Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Screen
- Cambridge Companions to Literature
- The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Screen
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Contributors
- Preface
- Note on References
- Introduction
- Part I Adaptation and Its Contexts
- Part II Genres and Plays
- Part III Critical Issues
- Part IV Directors
- 14 The Shakespeare Films of Orson Welles
- 15 Kurosawa’s Shakespeare: Mute Heavens, Merging Worlds or the Metaphors of Cruelty
- 16 Zeffirelli’s Shakespearean Motion Pictures: Living Monuments
- 17 Kenneth Branagh: Mainstreaming Shakespeare in Movie Theatres
- 18 Remaking Shakespeare in India: Vishal Bhardwaj’s Films
- Further Reading
- Filmography
- Index
- Cambridge Companions To …
17 - Kenneth Branagh: Mainstreaming Shakespeare in Movie Theatres
from Part IV - Directors
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2020
- The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Screen
- Cambridge Companions to Literature
- The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Screen
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Contributors
- Preface
- Note on References
- Introduction
- Part I Adaptation and Its Contexts
- Part II Genres and Plays
- Part III Critical Issues
- Part IV Directors
- 14 The Shakespeare Films of Orson Welles
- 15 Kurosawa’s Shakespeare: Mute Heavens, Merging Worlds or the Metaphors of Cruelty
- 16 Zeffirelli’s Shakespearean Motion Pictures: Living Monuments
- 17 Kenneth Branagh: Mainstreaming Shakespeare in Movie Theatres
- 18 Remaking Shakespeare in India: Vishal Bhardwaj’s Films
- Further Reading
- Filmography
- Index
- Cambridge Companions To …
Summary
Kenneth Branagh acted in and directed more Shakespeare plays than any other filmmaker before him; yet he also defied what was expected from a Shakespearean actor-director. First, he used the codes of Hollywood cinema to make the plays entertaining and available to a younger, more popular audience. Second, he not only adapted Shakespeare but also ventured into directing Hollywood blockbusters, as well as more intimate projects on stage and screen, injecting Shakespearean echoes into a new range of productions. Through his taste for popular, mainstream movies, his bold self-made trajectory that carried him repeatedly in and out of the ‘Establishment’, Branagh has contributed to redefining relations between Shakespeare and Hollywood, between the art house and the multiplex, and between theatre and cinema. Through his ceaselessly renewed ‘vaulting ambition’ of bringing Shakespeare to the people, Branagh has constructed over the years the ideologically complex persona of a working-class Shakespearean entrepreneur.
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- The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Screen , pp. 224 - 236Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020