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Peter Brook's King Lear: Aesthetic Achievement or Far Side of the Moon?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

Laurilyn J. Harris
Laurilyn J. Harris
Affiliation:
Laurilyn Harris is anAssociate Professor in the Department of Speech/Theatre Arts, Washington State University.
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Extract

In 1965, in an interview in Sight and Sound, Peter Brook eloquently discussed the difficulties of filming Shakespearian plays, decrying the ‘sad history of Shakespeare on the screen’ and denouncing the majority of Shakespearian films as ‘pitiful’ and ‘unspeakably bad’. Speaking at UNESCO's Shakespeare Quatercentenary Celebration in Paris, he said, in essence, that Shakespeare was impossible to film at all. However, the winter of 1968–9 found Brook in Northern Jutland, filming one of Shakespeare's most profoundly intricate tragedies, King Lear. When the film was released in 1970–1, critical reaction ranged from rapture to outrage. Nigel Andrews called Brook's Lear ‘a distinct achievement’, praising the acting, the setting, and, above all, Brook's use of the camera to ‘transcend repre-sentationalism’. Frank Kermode hailed Lear as a ‘fully realized and deeply imagined version of this great work … a masterly conception of the play’. Charles Phillips Reilly cautiously labelled the film ‘a mixed bag’, lauding Paul Scofield's performance as Lear and Brook's understanding of the themes of the play, but criticizing the camera work, especially in the storm sequence. Pauline Kael, the formidable reviewer for The New Yorker, simply said ‘I hated it’, and dismissed the film as ‘gray and cold … the drear far side of the moon’. According to Kael, the concept was ‘second-rate’, the script ‘plotless’, and the actors walking corpses.12 She dubbed the film ‘Peter Brook's “Night of the Living Dead”’.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 11 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1986 , pp. 223 - 239
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1986

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References

Notes

1. Brook, Peter, ‘Shakespeare on Three Screens: Peter Brook Interviewed by Geoffrey Reeves’, Sight and Sound 34 (Spring 1965): 66.Google Scholar

2. Manvell, Roger, Shakespeare and the Film (New York: A. S. Barnes and Company, 1979), p. 133.Google Scholar

3. Andrews, Nigel, ‘King Lear’, Sight and Sound 40 (Autumn 1971): 223.Google Scholar

4. Ibid.

5. Kermode, Frank, ‘Shakespeare in the Movies’, in Film Theory and Criticism, ed. by Mast, Gerald and Cohen, Marshall (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), p. 331.Google Scholar

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7. Ibid.

8. Kael, Pauline, Deeper into Movies (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1973), p. 354.Google Scholar

9. Ibid., pp. 354–5.

10. Ibid., p. 357.

11. Ibid., p. 355.

12. Ibid., p. 354.

13. Peter Brook, as quoted by Marowitz, Charles, ‘Lear Log’, Encore 10 (1963): 22.Google Scholar

14. Brook, Peter, The Empty Space (New York: Avon Books, 1968), p. 9.Google Scholar

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41. As quoted in Trewin, , p. 148.Google Scholar

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43. Marowitz, as quoted in Manvell, , Shakespeare and the Film, p. 135.Google Scholar

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53. Brook had directed Orson Welles in a very compressed (seventy-three minute) version of King Lear for a Sunday night television show in New York in 1953. See Trewin, , p. 71.Google Scholar

54. Michael Birkett had already produced The Caretaker, Peter Hall's A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Brook's film version of Marat/Sade.

55. Birkett, Michael, ‘King Lear: From Page to Screen’, Journal of the Society of Film and Television Arts (Autumn 1969): 16.Google Scholar

56. Ibid., 17.

57. Ibid.

58. Ibid.

59. Brook, , ‘Shakespeare on Three Screens’, 68.Google Scholar

60. Birkett, , 16.Google Scholar

61. This and all subsequent quotations from Shakespeare's King Lear are taken from William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, ed. by Harbage, Alfred (New York: The Viking Press, 1969)Google Scholar, and will be cited by act, scene, and line numbers in parentheses in the text.

62. Brook, , The Empty Space, p. 74.Google Scholar

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64. Kael, , p. 354.Google Scholar

65. Trewin, , p. 25.Google Scholar

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68. Manvell, , Shakespeare and the Film, p. 135.Google Scholar

69. Andrews, , 223.Google Scholar

70. Brook and Birkett were at first limited ‘in capital and scope’, but were able to film in cooperation with two Danish film companies, Athena and Laterna, and some of their total budget, which was just over a million dollars, was supplied by a grant from the Danish Film Fund. See Trewin, , p. 171.Google Scholar

71. Andrews, , 223.Google Scholar

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75. Ibid., p. 357.

76. Croyden, , p. 233.Google Scholar

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78. Andrews, , 224.Google Scholar

79. Kermode, , p. 331.Google Scholar

80. Manvell, , Shakespeare and the Film, p. 146.Google Scholar

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82. Ibid., 637.

83. Manvell, , Shakespeare and the Film, p. 143.Google Scholar

84. Andrews, , 223.Google Scholar

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87. Jorgens, Jack J., Shakespeare on Film (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977), p. 244.Google Scholar

88. Ibid.

89. Brook, , The Empty Space, p. 65.Google Scholar

90. Jorgens, , p. 249.Google Scholar

91. Shooting Script of Brook's King Lear, as reprinted in Manvell, , Shakespeare and the Film, p. 148.Google Scholar

92. Kott, , pp. 142–3.Google Scholar

93. Ibid., p. 151.

94. Ibid., p. 149.

95. Brook, , ‘Shakespeare on Three Screens’, 68.Google Scholar See also Kott, , p. 142.Google Scholar

96. Reeves, Geoffrey, ‘Finding Shakespeare on Film: From an Interview with Peter Brook’, in Focus on Shakespearian Films, ed. by Eckert, Charles W. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1972), p. 38.Google Scholar

97. Jorgens, , p. 240.Google Scholar

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100. As quoted in Trewin, , p. 160.Google Scholar Brook once directed Artaud's Spurt of Blood with the dialogue entirely replaced by screams.

101. Brook, , The Empty Space, p. 115.Google Scholar

102. Brook had been appointed director of Covent Garden Opera when he was twenty-six, and was always known for attempting to suit music to the plays he directed. It is interesting to note that he apparently believed music would be out of place in his film of Lear.

103. Jorgens, , p. 239.Google Scholar

104. Trewin, , p. 126.Google Scholar

105. Shooting script of Brook's King Lear, as reprinted in Manvell, , Shakespeare and the Film, p. 145.Google Scholar

106. Kermode, , p. 331.Google Scholar

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108. Ibid., p. 151.

109. Jorgens, , pp. 241–242.Google Scholar

110. Andrews, , 224.Google Scholar

111. Kael, , p. 355.Google Scholar

112. Andrews, , 223.Google Scholar

113. Brook, , ‘Shakespeare on Three Screens’, 68.Google Scholar

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115. Jorgens, , p. 247.Google Scholar

116. Ibid., p. 237.

117. Ibid., p. 250.