Warner Bros., Bette Davis and Jezebel,’ in Janet Staiger, ed., The Studio System (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995), pp. 74–92; p. 84. 106. Telegram from Reinhardt to Blanke, 29 June 1935 (WBA/USC). 107. Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare. Adapted for the Screen by Julius J. Epstein. Typescript, 12 August 1936, WBA/USC: 2055. 108. Fuhrich-Leisler and Prossnitz, Max Reinhardt in Amerika, pp, 223–44. 109. See Williams, Our Moonlight Revels, pp. 174, 176.

2 1. John Colville, The Fringes of Power: Downing Street Diaries, 1939–1955 (1985; rev. paperback edn, London: Phoenix Press, 2005), p. 503. On Churchill’s tastes in films, see D. J. Wenden and K. R. M. Short, ‘Winston S. Churchill: Film Fan’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 11.3 (1991), pp. 197–214. 2. Gregor Dallas, Poisoned Peace: 1945 – The War That Never Ended (London: John Murray, 2005), p. 259. 3. G. Wilson Knight, The Olive and the Sword (London, Toronto and New York: Oxford University Press, 1944), p. 3. 4. Norman Rabkin, Shakespeare and the Problem of Meaning (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1981). See also Sarah Munson Deats, ‘Rabbits and Ducks. Olivier, Branagh and Henry V’, Literature/Film Quarterly, 20.4 (1992), pp. 284–93. 5. On issues of masculinity and Olivier’s performances, see Peter S. Donaldson’s chapter, ‘Claiming from the Female’: Gender and Representation in Laurence Olivier’s Henry’, in Donaldson, Shakespearean Films/Shakespearean Directors (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990), ch. 1: For Tillyard’s response to the play, see Tillyard, Shakespeare’s History Plays (1944; Penguin Shakespeare Library edn, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969), pp. 309–18. 6. On the 1938 Drury Lane production, see Emma Smith, ed., Shakespeare in Production: ‘Henry V’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 49. 7. BSL: scripts at S322.1939Q (5 November 1939) and s.322.1943Q (28 February 1943). Both were Home Service broadcasts.

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8. BSL: script at s322.192pF. 9. Interview with Dallas Bower in Brian McFarlane, ed., An Autobiography of British Cinema (London: Methuen, 1997), pp. 80–84. See also Brian McFarlane, ‘Dallas Bower: The Man behind Olivier’s Henry V ’, Shakespeare Bulletin 12.1, no. 1 (Winter 1994), pp. 45–6. 10. Harold Nicolson, Diaries and Letters 1939–1945, ed. Nigel Nicolson (Collins: London, 1967), 36. 11. Angus Calder, The People’s War: Britain, 1939–1945 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1969), p. 61. 12. J. B. Priestley, Postscripts (London: Heinemann, 1940), p. vii. 13. Ibid, pp. 22–3. 14. Arthur Bryant, English Saga (1840–1940) (London: Collins with Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1940), pp. 37; p. 328. 15. George Orwell, ‘The English People’, in Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus, eds., George Orwell: Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters, Volume III: As I Please, 1943–1945 (London: Secker and Warburg, 1968), pp. 3, 50. 16. George Orwell, The Lion and the Unicorn, in Orwell and Angus, eds., George Orwell: Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters, Volume II: My Country Right or Left, 1940–1943, pp. 56–109; pp. 93–4, 67. 17. Ross McKibbin, Classes and Cultures: England 1918–1951 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 41–3; p. 43. See also Paul Addison, The Road to 1945: British Politics and the Second World War (rev. edn, London: Pimlico, 1994), esp. ch. 4, ‘New Deal at Dunkirk’. 18. Coleville, The Fringes of Power, p. 303 (5 February 1941). 19. Martin J. Wiener, English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit, 1850–1980 (new edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 80. 20. S. P. B. Mais, The Home Counties (London: B. T. Batsford Ltd., 1942–3). 21. BBC broadcast, ‘Coming Home’ (1943), in John Betjeman Coming Home: An Anthology of his Prose, 1920–1977, ed Candida Lycett Green (London: Methuen, 1988), pp. 42–61. 22. Orwell, The Lion and the Unicorn, p. 57. 23. Quoted in Peter Stansky and William Abrahams, London’s Burning: Life, Death and Art in the Second World War (London: Constable and Company, 1994), p. 113. 24. Robert Mackay, Half the Battle: Civilian Morale in Britain During the Second World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), p. 38. 25. See Margaret Dickinson and Sarah Street, eds., Cinema and State: The Film Industry and the British Government, 1927–1984 (London: BFI, 1985), ch. 6, ‘Adaptation to War’, pp. 103–5; James Chapman, The British at War: Cinema, State and Propaganda, 1939–1945 (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 1998), esp. chs. 3 and 4; and Jeffrey Richards and Dorothy Sheridan, eds., MassObservation at the Movies (London and New York, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987), esp. pp. 139–47. 26. Michael Balcon quoted in Geoffrey Macnab, J. Arthur Rank and the British Film Industry (Routledge: London and New York, 1993), p. 37.


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27. On attempts to film the novel Love on the Dole, see Robert Murphy, British Cinema and the Second World War (London and New York: Continuum, 2000), p. 63. 28. Marcia Landy, British Genres: Cinema and Society, 1930–1960 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), pp. 54–5. 29. Sue Harper, Picturing the Past: The Rise and Fall of the British Costume Film (London: BFI, 1994), p. 9. See also Pam Cook, Fashioning the Nation: Costume and Identity in British Cinema (London: BFI, 1996), ch. 4, ‘The Lure of the Past: Reinventing History’. 30. Graham Greene, Spectator, 5 March 1937, in, Greene, The Graham Greene Film Reader: Mornings in the Dark, ed. David Parkinson (Manchester: Carcanet, 1993), p. 180. 31. Rudy Behlmer, ed.,The Sea Hawk (Warner Bros., 1940) Wisconsin/Warner Bros. Screenplay Series (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982), p. 207. (The speech’s ellipses, used to indicate a momentary pause, have been replaced with dashes, and internal directions for action and camera have been removed.) 32. Karol Kulik, Alexander Korda: The Man Who Could Work Miracles (London: W. H. Allen, 1975), pp. 245–53. See also H. Mark Glancy, When Hollywood Loved Britain: The Hollywood ‘British’ Film, 1939–45 (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1999), ch. 4. 33. Robert Murphy, Realism and Tinsel: Cinema and Society in Britain 1939–49 (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 28. 34. Sarah Street, British National Cinema (London: Routledge, 1997), p. 50. 35. Jeffrey Richards and Anthony Aldgate, Best of British: Cinema and Society 1930–1970 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983), p. 44. 36. Richards and Sheridan, eds., Mass-Observation at the Movies, p. 145. 37. Ibid., pp. 220–91; comments on pp. 261, 256, 270, 271–2. The interviewers questioned 104 women and 116 men. 38. Reprinted in Dilys Powell, The Golden Screen: Fifty Years of Films, ed. George Perry (London: Pavilion Books, 1989), pp. 32–3. See also Glancy, When Hollywood Loved Britain, pp. 142–56. 39. Harper, Picturing the Past, p. 94. 40. Noe¨l Coward, Future Indefinite (London: Heinemann, 1954), p. 208. 41. Andrew Spicer, Typical Men: The Representation of Masculinity in Popular British Cinema (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2001), p. 27. 42. Ian Christie, BFI Film Classics: ‘A Matter of Life and Death’ (London: BFI, 2000), p. 50. 43. Hillary’s memoir, The Last Enemy (1942), was a bestseller: badly burnt when his aircraft was shot down, after a long and painful series of operations he returned to flying. In 1943 he was killed in a flying accident. See Bernard Bergonzi, Wartime and Aftermath: English Literature and Its Background, 1939–1960 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 47–9. 44. On Clark’s time at the MOI, see Stansky and Abrahams, London’s Burning, pp. 89–92, and Sir Kenneth Clark, The Other Half: A Self-Portrait

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(London: John Murray, 1977), pp. 9–22. Charles Drazin gives sympathetic and illuminating accounts of Beddington and del Giudice in The Finest Years: British Cinema of the 1940s (London: Andre Deutsch, 1998), pp. 177–84, 13–42. John Betjeman’s work at the MOI, including his dealings with Dallas Bower, is described in Bevis Hillier, John Betjeman: New Fame, New Love (London: John Murray, 2002), pp. 159–81. 45. Macnab, J. Arthur Rank and the British Film Industry, pp. 85–7. 46. In Felix Barker’s double biography of Olivier and Leigh, The Oliviers (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1953), p. 211, the idea is reported to have occurred to Olivier in a taxi after a meeting at the MOI. In an Illustrated London News article at the time of Olivier’s film of Richard III, Dent clarified his role: for the latest film he had contributed little beyond approving the director’s draft; for Henry V and Hamlet he ‘really did a certain amount of work, though always in consultation with Sir Laurence’ (‘Richard III: A Disclaimer’, 7 January 1956). For Olivier’s account, see Olivier, On Acting (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986), pp. 185–96. 47. Terry Coleman, Olivier: The Authorised Biography (London: Bloomsbury, 2005), p. 156; Michael Powell, A Life in Movies: An Autobiography (paperback edn; London: Methuen 1987), pp. 601–3. 48. On Perinal and Krasker, see MacFarlane, Autobiography of British Cinema, p. 82. 49. On Betjeman’s role, see Hillier, John Betjeman: New Fame, New Love, pp. 221–4. 50. Jack Cardiff, Magic Hour (London: Faber and Faber, 1996), pp. 74–82. On the Technicolor company’s control over filming, see Fred E. Besten, Glorious Technicolor: The Movies’ Magic Rainbow (Camarillo, CA: Technicolor, 2005), pp. 55–8. 51. ‘Henry V: Clever Effects’ Kinematograph Weekly, 9 December 1943. 52. Susan Walton, William Walton: Behind the Façade (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 94–6. 53. Kinematograph Weekly, reports on a weekly basis between 3 June 1943 and 13 January 1944. A chronology is also given by C. Clayton Hutton, The Making of ‘Henry V’ (London: Published by the author, 1944), pp. 70–2. 54. Barker, The Oliviers, p. 210: the shot (with the cow) was achieved on 28 June 1943. On the film’s scripts, see Russell Jackson, ‘Olivier’s Henry V: A PreProduction Script,’ Shakespeare on Film Newsletter (April 1991), pp. 3–4, and Ace G. Pilkington, Screening Shakespeare from ‘Richard II’ to ‘Henry V’ (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 1991), ch. 6. The script edited by Andrew Sinclair (London: Lorrimer, 1984) is based on the BFI’s copy of the release script. An account of the script material examined is given in the Appendix, p. 223. 55. Anthony Davies, Filming Shakespeare’s Plays: The Adaptations of Laurence Olivier, Orson Welles, Peter Brook and Akira Kurosawa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 29. 56. Vivian Sobchack, ‘‘‘Surge and Splendor’’: A Phenomenology of the Hollywood Historical Epic’, in Barry Keith Grant, ed., Film Genre Reader III (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003), pp 297–323; p. 302.


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57. William Morris, Centenary Edition: Stories in Prose [etc.], ed. G. D. H. Cole (London: Nonesuch Press, 1934), p. 284. 58. Kenneth Branagh, Shooting script, Henry V, October 1988 (for details, see the Appendix, p. 223). The alterations (pink pages) were made on 24 October. 59. Graham Holderness, Shakespeare Recycled (New York and London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992), p. 189. 60. Dale Silviria, Laurence Olivier and the Art of Film Making (Rutherford, Madison, Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1985), pp. 88–9. 61. MacFarlane, Autobiography of British Cinema, p. 82. 62. Raymond Durgnat, Films and Feelings (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1967), p. 262. In 1947 an official in the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed anxiety about the possible effect of the film on Anglo-French relations. See John W. Young, ‘Henry V, the Quai d’Orsay, and the Well-being of the Franco-British Alliance, 1947’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 7 (1987), pp. 319–21. 63. James N. Loehlin, Shakespeare in Performance: Henry V; (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), p. 38. 64. Dudley Andrew, Film in the Aura of Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), pp. 132–5. 65. The point is made by Harry M. Geduld, Filmguide to ‘Henry V’ (Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1973), p. 41. 66. Andrew, Film in the Aura of Art, pp. 138–9. 67. Pilkington, Screening Shakespeare, p. 126. 68. Donaldson, Shakespearean Films/Shakespearean Directors, pp. 91–14, and Pilkington, Screening Shakespeare, pp. 127–8. Dale Silviria observes that the effect is like waking from a dream; see Laurence Olivier and the Art of Film Making, p. 138. 69. Quoted from the Folger copy of the shooting script, with the directions (printed on the left-hand side in the original) here incorporated in the flow of the dialogue. The NYPL copy, acquired from the BFI, has pencil marks including a line drawn through this scene, but there is nothing to indicate whether these notes were made during or after the production process. On the film’s cuts in general, see Geduld, Filmguide, p. 47–58. 70. Silviria summarises: ‘the depiction of the incident does not yield to an empirical process of analysis’ (Laurence Olivier and the Art of Film Making, pp. 103–4). 71. In Donaldson’s phrase, the scene confirms ‘the integration of the feminine within the king’s personality’ (Shakespearean Films/Shakespearean Directors, p. 14). On the cuts, see Smith, Shakespeare in Production: ‘Henry V’, p. 232. 72. Sonya O. Rose, Which People’s War? National Identity and Citizenship in Wartime Britain 1939–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 149. 73. Ibid., p. 196. 74. Hansard, 5th series, p. 362: cols. 51–61. 75. Maureen Waller, London 1945: Life in the Debris of War (London: John Murray, 2004), p. 69. See also ch. 23, ‘The War Will Not be Over by Christmas’, in Juliet

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Gardiner, Wartime Britain, 1939–1945 (London: Headline, 2004), and ch. 9, ‘Never Again?: December 1942 to August 1945’, in Calder, The People’s War. 76. Time and Tide issues in October and November, 1945. 77. Mackay, Half the Battle, p. 135. 78. Evesham Journal, 4 July 1945. 79. Ivor Brown, John O’London’s Weekly, 24 August 1945. 80. Kinematograph Weekly, 25 October 1945; Yorkshire Post, 15 September 1945. 81. Ego 7, Even More of the Autobiography of James Agate (London: Harrap, 1945), pp. 272–5; p. 274. Agate insisted that ‘A sofa is not a bed because you can sleep on it. A film is not Shakespeare because it entertains an audience’ (p. 278). 82. According to the director Jill Craigie, Rank’s right-hand man John Davis was hostile to Henry V and made sure that it was previewed in the East End where ‘tomatoes and eggs – which were then rationed – were thrown at it’. See Macnab, J. Arthur Rank and the British Film Industry, pp. 88; p. 159. 83. Sight and Sound 13.52 (1944), pp. 85–6; p. 85. 84. See John Ellis, ‘The Quality Film Adventure: British Critics and the Cinema 1942–1948’, in Andrew Higson, ed., Dissolving Views: Key Writings on British Cinema (London: Cassell, 1996), pp. 66–93. 85. On reactions to the Beveridge Report, see Peter Hennessy, Never Again: Britain, 1945–1951 (London: Vintage, 1993), pp. 75–7, and Robert Kee, 1945: The World We Fought For (London: Guild Publishing, 1985), pp. 194–5. 86. BFI: Press book, Henry V, unnumbered pages. 87. C. A. Lejeune, Chestnuts in her Lap, 1936–1946 ( London: Phoenix House, 1947), pp. 134–5. 88. Ivor Brown, John O’London’s Weekly, 24 August 1945. 89. Sarah Street, Transatlantic Crossings: British Feature Films in the USA (New York and London: Continuum, 2002), pp. 96–106. For a comprehensive account of the relationship between the film industries of Britain and the United States, see Ian Jarvie, Hollywood’s Overseas Campaign: The North Atlantic Movie Trade, 1920–1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), ch. 6, ‘War and currency crisis, 1939–1945’. Jarvie documents fully his assertion that ‘If ever there was a chance for the British film industry to become a serious player in the international film trade, World War II provided it’ (p. 178). 90. Street, Transatlantic Crossings, p. 99. 91. Macnab, J. Arthur Rank, p. 191. (The source is Rank himself, quoted in Kinematograph Weekly, 8 December 1949.) 92. Street, Transatlantic Crossings, pp. 115, n. 13; p. 116, n. 26. 93. Quotations from James Agee, Agee on Film: Criticism and Comment on the Movies, in the Modern Library series The Movies, series editor Martin Scorsese, introduction by David Denby (New York: Modern Library, 2000), pp. 347–54 (Time); pp. 198–200; pp. 200–3 (Nation). 94. Ibid., pp. 352–3.


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95. Ibid., p. 203. 96. Ibid., pp. 198, 203. 97. Ibid., p. 203.

3 1. Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (New York: Harper and Row, 1929; paperback edn, 2 vols., 1975), II, p. 361. (Pt. V, ch. 2, ‘The Outward Refinement of Life’.) 2. The (uncredited) actor is Guy Bates Post, identified in various newspapers in June 1936 (USC: Shearer scrapbooks). 3. New York Times, 21 December 1934. Basil Rathbone, the film’s Tybalt, appeared as Romeo. James Vincent, a friend of George Cukor and dialogue director for the film, had worked as a stage manager for Cornell and McClintic’s production. See William J. Mann, Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood, 1910–1969 (Penguin: New York, 2002) p. 165. On Thalberg’s promotion of Shearer in the role, and on the production of the film in general, see Roland Flamini, Thalberg: The Last Tycoon and the World of MGM (Crown Publishers: New York, 1994), pp. 218–9, 243–52, and Gavin Lambert, Norma Shearer: A Life (Knopf: New York, 1990) pp. 220–30. Shearer had appeared with John Gilbert in the balcony scene for the studio’s early talkie, Show of Shows (1929). John Barrymore’s outstanding gifts and his value as a star of the ‘legitimate’ theatre were qualified by the problems caused by his alcoholism. See Michael Morrison, John Barrymore, Shakespearean Actor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 277–80. 4. On Adrian’s work for the film, see Howard Gutner, Gowns By Adrian: The MGM Years, 1928–1941 (New York: Abrams, 2001), pp. 156–9. On Messel, see Roger Pinkham, ed., Oliver Messel: An Exhibition Held at the Theatre Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1983), pp. 46–7. Short essays by all three designers appear in ‘Romeo and Juliet’. A Motion Picture Edition. Illustrated with Photographs. Produced for MetroGoldwyn-Mayer by Irving G. Thalberg. Directed by George Cukor. Arranged for the Screen by Talbot Jennings. (New York: Random House, 1936). Designs and models by Messel and Gibbons figure in stills and publicity material (for example, at AMPAS) and in one case Messel was shown adjusting his model of the Friar’s cell – a large sound-stage set with an extensive garden – which was not in fact built. Vivid and in some cases expressionistic sketches by Frederick Hope and Gibbons also exist as stills, and some of these (again, not reflecting the final product) featured in publicity. In the absence of other evidence, one has to assume that an uneasy truce existed between Messel, Adrian and Gibbons: on 25 November 1935 the Hollywood Reporter announced ‘Juliet Design Battle Finished’. See also the designs (some unused) reproduced in Romeo and Juliet. With Designs by Oliver Messel (London: Batsford, 1936).

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5. ‘Dennis Myers meets Mr Messel’, World Film News and Television Progress 1.5 (August 1936), p. 14. 6. Film Weekly (London), 29 February 1936 (‘Rising Two Million’). Samuel L. Marx, an executive in the script department, claims in his memoirs that in the face of opposition from colleagues (Nick Schenk thought the film ‘a silly idea’) the budget was reduced from $1.5 m to $800,000, but that the eventual price tag put on the film by the studio was $2m and the eventual loss (against the negative cost) was $922,000. This is confirmed by a ledger at AMPAS (see below, n. 43). See Samuel L. Marx, Mayer and Thalberg: The Make Believe Saints (New York: Random House, 1975), pp. 248–9; Appendix, p. 264. 7. The script materials at AMPAS include Strunk’s notes (R828) on appropriately Shakespearean exclamations, as well as memoranda from the research department on various topics (table manners, ‘animals in gardens’, the fawn, etc.) and copies of passages from Jacob Burckhardt and other authors, as recommended by Strunk. 8. Souvenir programme in NYPL. The opening sentence of Thalberg’s essay in the 1936 published edition of the script (see n. 4) is a less ambiguous version of the same statement, and suggests that the dream had been cherished by the producer for a long time (‘Romeo and Juliet’. A Motion Picture Edition, p. 13). 9. Unless otherwise identified, references to the script are to the NYPL copy of the version taken ‘on to the floor’ at the commencement of principal photography on 27 December 1935, notice being taken of subsequent revisions during filming. See Appendix, pp. 225–6. 10. Flamini, Thalberg, p. 130. 11. ‘Metro Goldwyn Mayer’, Fortune 6 (1932), pp. 51–8, reprinted in Tino Balio, ed., The American Film Industry (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976), pp. 256–70; pp. 269–70. The article includes a vivid account of Thalberg’s working methods and personality. See also Thomas Schatz, The Genius of the System: Hollywood Film-Making in the Studio Era (London: Faber and Faber, 1998), chs. 7 and 10, and Balio, Grand Design: Hollywood as a Modern Business Enterprise, 1930–1939 (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1993), passim. 12. Evening News (London), 25 May 1936. 13. Strunk in Romeo and Juliet. A Motion Picture Edition, p. 24. See also Gibbons’s article in the same edition, pp. 255–7. 14. AMPAS R879: Conference notes, 27 May 1935, Marian Ainslee (4pp., typescript). ‘Narrow streets and walled houses around the great square of the cathedral’ appear in Jennings’s drafts of 27 June 1935 (AMPAS R82T ‘Temporary incomplete’). 15. AMPAS R829: ‘Sketch of Dance Action for Ball Scene in Romeo and Juliet’, 11 July 1935 (6pp. typescript in blue covers), p. 1. 16. Messel’s published designs include one for a ‘negro page to Capulet’ and his sketch for the hall shows two dwarves in the foreground: ‘Romeo and Juliet’. With Designs by Oliver Messel, illustrations preceding p. 89 and following p. 30.


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17. Agnes De Mille claims that Stothart was ordered to do this when Thalberg heard the music for the first time after production was under way. See Dance to the Piper (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1951), pp. 232–4. See also her later volume, Speak to Me, Dance with Me (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press and Little, Brown, 1973), pp. 293–330. De Mille had studied old dance forms and employed them: the two musical numbers included in the edited sequence derive from examples in Thoinot Arbeau’s 1589 treatise Orche´sographie, and are strikingly similar in orchestration to the versions in Peter Warlock’s Capriol Suite (1927). In London De Mille had seen and admired Frederick Ashton’s 1930 ballet to this, considering it ‘a fine translation of the Elizabethan point of view’, though not ‘a reconstruction as I would have done’ (Dance to the Piper, p. 34). 18. Balio, Grand Design, p. 96. 19. The source for Juliet’s hair was Fra Angelico’s Annunciation (1440–60) in the Museo di San Marco, Florence. More significant than the hairstyle itself (which Lambert credits to the stylist Sydney Guilaroff) was Adrian’s design for the ‘Juliet Cap’. As was customary with studio-led fashions, this could be reproduced and promoted commercially as an accessory. On the synergy between the two industries, even in the case of ‘costume drama’, see Sarah Berry, Screen Style: Fashion and Femininity in 1930s Hollywood (University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis, 2000), pp. 72–87. (On the ‘Juliet Cap’, see pp. 83–4.) On Hollywood costume designs for films set in the Renaissance, see Edward Maeder, ed., Hollywood and History: Costume Design in Film (London and Los Angeles: Thames and Hudson and Los Angeles Museum of Art, 1987), pp. 65–9. In their filmography for the volume, Maeder and David Ehrenstein point out (p. 203) that ‘Shearer’s gowns are vaguely reminiscent of Renaissance dress, but the costumes’ materials, soft satins and chiffons, are fabrics of the 1930s.’ 20. Among commentators on the film, Stephen M. Buhler offers a detailed and telling analysis of this sequence, though he assumes (not unreasonably in the absence of archival evidence) that the published scenario represents Jennings’s intentions. See Buhler, Shakespeare in the Cinema: Ocular Proof (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), pp. 62–4. 21. De Mille, Dance to the Piper, pp. 232–3. 22. AMPAS R829: ‘Sketch of Dance Action for Ball Scene in Romeo and Juliet’, 11 July 1935. AMPAS R837: Script changes as of 9 March 1936: ‘The ball-room sequence arranged by Agnes De Mille.’ 23. Campaign book, BSL. The same source claims that the garden set was 450 feet long and 130 feet wide. See also Gibbons’s article in the published scenario, p. 256. 24. AMPAS R838: ‘Proposed Divertissement to be used as a background for Romeo’s entrance into the Capulet ball’, 31 January 1936. The ‘spear’ business in the film figures, unsurprisingly, in Joseph A. Porter’s reading of the performance’s ‘phallicity’. See his Shakespeare’s Mercutio: His History and Drama (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), pp. 189–90.

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25. Kathryn De Mille is identified on the back of some production stills. The sequence, drafted by Agnes De Mille, is absent from the shooting script: in one version (9 March) Rosaline would have been playing a lute to accompany a group of young (male) admirers, and Romeo would have displeased her by interrupting the singing. ‘Suddenly Romeo lowers his mask over his face as Tybalt enters scene. Tybalt holds in tether a whippet which has been made to look like a little monster with a unicorn’s horn on its forehead.’ Rosaline would walk off with Tybalt, leaving Romeo holding the lute. 26. The figure of forty is given by De Mille (Dance to the Piper, p. 234) and five rows of six dancers each are visible in production stills and in De Mille’s own on-set photographs, included in the ‘Photographic Scrapbooks’ documenting her work. The latter also give some indication of the full version of the first dance seen in the sequence, which would have included fuller participation by the women of her corps de ballet (NYPL *MGZEB 87–212 – vol. 2, pp. 29–43). Her claim that elements of the pavane found their way into Anthony Tudor’s Romeo and Juliet (Ballet Theatre, 1943) is borne out by a surviving ten-minute film of parts of the ballet in NYPL (*MGZ1C 9–3530). 27. As Buhler observes, the film’s version of the lovers’ meeting ‘both exemplifies and complicates Laura Mulvey’s formula for ‘‘voyeuristic active/passive mechanisms’’’ (Shakespeare in the Cinema, p. 64). 28. AMPAS (R836): Notes on props ‘based on current script’ by Harry Edwards, 26 November 1935. A list of extras for the feast scene in the same folder indicates 165 extras, including 20 men, 20 women and 14 ‘Girls – Trained Dancers’. It also gives table placements (‘Table no. 6. 4 Old Ladies (fat), 2 Wizened Old Ladies, 2 Middle Aged Ladies’). 29. Robert F. Willson, Jr., Shakespeare in Hollywood, 1929–1956 (Madison and Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000), pp. 60–1. 30. ‘Irving Thalberg’s Search for ‘‘Romeo’’ Turns to Hollywood Again’, New York Telegraph, 22 September 1935, and Hubbard Kay, ‘Romeo and Juliet to Stay Grown Up’, Milwaukee Sentinel (and other papers), 8 October 1935. 31. Ronald Harwood, ed., Trivial Fond Records by Leslie Howard (London: William Kimber, 1982), p. 127. 32. Margaret Booth, interviewed by Kevin Brownlow, The Parade’s Gone By . . . (paperback edn, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969), pp. 343. 33. I owe this phrase to Michael Anderegg, Cinematic Shakespeare (Lanham, Boulder, New York, Toronto and Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2004), p. 61. 34. The shooting script does not feature Peter in the opening scene, or include most of the comic business associated with him (dozing with his broom, falling over when he is fanning the Nurse). Strunk provided additional dialogue for the character on 4 April 1936 and his participation in the opening sequence first appears in script additions issued on 1 and 4 May. 35. Graham Greene, Spectator, 23 September 1936.


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36. The Production Code file for the film at AMPAS includes a letter to Mayer from Joseph Breen (12 November). Apart from some mild indecencies, including ‘bawd’, and ‘harlotry’, the producer is warned that ‘political censorship’ (i.e. censors in individual states and territories) will probably take exception to ‘Jesu’, ‘God’s dear Lady’, ‘God’s bread’ and the ‘action of the crowd crossing themselves’ (p. 50). There is no comment on the ‘prick of noon’. On 17 December the lyrics ‘An Old Hare Hoar’ and ‘There dwelt a man in Babylon’ (which does not figure in the film) were passed without comment, as was ‘Come Away, Death’ on 21 December, but on 20 December a ‘test scene’ of the lover’s farewell after their marriage night had occasioned anxiety: Breen thought it ‘ill-advised’, especially in view of the British censors’ tendency to delete all such scenes ‘when the couple are in or on one bed together’. ‘We therefore earnestly recommend to you that you play this scene so as to omit all action of them lying on the bed, fondling one another in a horizontal position, and pulling one another down, etc.’ 37. AMPAS (R837): List of ‘suggested titles’ from Jennings, 19 February 1936; this includes a suggestion for dispensing with the prologue. Other versions were drafted on 11 March and 4 May. 38. Campaign book, BSL S694.45 FL (copies are also in NYPL, USC and AMPAS). 39. ‘Films at Salzburg Festival Win Press, Public Approval’, Motion Picture Herald, 29 August 1936. 40. New York Herald Tribune, 3 September 1936; script in AMPAS. 41. The Norma Shearer Scrapbooks at USC have an unusually full complement of these much-reproduced articles from papers across the nation. 42. John Sedgwick, Popular Filmgoing in 1930s Britain: A Choice of Pleasures (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2000), p. 146; p. 77. The ratings were based on the POPSTAT system of analysis. 43. See Mark H. Glancy, When Hollywood Loved Britain: The Hollywood ‘British’ Film, 1939–45 (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1999), pp. 72–81. On pp. 70–1 Glancy cites evidence from the ‘Eddie Mannix ledger’ at AMPAS showing the box-office takings of the studio’s so-called ‘British’ films between 1931 and 1946. (This source also confirms Samuel L. Marx’s figures for Romeo and Juliet.) 44. On the 1935 London Romeo and Juliet, with Peggy Ashcroft, John Gielgud and Laurence, Olivier, see Jill L. Levenson, Shakespeare in Performance: Romeo and Juliet, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987) pp. 46–63. 45. Flamini, Thalberg, p. 252. 46. Hollywood Reporter, 27 December 1935. 47. John Mason Brown’s review is representative of critical responses to Howard’s New York performance of Hamlet at the Imperial Theatre: ‘It is not that Mr Howard understates the part. It is merely that he does not state it at all . . . . Although his Hamlet is perhaps better than was his Romeo on the screen, it is doubtful if any distinguished player has ever attempted the part and acted it throughout with less distinction’ (New York Evening Post, 11 November 1936).

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48. Stephen Watts, ed., From Behind the Screen (New York, 1938), reprinted in Richard Koszarski, Hollywood Directors, 1914–1940 (Oxford, London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), pp. 322–31; pp. 329–30. 49. Gavin Lambert, On Cukor, edited by Robert Trachtenberg (1972; rev. edn, New York: Rizzoli, 2000), pp. 84–6. 50. Romeo and Juliet, Rank promotional leaflet [1954], unnumbered pages. 51. John Walker, ed., Halliwell’s Film, Video and DVD Guide, 2006 (London: HarperCollins Entertainment, 2006), p. 950. The film was available on VHS in the United States from the 1980s to about 2004, but had dropped out of the UK catalogue by 1990. On DVD it is at present (2007) available only in Italy, with Italian dialogue and without subtitles. 52. On the ‘calligraphers’, see Pierre Leprohon, The Italian Cinema, translated by Roger Reaves and Oliver Stallybrass (London: Secker and Warburg, 1972), pp. 76–9, and Roy Armes, Patterns of Realism (South Brunswick and New York: A. S. Barnes and Company, 1971), pp. 35–40. The term was coined by Giuseppe de Santis to denote (in Armes’s words, p. 35) ‘the formalistic preoccupations and retreat into the past’ of many filmmakers under fascism. After a respectful consideration of his three previous films, Armes (p. 179) reports Castellani as ‘pursu[ing] an erratic and inconsistent course after 1951’ and dismisses Giulietta e Romeo in one phrase as ‘a colourful and decorative version’ of the play. 53. On ‘Pink Realism’ and Castellani, see Mira Liehm, Passion and Defiance: Film in Italy from 1942 to the Present (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1984), pp. 89; pp. 141–2. 54. Sergio Trasatti, Renato Castellani (Firenze: La Nuova Italia 1984), p. 54 55. Stelio Martini, ed., ‘Giulietta e Romeo’ di Renato Castellani (Bologna: Capelli Editore 1957), pp. 37–46; p. 45. 56. Ibid., pp. 49–50. 57. On ‘The battle of Senso’, see Liehm, Passion and Defiance, pp. 148–51. 58. See Martini, ed., ‘Giulietta e Romeo’, pp. 131–6 on the citta` ideale. 59. Quoted by Trasatti, Renato Castellani, p. 4. 60. Ibid., p. 46. 61. Ibid., p. 141: ‘quel sentimento della giustezza della propria causa’. Trasatti (p. 69) quotes Castellani as envisaging Juliet as a fourteen-year-old, ‘thin and graceful, with slightly protruding shoulder-blades’, which is not at all how Shentall appeared, but comments that her fair hair, ingenuous look and clear eyes seemed right for the part. 62. Martini, ed., ‘Giulietta e Romeo’, p. 118. They are imagined in specifically social terms; for all their energy and boisterousness, they are the sons of wealthy bourgeois or aristocratic families (‘figli . . . di agiate borghese o aristochratiche’). 63. Robert F. Hawkins, ‘Montague, Capulet and Castellani in Action’: undated and unidentified clipping, NYPL. The report refers to the filming not being completed until ‘at least September’ and film not being ready for showing until ‘next year’ – presumably 1954.


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64. References to the Birmingham Shakespeare Library copy of the film’s shooting script indicate the scene numbering rather than pages. For details of the script, see Appendix, p. 226. 65. The suggestion that the first scenes occur in winter (spring would come with Romeo’s scene with Benvolio, outside the walls) may have been intended to indicate the longstanding nature of the feud, but it is hard to see what benefit this would yield. In any case, one suspects that filming in more than one season would have been prohibitively expensive. 66. The somewhat intrusive announcements of the Master of Ceremonies are not in the script and in the English version sound too like the MC at a dance hall. 67. Born in Romania in 1919, Roman Vlad composed and arranged music for other films by Castellani, including the television biography of Giuseppe Verdi, and also had a distinguished career as a composer and teacher: see Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell, eds., The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edn, (London: Macmillan Reference, 2001), pp. 26, 848–9. 68. See the discussion of gestural language in Annunciation paintings by Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy (2nd edn, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), pp. 51–7. 69. Kenneth S. Rothwell, A History of Shakespeare on Screen: A Century of Film and Television (2nd edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 120. 70. Roger Manvell suggests, plausibly, that the audience ‘who rose to acclaim’ the film’s first showing were applauding ‘a splendidly colourful reincarnation of fifteenth-century Italy in Technicolor’, and regards its victory as ‘inevitable’. See Manvell, Shakespeare and the Film (rev. edn, New Brunswick and New York: A. S. Barnes and Company, 1979), p. 97. Liehm (Passion and Defiance, p. 345, n.) notes that the jury’s preference for the film over Senso and La Strada may reflect the attitude towards more radical neo-realism of the governmental institutions sponsoring the festival. 71. Paul A. Jorgensen, ‘Castellani’s Romeo and Juliet : Intention and Response’ in Film Quarterly 10.1 (Fall 1954), reprinted in Charles W. Eckert, ed., Focus on Shakespearean Films (Englewood, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1972), pp. 108–13; p. 111. Anthony Davies in Filming Shakespeare’s Plays: The Adaptations of Laurence Olivier, Orson Welles, Peter Brook and Akira Kurosawa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 14–15, is among those critics who regard the use of architecture as ineffective, failing to achieve ‘more than an ornamental significance’. For Davies, this is symptomatic of the director’s more general failure to appreciate the effect of a stage script’s being rendered in filmic terms. 72. Among more recent commentators, Michael Anderegg is unusual in his praise of Shentall’s performance – ‘she is without doubt the most effective and affecting of screen Juliets’ (Cinematic Shakespeare, p. 65). 73. Gian Piero Brunetta, Storia del cinema Italiano: Dal neorealismo al miracolo economico, 1945–1959, Volume Terzo (2nd edn, Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1993), p. 472.

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74. Franco Zeffirelli: Zeffirelli: The Autobiography of Franco Zeffirelli (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986), p. 61. Zeffirelli’s second, Italian, version adds nothing material to the account of Romeo and Juliet and the other Shakespearean films before his 1990 Hamlet, and omits many details given in the earlier book. Remarkably, his unsuccessful Stratford-upon-Avon Othello (1961) is now ignored completely. In some passages the earlier text (or an Italian original – no translator is acknowledged) is abbreviated. Here the reference to architecture is cut and the author simply states, ‘I finally had clearer ideas about my future, the road to follow: the theatre, the Cinema.’ See Zeffirelli, Zeffirelli: Autobiografia (Milan: Mondadori, 2006), p. 89. 75. Levenson, Shakespeare in Performance: Romeo and Juliet, p. 86. Levenson’s accounts of the film’s genesis and reception and analysis of the script’s relation to its dramatic source are indispensable. She refers to the release script as though it were a shooting script (to which she did not have access) but this affects her discussion only to the extent of qualifying her assertion that Zeffirelli planned every last detail at the script stage. 76. Jack J. Jorgens, Shakespeare on Film (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977), p. 81. For a similar account of the process, see Michael Pursell, ‘Zeffirelli’s Shakespeare: The Visual Realization of Tone and Theme’, Literature/Film Quarterly 8.4 (1980), pp. 211–8; p. 218. 77. On the film’s music, see Page Cook, ‘The Sound Track’, Films in Review 19 (October 1968), pp. 571–3, and Kenneth S. Rothwell, ‘Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet: Words into Picture and Music’, Literature/Film Quarterly 5.4 (1977), pp. 326–31. 78. Zeffirelli, Autobiography, p. 176. The Italian version represents this differently, as marking the arrival of an artist who had succeeded on his own merits and despite the war waged against him by almost everyone (‘malgrado la guerra che un po’ tutti gli averrano fatto’) (Autobiografia, p. 212). 79. Ibid., p. 155. 80. Ibid., p. 163. 81. Kenneth Tynan, Tynan Right and Left (London: Longmans, 1967), p 50, and Michael Blakemore, Arguments with England (London: Faber and Faber, 2004), p. 131. 82. Andre´ Bazin, What is Cinema? Essays Selected and Translated by Hugh Gray, 2 vols. (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1967), vol. 1, p. 37. 83. See, in particular, Barbara Hodgdon, The Shakespeare Trade: Performances and Appropriations (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), ch. 1, ‘Katherina Bound, or Play(K)ating the Strictures of Everyday Life’, pp. 1–38; pp. 15–19. 84. Alexander Walker, Hollywood England: The British Film Industry in the Sixties (London: Michael Joseph Ltd., 1974), pp. 397–400; p. 398. 85. Zeffirelli, Autobiography, p. 227. The phrase is retained in the Italian version’s less circumstantial account: he had to leave this world of dreams (‘questo


86.

87. 88.

89.

90.

91.

92.

93.

94. 95. 96.

97. 98. 99.

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mondo di sogni’) to attend to set construction and the selection of locations (Autobiografia, p. 261). Quoted with permission from Leonard Whiting’s copy of the shooting script; see Appendix, pp. 226–7. Subsequent references in the text are to the page and scene numbers of this script. On the number of takes, and the anxiety they occasioned with the producers, see Walker, Hollywood England, p. 399, and Franco Zeffirelli, ‘Filming Shakespeare’, in Glenn Loney, ed., Staging Shakespeare: Seminars on Production Problems, Garland Reference Library of the Humanities, vol. 798 (London and New York: Garland, 1990), pp. 239–71; p. 249 (‘I kept to the simplest with the two children’). Quoted by Carey Harrison, Sight and Sound (Spring 1967), reprinted in Eckert, Focus on Shakespearean Films, p. 159. A pot of lilies stands alongside the altar at which Romeo and Juliet are married, but there are none in her bedroom. In the script ‘Romeo has in his hands lilies he has picked in the garden’ when he arrives for the marriage (p. 104, sc. 28). The parents look at each other as they enter, but there is no explicit gesture, and the film (but not the script) omits the lines in which they offer to have statues of pure gold made of their children. Patricia Tatspaugh, ‘The Tragedies of Love on Film’, in Russell Jackson, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 141–64, p. 147. Levenson, Shakespeare in Performance: Romeo and Juliet, p. 89. I have discussed directors’ approaches to the staging problems of the scene in Shakespeare at Stratford: Romeo and Juliet (London: Thomson Learning/Arden Shakespeare, 2003), pp. 138–44. ‘As seen by the two [i.e. Benvolio and Romeo], Rosalina [sic] who is dancing with great skill. She is a magnificent girl, tall and slim, with the stereotyped and rather silly smile of beauties of the time . . . Rosalina must also be several years older than Romeo; in a word, not the right woman for the boy’ (p. 51, sc. 18). Albert R. Cirillo notes the repeated use of the circle motif in the film: ‘The Art of Franco Zeffirelli and Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet’, TriQuarterly 16 (Fall, 1969), pp. 68–93; p. 81. The script indicates a ‘musician’ rather than a singer, and the song has not yet been added to the scene. Michael York, Travelling Player: An Autobiography (London: Headline, 1991), p. 139. Peter S. Donaldson, Shakespearean Films/Shakespearean Directors (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990), ch. 6, ‘‘‘Let lips do what hands do’’: Male Bonding, Eros and Loss in Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet’. York, Travelling Player, p. 137. Donaldson, Shakespearean Films/Shakespearean Directors, pp. 176–7. See in particular William Van Watson, ‘Zeffirelli, Shakespeare and the Homosexual Gaze’, Literature/Film Quarterly 20 (1992), pp. 308–25, and Donaldson, Shakespearean Films/Shakespearean Directors, pp. 145–8.

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100. Donaldson, Shakespearean Films/Shakespearean Directors, p. 170. 101. In the script (p. 134, sc.38) we see the ‘sudden transformation from the calm and unpractised Friar we know to the strong and energetic man who is revealed for the first time’. 102. See, for example, Michael Pursell, ‘Artifice and Authenticity in Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet’, Literature/Film Quarterly 14.4 (1986), pp. 173–8. A less admiring response is Jay L. Halio’s ‘Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet: The Camera versus the Text’, Literature/Film Quarterly 5 (1979), pp. 322–5. 103. The script notes: ‘NB. I[f] desired, lines 1–8, or 5–8, or else – as at the Old Vic – 9–14 and 18–30 can be cut’ (p. 80, sc. 23). 104. In the ‘Filming Shakespeare’ question session (p. 244), Zeffirelli’s responses to a question about omitting the potion and apothecary scenes are ambiguous, but Leonard Whiting (personal conversation) is sure that the second of these was not filmed. 105. Ibid., p. 260 (‘The girl, Olivia, was not good in the Potion scene, so why spoil the girl with that scene when she is so good in the rest?’), and p. 244, where he justifies the omission in terms of dramaturgy. 106. Zeffirelli, Autobiography, p. 229. Surprisingly – given the alleged inspirational significance of Henry V – Zeffirelli omits all reference to Olivier’s contribution in Autobiografia (pp. 258–63). 107. John Brabourne, one of the co-producers, recalled in an interview that the film cost £1 million and grossed $17 million on its first release. (See Brian McFarlane, ed., An Autobiography of British Cinema (London: Methuen, 1997), pp. 92–6; p. 94. Zeffirelli describes how money had run out halfway through filming and the film was saved by the response of Paramount executive Charles Bludhorn’s teenage son at a screening of the material shot so far: he liked it, and understood it, so the money was forthcoming. ‘It virtually saved Paramount,’ the director reflected (Zeffirelli, Autobiography, p. 229). 108. Small, tactful advertisements for this work, to be sent in plain wrappers, appeared regularly in the New Statesman and other periodicals. 109. Van Watson and Donaldson; see note 99, above. 110. Films and Filming 14.10 (July 1968), pp. 34–5. 111. Theodore Roszak, The Making of a Counter-Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and its Youthful Opposition (New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1969), p. 39. 112. Christopher Booker, The Neophiliacs: A Study of the Revolution in English Life in the Fifties and Sixties (London: William Collins, 1969; Fontana paperback edn, 1970), p. 40. For a fuller account from a more recent perspective, see Arthur Marwick, The Sixties (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), ch. 3, ‘New Actors, New Activities’. 113. See Jackson, Shakespeare at Stratford: Romeo and Juliet, pp. 16–22. 114. See Marwick’s discussion in The Sixties of variations of youth culture across the continent as well as in Britain and North America, ‘Blousons Noirs, Copains, Vitelloni: Youth in France and Italy’, pp. 95–111.

Notes to page 220

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115. Cirillo, ‘The Art of Franco Zeffirelli and Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet’, p. 82. 116. Sarah Munson Deats, ‘Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet : Shakespeare for the Sixties,’ Studies in Popular Culture (1983), pp. 60–9. 117. Jorgens, Shakespeare on Film, pp. 86–7.

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Index

For the films discussed, see the entries under ‘Shakespeare’ for individual plays. Dates of films are those of the initial release. Abdication Crisis 72, 108 Abrahams, William 242, 243 Academy Awards 122, 130 Adamson, Andrew 2 Addison, Paul 242 Adelphi Theatre (London) 65 Adler, Renata 216–17 Adrian (costume designer) 129, 136, 161, 247 Adrian, Max 88–91 Adventures of Robin Hood, The (film, 1938) 110, 236 Agate, James 94, 115, 117, 246 Agee, James 125–6 Aherne, Brian 23 Ainslee, Marian 248 Alborn, Al 237 Aldgate, Anthony 83 Alexander, Norah 117–19 Alexander, Ross 33, 64 Alexander Nevsky (film, 1938) 110, 118 Anderegg, Michael 232, 250, 253 Andrew, Dudley 103, 105 Angelico, Fra 137, 249 Anger, Kenneth 20, 235 Anglo-American (film) market 162, 163 Angus, Ian 242 Anstey, Edgar 120 Almereyda, Michael 2 Anthony Adverse (film, 1936) 241 Arbeau, Thoinot 135, 249 Armes, Roy 252 Armstrong, Michael 218 Arts Council of Great Britain 71 Ashcroft, Peggy 158 Asherson, Reneé 88 Ashton, Frederick 249 Asquith, Anthony 85 Astaire, Fred 23 Atkins, Robert 86

Atkinson, Brooks 19, 129 Auckland Chronicle (UK) 74 authenticity 5–10 authorship (in films) 10 Balcon, Michael 79 Balio, Tino 233, 248 Banks, Leslie 84 Barbas, Samantha 232 Barker, Felix 244 Barnes, Howard 125 baroque (vs classical) 36 Barrymore, John 23, 129, 150–1, 159, 160 Battle of Britain 78, 114 Baxandall, Michael 253 Bayreuth (Festival Theatre performances) 18 Bazin, Andre´ 194 Beaumont, Hugh (‘Binkie’) 88 Beatles, the 193, 205, 206 Beck, Reginald 88, 125 Beddington, Jack 87 Beery, Wallace 23 Behlmer, Rudy 232, 233, 243 Bel Geddes, Norman 17, 69 Belle et la Beˆte, La (film, 1946) 3 Bellissima (film, 1951) 191 Bells Go Down, The (film, 1943) 82 Ben-Hur (film, 1925) 15, 23 Bergman, Ingmar 3 Bergonzi, Bernard 243 Berkeley, Busby 37, 63, 218 Berlin Press Association 12, 21 Berri, Duc de 111 Berry, Sarah 249 Betjeman, John 78, 88 Beveridge Report 119 Birmingham Mail 189 Birmingham Post 74, 158, 216

269

270

Index

Blakemore, Michael 193 Blanke, Henry 15, 22, 27, 42, 43, 68, 237, 239–40 Bludhorn, Charles 256 Board of Trade (UK) 79 Boboli Gardens (Florence) 12, 18, 21 Bocaccio, Giovanni 128 Bo¨cklin, Arnold 14 Boeser, Knut 234 Book of the Courtier, The (Castiglione) 128 Booker, Christopher 219 Booth, Margaret 148, 160 Bordwell, David 231 Boston Globe 137 Bower, Dallas 75, 87–8 Boy, The 218 Brabourne, John 195, 256 Branagh, Kenneth 1, 7, 9, 97–9, 102, 111 Braudy, Leo 3 Breen, Joseph 251 Bretton Woods Conference 70 Bride of Frankenstein (film, 1935) 88 British Board of Film Censors (BBFC) 79 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) 1, 75 British film industry 11, 71, 79, 118–19, 246 British Film Institute (BFI) 119 British Home Entertainment (BHE) 195 Brooklyn Daily Eagle 64, 156 Brown, Ivor 74, 115, 121, 246 Brown, Joe E. 29, 33, 50–1, 59, 64 Brown, John Mason 156, 251 Brown, Sheila 20, 235 Brownlow, Kenneth 250 Brunetta, Gian Piero 191 Bryant, Arthur 76 Bu¨chse der Pandora, Die (film, 1926) 15 Buhler, Stephen M. 249, 250 Bun˜uel, Luis 3 Burdett, Winslow 65, 156 Burckhardt, Jacob 128 Burton, Richard 193–4 Cabinet von Dr Caligari, Das (film, 1920) 2 Cabot, Sebastian 190 Cagney, James 23, 25, 27, 29, 48, 50–2, 63, 64, 65, 66 Calder, Angus 242, 246 ‘calligraphers’ (Italian filmmakers) 162, 252 Callow, Simon 232 Cameron, Kate 124 Camille (film, 1936) 132, 161 Canterbury Tale, A (film, 1944) 84–5, 86, 88 Capriol Suite (ballet to Warlock’s music, 1927) 249 Cardiff, Jack 89 Carpaccio 165, 173, 176 Carroll, Brendan 236

Carroll, Madeleine 23 Carroll, Sidney 65–6, 158, 159, 160 Carter, Angela 2 Casson, Lewis 74 Castellani, Renato 11, 127, 152, 160, 161–91, 197, 200, 207, 209, 219, 220 career 162–7 response to criticism 190 television films on Verdi and Leonardo da Vinci 164 working methods 167 Castiglione, Baldassare 128 Catholic Herald (London) 73 Cavalcanti, Alberto 84 Cavalleria Rusticana (Mascagni) 192 Cavell, Stanley 3 Censorship Reports on Home Opinion (UK government) 77 Century Theatre (New York) 16, 18 Chamberlain, Neville 74, 79 Chaplin, Charles 23 Chapman, James 242, 243 Chaucer, Geoffrey 84 Chestnut Street Opera House (Philadelphia, PA) 60 Christian Science Monitor 219 Christie, Ian 86 Chronicles of Narnia, The (film, 2005) 2 Churchill, Sir Winston 70, 77, 81, 82, 108, 113–14, 120 Cinecitta` (studios) 213, 215 cine´ma-verite´ 1, 197, 205 Cinthio, Giraldo 163 Cirillo, Albert R. 220, 255 City Center (theatre, New York) 124 Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, The (Burckhardt) 128 Clark, Kenneth 87 Cocteau, Jean 3 Cole, G. D. H. 245 Coleman, Terry 88 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 3 Colker, Henry 152 Collier, Constance 153 Collier, Lionel 116 Colman, Ronald 146 Colville, John 70, 77 Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) 154 commedia dell’arte 194, 206 Company of Wolves, The (film, 1984) 2 Connery, Sean 5 Connoly, Marc 68 Cook, Alton 124 Cook, Page 254 Cooper, Lady Diana 12

Index Cooper, Gary 23 Cooper, Violet Kemble 129 Corbin, John 234 Cornell, Katharine 129, 156, 158, 159, 247 Coronation (of George VI, 1937) 81 Corot, Jean-Baptiste 21 Covent Garden (Royal Opera House) 192 Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA) 71 Craigie, Jill 246 Crećy, battle of 109 Crooker, Herb 240 Coward, Noe¨l 64, 85 Crawford, Joan 23, 160 Creelman, Eileen 124, 156 Crowther, Bosley 124, 187 Cukor, George 128, 129, 130–1, 138, 147, 156, 157, 160, 161, 164, 168–9, 197, 239, 247 cultural materialism 72 Czinner, Paul 159, 160 Daily Express (London) 116, 215, 216, 217 Daily Film Renter (London) 186 Daily Herald (London) 189 Daily Mail (London) 186, 187, 189 Daily Mirror (New York) 64, 122 Daily News (New York) 124 Daily Sketch (London) 116, 120, 190 Daily Telegraph (London) 116, 157, 158, 187, 188, 215, 218 Daily Worker (London) 93, 217, 218, 219 Dallas, Gregor 71 Danes, Claire 127 Daniels, William 136 Danton (Romain Rolland) planned film, 1935 68–9 David Copperfield (film, 1934) 132, 151, 157, 239 Davies, Anthony 91, 244, 253 Davies, Marion 15 Davis, Bette 23 Davis, John 246 Dawson, Ralph 26, 238, 240 Death in Venice (film, 1971) 192 Deats, Sarah Munson 220, 241 Decameron, The (Bocaccio) 128 De Havilland, Olivia 22 Dehn, Paul 194 Delahanty, Thomas 64 De Laurentiis 194, 195 De Mille, Agnes 130, 133, 135, 138–45, 161, 249, 250 De Mille, Cecil B. 116, 139 De Mille, Kathryn 139, 250 Denby, David 246 Dench, Judi 193

271

Denham Studios (London) 91 Denny, Reginald 150, 154 Dent, Alan 87, 244, 246 Deutsches Theater (Berlin) 17, 18, 21 Depression, Great 13–14 Devine, Andy 129, 151, 159, 160 Diary for Timothy (film, 1945) 94, 114 DiCaprio, Leonardo 127 Dick, Bernard F. 233 Dickinson, Margaret 242 Dieterle, William 13, 14, 15, 16, 22–3, 25, 26–8, 29, 42, 43, 66, 69, 127, 239–40 Dietz, Howard 153 Disney, Walt 2, 45 Dixon, Campbell 116, 188 documentary film 71, 78–9 Dolce Vita, La (film, 1959) 194 Donaldson, Peter S. 206, 209, 241, 255 dreams 1, 2–4, 5–6, 10, 12–241 Drazin, Charles 244 ‘Dream Factory’ (i.e. Hollywood) 4 Dream Works (production company) 4 Drinkwater, John 237 Drury Lane Theatre (London) 74 Dubin, Al 63 Duchen, Jessica 236 Due Soldi di Speranza (film, 1952) 163 Dumbarton Oaks conference 70 Duncan, Isadora 37 Durgnat, Raymond 101, 245 Dyer, Richard 231 E` Primavera (film, 1949) 162 Eagle-Lion (production company) 93, 120 Earthly Paradise, The (Morris) 94 Eckert, Charles W. 253 Education Act, 1944 (‘Butler Act’) 118, 119 Edward, Prince of Wales (the Black Prince) 109 Edward VIII, King 108 Edwards, Harry 250 Ehrenstein, David 249 Eisenstein, Sergei 110 Eisner, Lotte H. 234 Elizabeth I, Queen 81, 88 Elizabeth, the Queen Mother 108 Elizabethan theatre 16 Ellis, John 48, 246 Empire Leicester Square (London cinema) 156 Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA) 191 Epstein, Julius J. 68 Epstein, Max 19 Esquire Theatre (Boston, MA) 121 Eternal Road, The (Werfel) 51 Evans, Edith 88, 158

272

Index

Evening News (London) 72, 73, 115, 117, 157, 189 Evening Standard (London) 72, 73, 116, 120, 157 Evening Times (Glasgow) 117 expressionism 14, 150 Eyman, Scott 15 Eysoldt, Gertrud 19–20 Fairbanks, Douglas, Jr. 23 Fairbanks, Douglas, Sr. 72, 73, 160 fascist regime, Italian 162 Faust (Goethe) 12 film, 1926 14 stage, 1938 69 Fellini, Federico 191, 194 Felton, Felix 235 Fiedler, Leonhard M. 232 Fields, W.C. 23 film (technical media of production and exhibition) 6, 232 film production 6–9 film noir 2 Film Quarterly 188 Films and Filming 218 Financial Times (London) 187, 189, 218 Fire Over England (film, 1937) 80–1 Fires Were Started (film, 1943) 82 Flamini, Roland 247 Fleischmann, Benno 235 Fleming, Peter 72–3, 73 Fletcher, Helen 117 flying bombs (1944–5) 114 Flynn, Errol 73, 81–2, 160 Forbes, Ralph 154 Foreign Office (UK) 85 Fortune (magazine) 131 Francesca, Piero Della 165 Francis, Kay 23 Frankenstein, Dr 137 French, Emma 232 Gable, Clark 23 Gambler, The (Dostoevsky) planned film, c. 1935 68, 69 Garbo, Greta 23, 161 Gardiner, Juliet 245 Garson, Greer 83 Gattopardo, Il (film, 1965) 164 Geduld, Harry M. 245 gender 5–10, 51, 56–7, 112–13, 114, 129 general election (1945) 77 Genn, Leo 88 George VI, King 72, 73, 85, 108 Gibbons, Cedric 129, 132, 133–5, 136, 161, 164, 168, 169, 247, 248, 249 Gielgud, John 88, 158, 160, 168

Gilbert, Douglas 156 Gilroy, Harry 216 Gish, Lilian 15 Giudice, Fillipo del 87 Glancy, H. Mark 243, 251 Glasgow Bulletin 189 Glasgow Evening Times 159 Globe Theatre (London, c.1600) 87, 91 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 12, 14, 69 Goldberg, Harry 60 Gold Diggers of 1933 (film) 13 Goldwyn, Samuel 22 Gomery, Douglas 233 Gone With the Wind (film, 1939) 88 Good Earth, The (film, 1937) 130 Graduate, The (film, 1967) 217 Grand Hotel (film, 1932) 132 Grant, Barry Keith 244 Grant, Elspeth 116 Great Ziegfeld, The (film, 1936) 154 Greek dramatic festivals 14 Greek Theatre (Berkeley) 17 Green, Candida Lycett 242 Green Pastures, The (film, 1936) 60, 68 Greene, Graham 66, 81, 84, 152, 157, 159, 161 Grosses Schauspielhaus (Berlin) 17 Grot, Anton 14, 25, 237 Guardian (formerly Manchester Guardian) 196, 218 Guilaroff, Sidney 249 Gurney, Otis L., Jr. 187 Guthrie, Tyrone 72–4 Gutner, Howard 247 Haden, Sarah 59, 240 Halio, Jay L. 237, 256 Haller, Ernest 25, 26 Handel, George Frideric 36 Hansard 245 Harman, Jympson 115, 117 Harper, Sue 85 Harrison, Carey 255 Harrison’s Reports 67, 155, 156 Harvey, Laurence 166–7, 179–83, 189, 220 Harwood, Ronald 250 Havelock-Ellis, Anthony 195 Hawkins, Robert E. 252 Hays, Will 60–3 Headington Hill Hall (Oxford) 18, 21 Hearst, William Randolph 15 Hepburn, Katharine 23 Herald, Heinz 18, 19 Herald Tribune (New York) 64, 125, 187, 251 Herbert, Hugh 48 Hess, Myra 94

Index Heylin, Clinton 232 Hibbin, Nina 217, 219 Higham, Charles 233 Higson, Andrew 246 Hillary, Richard 243 Hillier, Bevis 244 Hiroshima, bombing of 115 His Majesty’s Theatre (London) 156 historical epic (film genre) 92 Hitler, Adolf 74, 114, 120 Hobson, Harold 219 Hodgdon, Barbara 254 Hoffmann, Michael 1, 2, 6, 28, 42, 50, 240 Holbein, Hans 165 Holderness, Graham 99, 241 Holloway, Baliol 74 Hollywood Bowl 12, 17, 21–2, 22 ‘Hollywood British’ films 157 Hollywood Hotel Hour (radio programme) 154 Hollywood Reporter 8, 22–3, 60, 63, 154, 247, 251 Home Service (BBC radio) 241 Hope, Frederick 247 Hope-Wallace, Philip 189 Horch, Franz 233 horror films 2 Hortmann, Wilhelm 233 Howard, Leslie 129, 137, 145–6, 153, 154, 158–9, 160, 161, 184, 186, 218, 220, 251 Howard, William K. 81 Humperdinck, Engelbert 13 Hunchback of Notre Dame, The (film, 1939) 14 Hunt, Mary 116, 120 Hunter, Ian 59 Hussey, Olivia 195, 216, 218 Huston, Walter 23 Hutton, C. Clayton 90, 244 Ihering, Herbert 14 Illustrated London News 244 Insel der Seligen, Der (film, 1913) 15 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 70 In Which We Serve (film, 1942) 85, 101 Italian cinema 162–7, 191–2 Jackman, Fred 27, 46, 237, 239 Jackson, Freda 88, 99 Jackson, Russell 244, 256 Jacobs, Margaret 232, 234 Jacobsohn, Siegfried 18, 19 Janni, Joseph 163 Jarman, Derek 2 Jarvie, Ian 246 Jedermann (Hoffmansthal) 12, 154 Jennings, Humphrey 78–9, 82, 94, 114 Jennings, Talbot 130, 133, 153

273

Jensen, Michael P. 237, 240 Jewish Chronicle, (London) 73 Jezebel (film, 1938) 241 John o’London’s Weekly 246 Jones, Carlisle 67 Jordan, Neil 2 Jorgens, Jack J. 39, 192, 220 Jorgensen, Paul 188 Jory, Victor 29, 66 ‘Juliet cap’ 249 Kael, Pauline 217–18 Kahane, Arthur 14 Kay, Hubbard 250 Keaton, Buster 23, 49 Keats, John 187 Kee, Robert 246 Keighley, William 68 Kemp, T. C. 74 Kennedy, Dennis 21 Kensington News (London) 186 Kenyon, Charles 27, 59, 68, 241 Kenzie, Martin 7 Kermesse He´ro¨ıque, La (film, 1935) 118 Kerr, Walter 14 Kibbee, Guy 23 Kinematograph Weekly 89, 90, 115, 116, 120 Kinsella, Patrick 74 Klinger, Barbara 232 Knight, Esmond 88 Knight, G. Wilson 71 Knina, Gustav 17 Koenig, William 26, 32, 239 Konnersreuth, Therese von 15 Korda, Alexander 80–1, 85, 146 Korngold, Erich Wolfgang 25, 27, 29, 38, 68, 236, 240 Koszarski, Richard 252 Krasker, Robert 89, 161, 184, 186, 207 Kraus, Karl 19 Kreuzberg, Harold 23 Kubrick, Stanley 7 Kulik, Karol 243 Ku¨nstlertheater (Munich) 18 Labour Party 77 Ladri di Bicicletti (film, 1948) 167 Lady Hamilton (film, 1941; akaThat Hamilton Woman) 81–2, 85 Lake, Veronica 124 Lambert, Gavin 161, 247 Landis, Bill 235 Landy, Marcia 79 Lang, Fritz 14–15 Laughton, Charles 68, 69

274

Index

Laurie, John 88 Lawrence Organisation 121 leadership, images of 85–6, 103–4, 107–14 Lean, David 85, 88 Lease-Lend agreement 70 Leigh, Vivien 80, 81, 82, 88, 124, 125, 244 Lejeune, Caroline 119–20, 187, 188 Leprohon, Pierre 252 Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (Agee and Walker) 126 Levenson, Jill L. 192, 202, 251, 254, 255 Liehm, Mira 252, 253 Life (magazine) 216 Listen to England (film, 1941) 94 Loehlin, James N. 103 Loew’s (film exhibitors) 156 Logan, Stanley 27, 239–40 London Films 146 Loney, Glenn 255 Lorenzo, Fiorenzo da 165 Los Angeles Evening News 153 Los Angeles Evening Telegraph 136 Louise, Anita 41, 42, 60, 64, 239–40 ‘Love Me Do’ (Beatles song, 1964) 193 Loy, Myrna 23 Loyola, Ignatius 154 Lubitsch, Ernst 15 Lucas, E.V. 237 Ludwig, Ken 2 Luhrmann, Baz 1, 2, 127–8, 152, 162, 202 M (film, 1931) 15 Mackay, Robert 79, 114 Macnab, Geoffrey 242, 244, 246 Madden, John 94 Maeder, Edward 249 Making of a Counter-Culture, The (Roszak) 219 Mais, S. P. B. 78 Manchester Guardian (subsequently The Guardian) 117, 189 Mann, William J. 247 Mannix, Eddie 251 Mantle, Burns 158, 159 Manvell, Roger 253 March, Frederic 23, 146 Marie Antoinette (film, 1938) 160 Marquis, Don 64 Marlowe, Christopher 101 Martineau, Jane 231 Martini, Stelio 165, 166 Marvell, Andrew 86 Marwick, Arthur 256 Marx, Samuel L. 248, 251 masculinity: see gender Massine, Leonide 23

Mass-Observation 79, 83, 87 Matter of Life and Death, A (film, 1946) 86 Max Reinhardt Film Company 15 Mayer, Louis B. 251 Mayerson, Donald J. 216 McCall, Mary, Jr. 27, 68, 241 McCarten, John 124, 188 McClintic, Guthrie 247 McEnery, John 199, 219 McFarlane, Brian 242, 244, 256 McGinn, Colin 3, 5 McHugh, Frank 48 McKibbin, Ross 77 McOwen, Alec 219 Meistersinger von Nu¨rnburg, Die (Wagner) 154 Meerson, Lazare 80 Mendelssohn, Felix 21, 28, 29, 30, 38 Third Symphony (‘Scottish’) 33 Songs Without Words 35 Merchant of Yonkers, The (Wilder) 69 Messel, Oliver 129–30, 135, 156–7, 161, 164, 247 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) 5, 16, 68, 80, 127, 128–61, 164, 165, 168, 169, 172, 176, 202, 207, 219, 239 Metropolis (film, 1927) 14 Milwaukee Sentinel 250 Ministry of Foreign Affairs (French) 245 Ministry of Information (MOI) 79, 82, 85, 87, 244 Miracle, The (play) 12, 13–14, 16–17 completed and proposed films of 15 Miskin, Leo 216 mods and rockers 217 Mohr, Hal 25, 26, 43, 68 Moreau, Gustave 6 Morley, Christopher 237 Morning Advertiser (London) 157 Morning Telegraph (New York) 216 Morris, William 94 Moseley, Monica 236 Mosher, John C. 64, 156 Motion Picture Herald 154 Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America Inc. (MPPDA) 63 Motley (designers) 72, 73, 74 Mountbatten, Lord Louis 85 Mrs Miniver (film, 1941) 83 MTV 1 Mulvey, Laura 231, 250 Muni, Paul 68, 69 Munich Crisis 74 Murnau, Friedrich Wilhelm 14–15 Murphy, Andrew 82, 243 Murray, Stephen 73 Mutiny on the Bounty, The (film, 1935) 130

Index Nagasaki, bombing of 115 Napoleon 82 Nation 125–6 National Board of Review (USA) 15, 122 National Board of Review Magazine 64, 65 National Gallery (London) 94 National Theatre (London) 193, 195 nationality 5–10 Nazis 104 neo-realism (Italian) 5, 127, 160, 162–7, 187 Neue Sachlichkeit (art movement) 14 Neues Theater (Berlin) 12, 17, 19 New Deal 126 New Historicism 72 News Chronicle (London) 118–19 New Statesman and Nation (London) 73, 256 ‘New Theatre’ movement (c. 1900–30) 16–17 Newton, Robert 88 New Wave (film movement) 1 New York American 156 New York Daily News 158 New York Evening Post 64, 251 New York Film Critics’ Circle 122 New York Post 68, 156 New York Sun 156 New York Telegraph 250 New York Times 64, 65, 124, 129, 156, 187, 215, 216–17, 247 New York World-Tribune 156 New Yorker 64, 124, 156, 188, 217–18 Nicoll, Allardyce 66–7 Nicolson, Harold 75 Nijinska, Bronislava 23, 25, 36, 38, 236 Noble, Adrian 3–4 Norgate, Mathew 117 Normandy Landings (‘D-Day’, 1944) 93, 114, 115 Northampton Repertory Theatre 72–3 Nottingham Journal 74 Novello, Ivor 74 Nugent, Frank S. 156 O’Brien, Pat 59 Observer (London) 74, 119–20, 187, 188, 193, 215 Odeon cinema (Leeds) 115 Oedipus (play, 1911) 14 Oldham Evening Chronicle 186 Old Vic Theatre (London) 72, 73, 74, 87, 88, 124, 166, 192–3, 193, 202 Olive and the Sword, The 71 Oliver, Edna May 151, 154, 159 Olivier, Laurence 1, 2, 5, 11, 23, 69, 70–215 in Coriolanus, Old Vic, 1938 72, 73 in Fire Over England (film, 1937) 80, 81 in Henry V, Old Vic, 1937 72, 73, 87 in That Hamilton Woman (film, 1941) 81, 82

275

Olympia (London exhibition hall and arena) 14 On the Waterfront (film, 1954) 186 Orche´sographie (Arbeau) 135, 249 Ornstein, George H. 194 Orwell, George 77, 78 Orwell, Sonia 242 O’Shea, Milo 199 Ossessione (film, 1942) 191 Otello (proposed film based on Cinthio, c. 1950) 163 Otello (film of Verdi’s opera, 1986) 192 Oxford Mail 190, 191 Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS) 18 Pagliacci, I (Puccini) 192 Panofksy, Irwin 3 Paramount Pictures 194–5, 215 Paris cinema (New York) 215, 216 Parkinson, David 243 Pasolini, Pier Paolo 194 Patterson, Michael 234 Pavilion, Marble Arch (London cinema) 114, 115 Payne, Ben Iden 72 Pearl Harbor 81, 82 ‘People’s War’ 71 Petrified Forest, The (film, 1935) 146 Philadelphia Inquirer 159 Picturegoer [and Film] Weekly (London) 116, 157 Pilgrimage Theatre (Los Angeles) 69 Pilkington, Ace G. 106, 244 Pinkham, Roger 247 Pirandello, Luigi 68, 69 Pisanello, Vittore 165 Pommer, Erich 81 Poppenberg, Felix 19 popular theatre 12 Porter, Joseph 249 Portman, Eric 84 Porto, Luigi da 163 Post, Guy Bates 247 Powell, Dick 23, 29, 33, 63, 64 Powell, Dilys 190, 243 Powell, Michael 84, 86, 88, 244 Pressburger, Emeric 84, 86 ‘prestige’ films 71, 86 Priestley, J. B. 76, 77, 78, 83 Private Life of Henry VIII, The (film, 1933) 80 Production Code Administration (PCA) 37, 63, 152, 238, 251 propaganda 75–87, 113 Pudney, John 86 Punch 187 Pursell, Michael 254, 256

276

Index

Rabkin, Norman 72 Rackham, Arthur 20 RAI 195 Raleigh, Sir Walter 86 Rank, J. Arthur (and Rank Organisation) 87, 119, 121, 122, 161, 162, 163, 184, 186 Rapf, Maurice 216 Rathbone, Basil 129, 151, 159, 247 Raymond, Moor 117 Rebecca (film, 1940) 5 Reddington, John 64 Redgrave, Michael 85 Reé, Max 25 Reed, Carol 88 Reinhardt, Edmund 13 Reinhardt, Gottfried 16, 42 Reinhardt, Max 2, 3, 6, 12–241 departure from Germany (1933) 16, 17 plans for festivals in USA 17 plans for films after 1935 68, 160 stage productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream 1, 17–22, 233 work with actors 25 ‘Workshop of Stage Screen and Radio’ 69 Renaissance Italy, visions of 1, 11, 132, 137, 138, 147, 152–3, 194, 219, 221 Reynolds News (London) 66 Richard II, King 109 Richards, Jeffrey 83, 242, 243 Richardson, Ralph 75–87 Robey, George 88, 99 Robinson, David 218 Robson, Flora 80, 81, 166, 167, 177, 178, 190 Rocco e i suoi Fratelli (film, 1960) 194 Roddick, Nick 233, 241 Rolland, Romain 68–9 Rolling Stones, the 206 Rooney, Mickey 20, 21, 29, 59, 63, 64, 65, 66, 152 Roosevelt, Franklin D. 70, 120 Rosalinda (version of Die Fledermaus) 69 Rose, Sonya O. 113 Rosenbach, A. S. W. 60 Rosenkavalier, Der (Strauss) 20 Rosselini, Roberto 192 Rosten, Leo 232 Roszak, Theodore 219 Rota, Nino 1, 192, 196 Rothe, Hans 233 Rothwell, Kenneth S. 253, 254 Roud, Richard 218 Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, London (RADA) 166 Royal Film Performance 215 Royal Shakespeare Theatre 193 Ru¨hle, Gu¨nther 21, 233

Salzburg Festival 69, 154 Santis, Giuseppe de 252 Santis, Pasquale de 207 Scarlet Pimpernel, The (film, 1935) 146 Schatz, Thomas 231, 233, 241, 248 Schenk, Nick 248 Scorsese, Martin 246 Sea Hawk, The (film, 1940) 81, 243 Selzer, Ed 240 Selznick, David O. 88 Senate Foreign Relations Committee (USA) 82 Sennwald, Andre´ 64 Senso (film, 1954) 164, 191, 253 Seven Samurai (film, 1954) 186 Seventh Veil, The (film, 1945) 72–3 Shakespeare Association of America 60 ‘Shakespeare Films’, anxieties occasioned by 159–60 Shakespeare in Hollywood (play, 2005) 2 Shakespeare in Love (film, 1998) 94 Shakespeare Memorial Theatre (Stratford-uponAvon) 72 Shakespeare, William As You Like It 33 film, 1936 159, 160 proposed MGM film, 1936 160 Coriolanus stage, 1938 (Old Vic) 72, 73 Hamlet 73 film, 1948 2, 244 film, 1996 7, 9–10, 245 film, 1999 2 proposed film, c. 1935 68 stage (New York: Gielgud) 1936 160 stage (New York: Howard) 1936 146, 160, 251 Henry IV, Part One 73 Henry V 71–5 film, 1944 1, 2, 11, 69, 70–247 acting style 97, 103–4 casting 88, 183 characterising the French 101–2, 104, 110, 245 chorus 94–5, 97–9, 103–4 dedication 93 DVD versions 93 finance and production 87 framing devices and structure 93, 103–4, 105, 106–7 Globe Theatre 88, 90, 91, 94–7, 106–7, 130 ‘historical epic’ 92 leadership 103–4, 107–14 looking (as a topic of the film) 102–3, 107 masculinity 112–13, 114

Index music, diegetic and nondiegetic 107, 112 production schedule 90 promotion and reception in Britain 70, 114–21 in USA 121–6 propaganda 71, 75–87, 119–20, 120 script development 90, 108–10 use of colour 89–90 film, 1989 1, 97–9, 102, 104, 111 radio, 1939–43 75 stage, 1937 (Old Vic) 72–4, 87 stage, 1937 (Stratford-upon-Avon) 72 stage, 1938 (Dury Lane) 74 stage, 1941 (Regent’s Park) 74 stage, 1943 (performances by Durham Light Infantry) 74 stage, 1943 (Stratford-upon-Avon) 74 television, planned production c. 1939 75 Julius Caesar television, c. 1936–9 75 Macbeth film, 1949 2, 8 Merchant of Venice, The in Reinhardt’s repertoire 233 Midsummer Night’s Dream, A 2, 3, 86, 139 film, 1935 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 10, 12–241, 91, 92, 128, 129, 153, 156, 159, 168 ‘Bottom’s Wife’ 54–5, 59, 240 budget 32, 241 casting choreography 36–9 colour, planned use of 47 delays to schedule 25–6 editing 26 eroticism 29–30, 31, 39, 238 masculinity 51, 56–7 nature and civilisation 32, 36 promotion and reception 59 script development 26–8 special effects 27, 42–8, 239 film, 1968 6 film, 1996 3–4, 6 film, 1999 1, 2, 6, 28, 42, 50, 240 stage, 1905 (Berlin) 12, 17, 18, 19, 36, 238 stage, 1924–5 (Vienna) 18 stage, 1925 (Salzburg) 21 stage, 1927 (Munich) 18 stage, 1927 (New York) 19 stage, 1933 (Florence) 12, 18, 21, 23 stage, 1933 (Oxford) 18, 21, 23 stage, 1934 (Hollywood Bowl) 21–2, 23 stage, 1934 (tour in USA) 17 Much Ado About Nothing stage, 1965

277 Othello (film, 1952) 2, 8, 163 stage, 1961 193 Richard III film, 1955 244 Romeo and Juliet 127 ballet by Anthony Tudor, 1943 (New York) 250 ‘Fantasy Overture’ (Tchaikovsky) 135, 136, 149 film, 1936 1, 7–11, 68, 86, 127, 128–61, 164, 165, 168, 176, 184, 186, 197, 202, 218, 219, 220 box-office 156 budget 248 Capulet’s feast 137, 202 choreography 130, 138, 250 cinematography 136 credits and opening sequence 128 designs 129–30, 132, 136–7, 140, 145, 156–7, 249 masculinity 144, 249 music 128, 135–6, 140, 149, 152, 249 period detail 132, 133–5 preparation and production 131, 135 presentation of lovers balcony scene 147–9 eroticism (lack of) 149–50, 161, 251 first encounter 144 Juliet’s first appearance 146–7 Romeo’s first appearance 146 Romeo’s restraint 150, 158–9, 161 wedding night 251 prologue and epilogue 147, 152–3 promotion and reception 135, 153–61, 248 proposed revision of opening sequence 153 rehearsals 131 religion 137, 151–2, 181–3 script development 131, 132, 133–5, 144, 146 supporting players 150, 250 film, 1954 1, 11, 127, 152, 161–91, 197, 200, 202, 209, 219, 220 Capulet’s feast 169–72, 250 casting 165, 190 choice of period 164 choreography 170, 171, 172 director’s working methods 167, 190, 191 family relationships 176–9 Juliet’s funeral 176 locations 165, 174 music 172, 176, 185, 186 Nurse 177–9 opening sequence 168–9, 253 presentation of lovers 179–81 balcony scene 181–3 final scenes 183–6

278

Index

Shakespeare, William (cont.) first meeting 170–2 marriage scene 174 wedding night 183 production process 191 prologue 168 promotion and reception 161–2, 184, 186–91 relation to 1936 film 164, 165, 168, 169, 172, 176 religion and religious symbolism 172–6, 179–81 Romeo’s fight with Paris 184, 186–91, 256 sexuality 182, 183 social behaviour 168 title for Italian release (Giulietta e Romeo) 162, 164 use of paintings 165, 173–6 Verona 168–9 film, 1968 1, 4, 11, 127, 152, 162, 171, 184, 186, 191 behaviour in Verona 197, 210 box office 215–16 Capulet’s feast 202 casting 195 choreography 204, 250 cinematography 200–1, 202, 204, 205, 208, 210–12 destiny as a theme 195–6, 197 epilogue 213, 214–15 family relationships 198, 203–4, 205, 208 Friar Laurence 199 homoeroticism 201, 209, 218 music 192, 205 Nurse 198, 199, 206 omitted scenes Romeo and the Apothecary 213 Romeo’s fight with Paris 212, 213 presentation of lovers balcony scene 206–8 first meeting 204–5, 206 marriage 200 wedding night 209–10 production plans and financing 194, 256 prologue 213–14 promotion and reception 213, 215 rehearsals and working method 192, 255 religion 197, 200 Rosaline 250, 255 sexuality 205, 207, 208, 209–10 script development 212–15 violence 200–2, 210–12 youth culture 197, 208, 213, 215, 216, 217–18, 219, 220 film, 1996 1, 2, 127–8, 162, 202 stage, 1934 (New York) 129, 156, 158, 159, 247

stage, 1935 (London) 88, 158 stage, 1960 (London) 192–3, 202, 219 The Taming of the Shrew film, 1929 159 film, 1967 191, 193–4, 213, 215, 218 television (Garrick’s version), c. 1936–9 75 The Tempest 140 film, 1980 2 television, c. 1936–9 75 Titus Andronicus film (Titus), 1999 2 Twelfth Night planned film, 1935 68, 160 song, ‘O mistress mine’ 140 Shearer, Norma 129, 136, 145–7, 153, 154, 157, 158–9, 160, 161, 218, 220, 247 Shentall, Susan 165–6, 179–81, 189–90, 220, 252 Sheridan, Dorothy 242, 243 Sherwood, Lydia 190 Short, K. R. M. 241 Shorter, Eric 218 Sica, Vittorio de 167 Siegfried (film, 1924) 14 Siegfried (Wagner) 19 Sight and Sound 66–7, 118 Silviria, Dale 101, 245 Sinclair, Andrew 244 Six Characters in Search of an Author (Pirandello) planned film, c. 1935 68, 69 Smith, C. Aubrey 129 Smith, Emma 241, 245 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (animated film, 1937) 2, 45 Sobchack, Vivian 92 Sokolov, Vladmir 19 Sotto il Sole di Roma (film, 1948) 162 Spectator, (London) 66, 72–3, 120, 157, 161 Sphere (London) 72, 73 Spicer, Andrew 243 Staiger, Janet 231, 241 Stalin, Josef 73 Stansky, Peter 242, 243 stars 4, 5, 145, 160 Star Wars (film, 1977) 10 Stephens, Robert 219 Stern, Ernst 18, 20 Stimmungstheater (Reinhardt’s) 12 Stothart, Herbert 135–6, 152, 192 Strada, La (film, 1954) 186, 253 Stratford-upon-Avon 115, 193 Street, Sarah 82, 121, 242, 243, 246 Stride, John 193 Strunk, William, Jr. 130, 133, 248, 250 Studlar, Gaylin 239

Index Styan, J. L. 232 ‘Sumer is icumen in’ 128 Sun (New York) 124 Sunday Chronicle and Referee (London) 117 Sunday Express (London) 115, 189, 190 Sunday Graphic (London) 117 Sunday Pictorial (London) 117–18, 157 Sunday Telegraph (London) 117 Sunday Times (London) 65–6, 158, 160, 190 Sydney, Basil 84 Tales of Hoffman, The (Offenbach) planned film, c. 1935 68, 69 Tamburlaine the Great (Marlowe) 101 Tarakanova (film, 1938) 118 Tatler 94, 115 Tatspaugh, Patricia 255 Taylor, Elizabeth 193–4 Taylor, John Russell 218, 219 Taymor, Julie 2 Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Ilyich 135, 149, 192 Technicolor 70, 89, 93, 115, 124, 161, 253 Terra Trema, La (film, 1948) 193 Thalberg, Irving 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 138, 146, 153, 157–8, 160, 161, 164, 247, 248, 249, 250 That Hamilton Woman (film, 1941; aka Lady Hamilton) 81–2, 85 Theater in der Josefstadt (Vienna) 18 Theilade, Nini 21, 23, 25, 36, 39, 42, 60, 66, 236 Thesiger, Ernest 88 Thimig, Helene 235, 236 This Happy Breed (film, 1944) 85, 94 Thomas, John Alfred 64, 65 Thomas, Stephen 75 Thompson, Kristin 231 Tibbett, Laurence 23 Tillyard, E. M. W. 72 Time (magazine) 125–6, 190 Time and Tide 114 Times, The (London) 65, 66, 189, 216, 218 Today’s Cinema (London) 185, 186 Tone, Franchot 146 Top of the Pops (BBC TV) 216 Trachtenberg, Robert 252 Tracy, Spencer 68, 69 Trasati, Sergio 252 Travers, Bill 179 Traviata, La (Verdi) 192 Treacher, Arthur 48, 50, 239 Tre`s Riches Heures du Duc de Berri, Les 111, 117 Trinder, Tommy 82 Trotsky, Leon 73 Tudor, Anthony 250

279

Two Cities Films 87, 93 Tynan, Kenneth 193 Ucello, Paolo 90, 165 United Artists (UA) 15, 103, 122 United Nations Organisation (UNO) 71, 124, 126 Valentino, Rudolph 51, 158 Van Watson, William 255, 256 Variety 63, 67, 122, 155, 159, 186, 195, 215 Vatkova´, Renata 234 Venezianische Nacht (film, 1913) 15 Venice Film Festival 186, 188, 253 Vertrees, Alan David 231 Victorian fairy painting 231 Victory Parade (London, 1946) 109 Vietnam War 220 Villager (New York) 216 Vincent, James 247 Vinci, Leonardo da 165, 173 Virgin Mary 154, 173, 174, 183 Visconti, Luchino 164, 191–2, 194 Vitteloni, I (film, 1953) 194 Vlad, Roman 172, 192, 253 Volksbu¨hne (Berlin) 17 Wagner, Richard 18, 19 Walker, Alexander 254, 255 Walker, John 252 Wallis, Hal 22, 25, 26, 32, 42, 59, 64, 233, 239–40 Walser, Erwin 17 Walton, Susan 244 Walton, William 88, 89, 99, 112, 244 ‘Wanderers, The’ (William Morris) 94 Waring, Hubert 66 Warlock, Peter Capriol Suite 249 War Memorial Opera House (San Francisco) 17 Warner Bros. 8, 11, 12–241, 129, 153, 160 Warner Harry 13 Warner, Jack L. 25, 26, 59, 63 Warren, Harry 63 Warren, John 232, 234 Waterhouse, J. W. 6 Watts, Stephen 252 Way to the Stars, The (film, 1945) 85–6 Weerth, Ernest de 12 Weill, Kurt 69 Weisskopf, Carol 240 Welfare State 119 Welles, Orson 2, 8, 163, 232 Wenden, D. J. 241 Went the Day Well? (film, 1942) 84 Werfel, Franz 68

280

Index

Western Approaches (film, 1944) 89, 120 West Side Story (stage, 1957; film, 1960) 171, 216, 217, 219 Whale, James 88 Whiting, Leonard 184, 195, 213, 215, 216, 256 Wiene, Robert 2 Wiener, Martin J. 78 Wilder, Thornton 69 Wilk, Jacob 68 Wilkinson, F. W. 118 Wilkinson, W. R. 154 Williams, Gary Jay 13, 232 Williams, Harcourt 73, 88 Williams, Simon 19, 233 Williams, Stephen 72 Williams, W. E. 66 Willson, Robert F., Jr. 145, 250 Winant, Gilbert 70 Wise Children (Carter) 2 Wizard of Oz, The (film, 1939) 3, 60

Women, The (film, 1939) 160 Wooland, Norman 179, 190 World Film News and Television Progress 248 World-Telegram (New York) 124 Wuthering Heights (film, 1939) 5 Wyler, William 88 York, Michael 198, 204 Yorkshire Post 158, 189 Young, John W. 245 ‘youth culture’ (1960s) 127 Zeffirelli, Franco 1, 4, 11, 127, 152, 161, 162, 171, 172, 184, 191–221 career 191–4 opera productions 192 stage production of Romeo and Juliet at old Vic 192–3 Ziegfeld, Florenz 158 Zukor, Adolph 15

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