November 8, 2011 (XXIII:12) Richard Loncraine, RICHARD III (1995, 104 min.)

Directed by Richard Loncraine Based on the play by William Shakespeare Script by Ian McKellen and Richard Loncraine Produced by Stephen Bayly and Lisa Katselas Paré Original Music by Trevor Jones Cinematography by Peter Biziou Film Editing by Paul Green Art Direction by Richard Bridgland and Choi Ho Man Ian McKellen...Richard III Annette Bening...Queen Elizabeth, wife of Edward IV Jim Broadbent...Duke of Buckingham Robert Downey Jr....Lord Rivers Nigel Hawthorne...George, Duke of Clarence Kristin Scott Thomas...Lady Anne John Wood...King Edward IV Maggie Smith...Duchess of York Jim Carter...Lord William Hastings Edward Hardwicke...Lord Thomas Stanley Adrian Dunbar...James Tyrell Tres Hanley...Rivers' Mistress Dominic West...Earl of Richmond Roger Hammond...Archbishop Thomas RICHARD LONCRAINE (October 20, 1946, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England) has 18 directing credits: 2010 “The Special Relationship”, 2009 My One and Only, 2006 Firewall, 2004 Wimbledon, 2003 “My House in Umbria”, 2002 “The Gathering Storm”, 2001 “Band of Brothers”, 1995 Richard III, 1993 “Screen One”, 1987 Bellman and True, 1982 The Missionary, 1982 Brimstone & Treacle, 1980 “Blade on the Feather”, 1977-1980 “Play for Today”, 1979 “Secret Orchards”, 1977 The Haunting of Julia, 1975/I Slade in Flame, and 1974 Radio Wonderful. PETER BIZIOU (August 8, 1944, Wales) won a best cinematography Os ar for Mississippi Burning (1988). His 23 other cinematographer credits are 2005 Derailed, 2004 Ladies in Lavender, 2003 Festival Express, 2002 Unfaithful, 1998 The Truman Show, 1995 Richard III, 1994 The Road to Wellville, 1993 In the Name of the Father, 1992 Damage, 1992 City of Joy, 1990 Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, 1988 A World Apart, 1986 Nine 1/2 Weeks, 1984 Another Country, 1982 Pink

Floyd The Wall, 1981 Time Bandits, 1979 Life of Brian, 1976 Short Ends, 1976 Bugsy Malone, 1974 Footsteps, 1974 Our Cissy, 1969 Secret World, and 1965 Fragment. IAN MCKELLEN (May 25, 1939, Burnley, Lancashire, England) has 87 screen credits, among them 2012 Miss in Her Teens, 2011 Lady Grey London, 2010 The Egg Trick, 2009 “The Prisoner” (6 episodes), 2009 The Academy, 2008 “King Lear”, 2008 “Great Performances”, 2007 The Golden Compass, 2007 Stardust, 2006 Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth II - Rise of the Witch King (Video Game), 2006 X-Men: The Last Stand, 2006 The Da Vinci Code, 2005 “Coronation Street” (10 episodes), 2005 Asylum, 2003 The Lord of the Rings: T*he Return of the King, 2003 Emile, 2002 The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, 2001 The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, 2000 X-Men, 1998 Gods and Monsters, 1997 Swept from the Sea, 1997 Bent, 1996 “Rasputin”, 1995 Restoration, 1995 Richard III, 1995 Jack & Sarah, 1995 “Cold Comfort Farm”, 1994 The Shadow, 1993 Six Degrees of Separation, 1993 “And the Band Played On”, 1993 The Ballad of Little Jo, 1993 Last Action Hero, 1989 Scandal, 1985 Plenty, 1983 The Keep, 1981 Priest of Love, 1972 “BBC Show of the Week”, 1971 “The Tragedy of King Richard II”, 1970/I “Hamlet”, 1970 “Edward II”, 1969 The Promise,

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1966 “David Copperfield” (9 episodes), and 1964 “The Indian Tales of Rudyard Kipling”. ANNETTE BENING (May 29, 1958, Topeka, Kansas) has 31 screen credits, including 2012 He Loves Me (post-production), 2012 Imogene (post-production), 2010 The Kids Are All Right, 2009 Mother and Child, 2008/I The Women, 2006 Running with Scissors, 2004 Being Julia, 2000 What Planet Are You From?, 1999 American Beauty, 1998/I The Siege, 1996 Mars Attacks!, 1995 The American President, 1995 Richard III, 1994 Love Affair, 1991 Bugsy, 1991 Regarding Henry, 1991 Guilty by Suspicion, 1990 The Grifters, 1990 Postcards from the Edge, 1989 Valmont, 1987 “Miami Vice”, and 1986 Manhunt for Claude Dallas (TV movie). JIM BROADBENT (May 24, 1949, Lincoln, Lincolnshire, England) won a best supporting actor Oscar for Iris (2001). He has 120 other screen credits, among them 2011 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, 2011 “Exile”, 2010 “Any Human Heart”, 2010 Another Year, 2009 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, 2009 The Young Victoria, 2008 Inkheart, 2008 Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, 2005 The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, 2005 The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Video Game), 2004 Vera Drake, 2004 Vanity Fair, 2004 Around the World in 80 Days, 2002 Nicholas Nickleby, 2002 Gangs of New York, 2001/I Iris, 2001 Moulin Rouge!, 2001 Bridget Jones's Diary, 1995-2000 “The Boss” (9 episodes), 1996-2000 “Percy the Park Keeper” (17 episodes), 1999 Big Day, 1999 Topsy-Turvy, 1998 The Avengers, 1997 Smilla's Sense of Snow, 1996 The Secret Agent, 1995 Richard III, 1994 Bullets Over Broadway, 1992 “Gone to Seed” (6 episodes), 1991 “Gone to the Dogs” (6 episodes), 1990 Vroom, 1989 Erik the Viking, 1988 “Blackadder's Christmas Carol”, 1987 Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, 1985 “Silas Marner”, 1985 Brazil, 1981 Time Bandits, 1980 The Dogs of War, 1980 Breaking Glass, 1979 The Passage, and 1978 The Shout. ROBERT DOWNEY JR. (April 4, 1965, New York City, New York) has 75 screen credits, among them 2012 The Avengers (post-production), 2011 Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (post-production), 2010 Iron Man 2, 2009 Sherlock Holmes, 2009 The Soloist, 2008 Tropic Thunder, 2008 The Incredible Hulk, 2008 Iron Man, 2006 Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus, 2005 Good Night, and Good Luck., 2005 Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, 2004 Eros, 2003 Gothika, 2003 The Singing Detective, 2000-2002 “Ally McBeal” (25 episodes), 2000 Wonder Boys, 1999 Bowfinger, 1999 Friends & Lovers, 1998 The Gingerbread Man, 1997 One Night Stand, 1995 Restoration, 1995 Richard III, 1994 Natural Born Killers, 1993 Short Cuts, 1992 Chaplin, 1991 Soapdish, 1990 Air America, 1989 True Believer, 1988 Johnny Be Good, 1987 Less Than Zero, 1986 America, 1986 Back to

School, 1985-1986 “Saturday Night Live” (18 episodes), 1984 Firstborn, 1983 Baby It's You, and 1970 Pound. NIGEL HAWTHORNE (April 5, 1929, Coventry, Warwickshire, England – December 26, 2001, Hertfordshire, England) appeared in 99 films and TV series, among them 1999 The Clandestine Marriage, 1999 A Reasonable Man, 1999 The Big Brass Ring, 1999 The Winslow Boy, 1998 At Sachem Farm, 1998 The Object of My Affection, 1997 “Forbidden Territory: Stanley's Search for

Livingstone”, 1997 Amistad, 1996 Twelfth Night, 1995 Richard III, 1994 The Madness of King George, 1993 Demolition Man, 1986-1988 Yes, Prime Minister (16 episodes), 1988 Rarg, 1985-1986 “Mapp & Lucia” (10 episodes), 1985 Turtle Diary, 1985 The Black Cauldron, 1980-1984 “Yes Minister” (22 episodes), 1984 “The House”, 1983 “Tartuffe, or The Impostor”, 1982 The Barchester Chronicles (7 episodes), 1982 Gandhi, 1982 “A Woman

Called Golda”, 1980 “Jukes of Piccadilly” (6 episodes), 1979 “Thomas and Sarah”, 1978 “Watership Down”, 1978 “Holocaust”, 1978 “Warrior Queen”, 1976 “Couples”, and 1957 “The Royal Astrologers”. KRISTIN SCOTT THOMAS (May 24, 1960, Redruth, Cornwall, England) has 75 screen credits, some of which are 2012 Dans la maison (post-production), 2011 Bel Ami (completed), 2011 Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, 2011 The Woman in the Fifth, 2010 Love Crime, 2009 Nowhere Boy, 2009 Confessions of a Shopaholic, 2008 Seuls Two, 2008 The Other Boleyn Girl, 2008 I've Loved You So Long, 2007 The Golden Compass, 2007 The Walker, 2006 Tell No One, 2006 The Valet, 2003 Small Cuts, 2001 Gosford Park, 1999 Random Hearts, 1998 The Horse Whisperer, 1996 The English Patient, 1996 Mission: Impossible, 1995 The Pompatus of Love, 1995 Angels and Insects, 1995 Le confessional, 1995 Les Milles, 1995 Richard III, 1995 En mai, fais ce qu'il te plait, 1994 Four Weddings and a Funeral, 1993 “Body & Soul” (6 episodes), 1990 The Bachelor, 1988 A Handful of Dust, and 1984 “Les enquêtes du commissaire Maigret”. JOHN WOOD (July 5, 1930, Derbyshire, England – August 6, 2011, Gloucestershire, England) appeared in 101 films and TV series, some of which were 2005 The White Countess, 2004 The Rocket Post, 2003 Imagining Argentina, 2002 “Goodbye, Mr. Chips”, 2002 “Napoléon”, 2001 “Victoria & Albert”, 2001 “Love in a Cold Climate”, 2000 Chocolat, 1998 The Avengers, 1998 The Revengers' Comedies, 1997 Metroland, 1996 Jane Eyre, 1995 Sabrina, 1995 Richard III, 1995 “Citizen X”, 1994 The Madness of King George, 1993 Shadowlands, 1992 Orlando, 1986 Jumpin' Jack Flash, 1986 Heartburn, 1985 Ladyhawke, 1985 The Purple Rose of Cairo, 1983 WarGames, 1972 Slaughterhouse-Five, 1971 Nicholas and Alexandra, 1970 Which Way to the Front?, 1967 The Avengers, 1965 “A Tale of Two

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Cities” (8 episodes), 1963 “The Victorians” (8 episodes), 1960 “Barnaby Rudge” (12 episodes), 1953 Salome, and 1952 Stolen Face. MAGGIE SMITH (December 28, 1934, Ilford, Essex, England) won a best supporting actress Oscar for California Suite (1978) and a best actress Oscar for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969). She has 69 other film and TV credits, among which are 2010-2011 “Downton Abbey” (16 episodes), 2011 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, 2011 Gnomeo & Juliet, 2010 Nanny McPhee Returns, 2009 From Time to Time, 2009 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, 2007 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, 2005 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, 2004 Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, 2003 “My House in Umbria”, 2002 Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, 2002 Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, 2001 Gosford Park, 2001 Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, 1999 “David Copperfield”, 1999 “All the King's Men”, 1997 Washington Square, 1996 The First Wives Club, 1995 Richard III, 1993 Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit, 1993 The Secret Garden, 1992 Sister Act, 1991 Hook, 1990 Romeo.Juliet, 1987 The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, 1985 A Room with a View, 1984 Lily in Love, 1982 The Missionary, 1982 Evil Under the Sun, 1981 Clash of the Titans, 1981 Quartet, 1978 Death on the Nile, 1976 Murder by Death, 1969 Oh! What a Lovely War, 1957-1966 “ITV Play of the Week” (6 episodes), 1965 Othello, 1965 Young Cassidy, 1964 The Pumpkin Eater, 1963 The V.I.P.s, 1962 Go to Blazes, 1958 Nowhere to Go, and 1955 “BBC Sunday-Night Theatre”. Richard III (play) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Richard III is a history play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in approximately 1591. It depicts the Machiavellian rise to power and subsequent short reign of Richard III of England. The play is grouped among the histories in the First Folio and is most often classified as such. Occasionally, however, as in the quarto edition, it is termed a tragedy. Richard III concludes Shakespeare's first tetralogy (also containing Henry VI parts 1–3). After Hamlet, it is the longest play in the canon and is the longest of the First Folio, whose version of Hamlet is shorter than its Quarto counterpart. The play is rarely performed unabridged; often, certain peripheral characters are removed entirely. In such instances extra lines are often invented or added from elsewhere in the sequence to establish the nature of characters' relationships. A further reason for abridgment is that Shakespeare assumed that his audiences would be familiar with the Henry VI plays, and frequently made indirect references to events in them, such as Richard's murder of Henry VI or the defeat of Henry's queen Margaret….

Date and text Richard III is believed to be one of Shakespeare's earlier plays, preceded only by the three parts of Henry VI and perhaps a handful of comedies. It is believed to have been written c. 1591. Although Richard III was entered into the Register of the Stationers Company on 20 October 1597, by the bookseller Andrew Wise, who published the first quarto (Q1) later that year (with printing done by Valentine Simmes), Christopher Marlowe's Edward II, which cannot have been written much later than 1592 (Marlowe died in 1593) is thought to have been influenced by it. A second quarto (Q2) followed in 1598, printed by Thomas Creede for Andrew Wise, containing an attribution to Shakespeare on its title page and may have been a memorial reconstruction. Q3 appeared in 1602, Q4 in 1605, Q5 in 1612, and Q6 in 1622; the frequency attesting to its popularity. The First Folio version followed in 1623.

Comedic elements The play resolutely avoids demonstrations of physical violence; only Richard and Clarence die on-stage, while the rest (the two princes, Hastings, Grey, Vaughan, Rivers, Anne, Buckingham, and King Edward) all meet their ends off-stage. Despite the villainous nature of the title character and the grim storyline, Shakespeare infuses the action with comic material, as he does with most

of his tragedies. Much of the humour rises from the dichotomy between how Richard's character is known and how Richard tries to appear. Richard himself also provides some dry remarks in evaluating the situation, as when he plans to marry Queen Elizabeth's daughter: "Murder her brothers, then marry her; Uncertain way of gain ..." Other examples of humour in this play include Clarence's reluctant murderers, and the Duke of Buckingham's report on his attempt to persuade the Londoners to accept Richard ("... I bid them that did love their country's good cry, God save Richard, England's royal king!" Richard: "And did they so?" Buckingham: "No, so God help me, they spake not a word ...") Puns, a Shakespearean staple, are especially well-represented in the scene where Richard tries to persuade Queen Elizabeth to woo her daughter on his behalf…. Richard as anti-hero Throughout the play, Richard's character constantly changes and shifts and, in doing so, alters the dramatic structure of the story. Richard immediately establishes a connection with the audience with his opening monologue. In the soliloquy he admits his amorality to the audience but at the same time treats them as if they were co-conspirators in his plotting; one may well be enamored by his rhetoric while being appalled by his scheming. Richard shows off his wit in Act I, as seen in the interchanges with Lady Anne (Act I, Scene II) and his brother Clarence (Act I, Scene I). In his dialogues Act I, Richard knowingly refers to thoughts he has only previously shared with the audience to keep

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the audience attuned to him and his objectives. In 1.1, Richard tells the audience in a soliloquy how he plans to claw his way to the throne—killing his brother Clarence as a necessary step to get there. However, Richard pretends to be Clarence's friend, falsely reassures him by saying, "I will deliver you, or else lie for you" (1.1.115); which the audience knows—and Richard tells us after Clarence's exit—is the exact opposite of what he plans to do. Scholar Michael E. Mooney describes Richard as occupying a "figural position"; he is able to move in and out of it by talking with the audience on one level, and interacting with other characters on another. Each scene in Act I is book-ended by Richard directly addressing the audience. This action on Richard's part not only keeps him in control of the dramatic action of the play, but also of how the audience sees him: in a somewhat positive light, or as the protagonist. Richard actually embodies the dramatic character of "Vice" from Medieval mystery plays – with which Shakespeare was very familiar from his time – with his "impish-to-fiendish humour". Like Vice, Richard is able to present what is ugly and evil – his thoughts and aims, his view of other characters – into what is charming and amusing for the audience. In the earlier acts of the play, too, the role of the antagonist is filled by that of the old Lancastrian queen, Margaret, who is reviled by the Yorkists and whom Richard manipulates and condemns in Act I, Scene III. However, after Act I, the number and quality of Richard's asides to the audience decrease significantly, as well as multiple scenes are interspersed that do not include Richard at all, but average Citizens (Act II, Scene III), or the Duchess of York and Clarence's children (Act II, Scene II), who are as moral as Richard is evil. Without Richard guiding the audience through the dramatic action, the audience is left to evaluate for itself what is going on. In Act IV, Scene IV, after the murder of the two young princes and the ruthless murder of Lady Anne, the women of the play – Queen Elizabeth, the Duchess of York, and even Margaret – gather to mourn their state and to curse Richard; and it is difficult as the audience not to sympathise with them. When Richard enters to bargain with Queen Elizabeth for her daughter's hand – a scene whose form echoes the same rhythmically quick dialogue as the Lady Anne scene in Act I – he has lost his vivacity and playfulness for communication; it is obvious he is not the same man. By the end of Act IV everyone else in the play, including Richard's own mother, the Duchess, has turned against him. He does not interact with the audience nearly as much, and the inspiring quality of his speech has declined into merely giving and requiring information. As Richard gets closer to seizing the crown, he encloses himself within the world of the play; no longer embodying his facile movement in and out of the dramatic

action, he is now stuck firmly within it. It is from Act IV that Richard really begins his rapid decline into truly being the antagonist. Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt notes how Richard even refers to himself as "the formal Vice, Iniquity" (3.1.82), which informs the audience that he knows what his function is; but also like Vice in the morality plays, the fates will turn and get Richard in the end, which Elizabethan audiences would have recognised. In addition, the character of Richmond enters into the play in Act

V to overthrow Richard and save the state from his tyranny, effectively being the instantaneous new protagonist. Richmond is a clear contrast to Richard's evil character, which makes the audience see him as such. Performance The earliest certain performance occurred on 17 November 1633, when Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria watched it on the Queen's birthday. The Diary of Philip Henslowe records a popular play he calls Buckingham, performed in December 1593 and January 1594, which might have been Shakespeare's play. Colley Cibber produced the most successful of the Restoration adaptations of Shakespeare with his version of Richard III, at Drury Lane starting in 1700. Cibber himself

played the role till 1739, and his version was on stage for the next century and a half. It contained the line "Off with his head; so much for Buckingham" – possibly the most famous Shakespearean line that Shakespeare did not write. The original Shakespearean version returned in a production at Sadler's Wells Theatre in 1845. Most film versions of Richard III feature actors who had previously played Richard on stage. The two best-known film versions are those with Laurence Olivier and Ian McKellen. McKellen's film is directly based on an earlier stage production set in a Nazified England of the 1930s, which toured Europe for six years to sell-out crowds prior to being shortly thereafter adapted to film. McKellen wrote the screenplay for his film version, although he did not direct it. Olivier played Richard on stage for quite a few years in the 1940s before making a film of it in 1955. His film performance, if not the production as a whole, is heavily based on his earlier stage rendition. The Al Pacino film, Looking for Richard is a documentary of rehearsals of specific scenes from the play, and a meditation on the play's significance. Pacino had played the role on stage 15 years earlier. In 2011, well-known film actor Kevin Spacey starred in an Old Vic production which subsequently toured the United States, directed by well-known stage and film director Sam Mendes. No plans for a film version have been announced. Spacey had played

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the role of Richard's henchman, the Duke of Buckingham, in the Pacino film…. Film The most famous player of the part in recent times was Laurence Olivier in his 1955 film version. Olivier's film incorporates a few scenes and speeches from Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part III and Cibber's rewrite of Shakespeare's play, but cuts entirely the characters of Queen Margaret and the Duchess of York, and Richard's soliloquy after seeing the ghosts of his victims. Olivier has Richard seduce Lady Anne while mourning over the corpse of her husband rather than her father-in-law as in the play. Olivier's rendition has been parodied by many comedians, including Peter Cook and Peter Sellers. Sellers, who had aspirations to do the role straight, appeared in a 1965 TV special on The Beatles' music by reciting "A Hard Day's Night" in the style of Olivier's Richard III. The first episode of the BBC television comedy Blackadder in part parodies the Olivier film, visually (as in the crown motif), Peter Cook's performance as a benevolent Richard, and by mangling Shakespearean text ("Now is the summer of our sweet content made o'ercast winter by these Tudor clouds ...") Ian McKellan's film is set in a fictional Nazified England in the 1930s, and based on an earlier highly successful stage production. Only about half the text of the play is used. The first part of his Now is the winter of our discontent... soliloquy is a public speech, while the second part is a private monologue. The famous final line or Richard's “A horse, my kingdom for a horse” is spoken when the engine of his jeep will not start. In 2002 the story of Richard III was re-told in a movie about gang culture called The Street King. In 1996, a pristine print of Richard III (1912), starring Frederick Warde in the title role, was discovered by a private collector and donated to the American Film Institute. The 55-minute film is considered to be the earliest surviving American feature film. The 2011 film, The King's Speech, features a scene where Lionel Logue, as played by Geoffrey Rush, auditions for the role by reciting the lines, "Now is the winter of our discontent / Made glorious summer by this sun [or son] of York,"

From New York State Writers Institute:

Shakespeare’s version of Richard III was a tyrant and a charismatic schemer, a man whom the desire for imperial power had turned into an ambitious murderer. He would kill those who stood in his way to the throne, kill those who disputed his rule, and kill those whose empires he decided were a threat to his own. His homicidal whims were transformed into state policy, and he spent his nation into bankruptcy with his enthusiastic war making. Dissenters gave up their voice, and much more, on the headsman's block at the Tower of London. Shakespeare willed us, in short, a very modern dictator.

This is just how director Richard Loncraine and star Ian McKellean envisioned Richard, as a man who would have been at home in the horrific golden age of modern dictators, when Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini left bloody footprints across the globe. It is the 1930's, and we are in a familiar-seeming but alternate England. Yet it is one that might very well have come to pass if native British Depression-era fascists like Oswald Mosley, who captained a black-shirted militia, had come to power in the same way Hitler had. Production designer Tony Burrough has recreated Britain between the wars to a fare-thee-well, from the British art deco designs associated with high society, to the imposing Victorian spaces associated with the democratic government that arose to contain the excesses of mad rulers like Richard. Cinematographer Peter Biziou's performance is one of the best in the film; he photographs these untimely spaces in striking, often expressionistic moments, and offers Richard's serial slaughterings of royal rivals in scenes of opulent violence.

By moving the play forward a few hundred years, Loncraine and McKellen (they wrote the screenplay together) open up imaginative opportunities for location staging. A power station becomes the Tower of London, and a steam train museum on Lancashine becomes part of the battle of Bosworth Field. Richard is now, like Hitler, a World War I veteran, chain smoking and exhorting the rabble. Squaring off against Richard at Court are a cadre of distingué royals right out of Noel Coward, led but never organized by Queen Elizabeth, played by Annette Bening.

In his own day, Shakespeare's history plays had been done in modern dress. Many of Shakespeare’s twentieth century exponents in the theater, most notoriously Orson Welles, have found in Shakespeare’s works eerie parables for modern fascism and criminality. (The recent independent film Scotland, PA burlesques this tradition, with its version of Macbeth concentrating on the bloody struggle for control of a family-style restaurant in a small Pennsylvania town in the 1970’s.) Loncraine follows in this tradition – he has said that he sought to "mesh the twentieth century imagery and the sixteenth century dialog."

Richard Loncraine is not the first film director to take on Shakespeare’s controversial play. (Controversial because his historians have argued that Richard was a radically different person than the monumental villain Shakespeare gives us.) Laurence Olivier’s 1955 Richard, the third in Olivier’s cinematic Shakespeare trilogy, forever cemented this image of killing cruelty and physical disability in the popular mind. The McKellen version cleverly attempts, not to contradict these

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assumptions, but to take them as givens, and improvise on them. McKellen has been involved with some of the most innovative films of recent years, and as a collaborator, he sought someone able to fully commit himself to a high concept interpretation. Loncraine had directed such uncategorizable films as Bellman and True and Brimstone and Treacle, disturbing and expressive dark comedies, and McKellen rightly believed that Loncraine would find the extravagant cinematic equivalents to the political updatings of their script.

Their adaptation has been, itself, controversial, less for its on-screen violence than for the violence Loncraine does to Shakespeare’s language. Many of the play’s scenes are cut or trimmed, and even some of the great speeches have been radically altered. (The "now is the winter of our discontent" speech, for instance, gets chopped in half; it is used as a public harangue, and then as a monologue in a men's room.) But McKellen makes Richard’s grandiose ego mesmerizing. He confides in us with such assuredness that we almost find ourselves dimly beginning to believe in his strange messiah complex, before we bring ourselves up short, suddenly aware of how a dictator could have compelled a nation and its stewards to fight for his unbalanced view of the world. And yet, for us, as for reviewer Kenneth Turan, McKellen’s Richard, for all his modern dress, is still recognizable as Shakespearean: "Insinuator, instigator, a matchless deployer of nets and traps, McKellen’s smirking Richard is master of oily dissimulation. With his awkward hump and withered arm, he is at once the scuttling apparition that dogs bark at and everyone’s concerned false friend, `too childish, foolish for this world.’

— Kevin Hagopian, Penn State University

The following is taken from a Chicago Sun-Times review by Roger Ebert that appeared Jan. 19, 1996:

One of the most audacious proposals in all of literature occurs in Shakespeare's "Richard III," when the misshapen Richard, who has caused the death of King Henry VI, proposes to his widow, Anne, as she accompanies the corpse of her husband through the streets. Here Shakespeare was collapsing events separated in time, to underscore Richard's evil impudence. Of course, in the 15th century, royal marriages were more a matter of politics and strategy than of romance, and by the end of the scene, Anne is

actually considering his proposal.

Now look at a small touch added to the scene by "Richard III," the new film by Richard Loncraine and Ian McKellen. Richard (McKellen) softens up Anne (Kristin Scott Thomas) with flattery, sophistry and lies, and finally offers her a ring, which she accepts. All very well. But in this version, he first removes the ring from his own finger by sticking it in his mouth and lubricating it with saliva, so that as he slips it on her finger, she cannot help feeling the spit of her husband's murderer.

That extra measure of repulsive detail scuttles through the entire film, making this "Richard III" not just a seductive telling of

Shakespeare's story but also a perversely entertaining one…. The movie, based on a London stage production that also starred McKellen, advances the action 500 years, to the 1930s, while keeping Shakespeare's words. The first 10 minutes of the film set the stage almost without dialogue, as Richard shoots a rival and then addresses a political rally. When the famous opening lines arrive ("Now is the winter of our

discontent"), we slip easily into the language. (More fiendishness: Richard begins his speech in public glory, and then concludes it in private, standing at a urinal, speaking directly to the camera, enlisting us in his scheme.)

The movie is set in the kind of England that might have resulted if Edward VIII, instead of abdicating, had been able to indulge his fascist fantasies, summon Oswald Mosley to lead a government and lead his people into an accommodation with Hitler. Much of the popular appeal of Nazism grew out of the costumes, settings and architecture of the Hitler cult, and in "Richard III," the men strut in black and red, in leather and tailored wool -- their politics an expression of their fetishes. Many of the scenes are placed inside and outside a vast 1930s Art Deco power station, which looks like the set for an Ayn Rand wet dream.

And they smoke constantly. Of course, everyone smoked in the 1930s, but the smoking behavior in "Richard III" is particular: Richard's consciousness in many scenes seems to center on his cigarette, which he returns to obsessively, as if through its tube he is inhaling the venom that enables him to carry on. All of the others smoke, too -- the women using cigarette holders and gloves to maintain a dainty distance between themselves and the poison they crave.

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Richard's progress to the crown is hastened by a steady stream of murders, orchestrated with the aid of a couple of blank-faced hit men and the advice of the plump, sleek Buckingham (Jim Broadbent), who beams benignly over the slaughter and dreams of being paid off with a country estate….

Annette Bening plays Elizabeth solidly…. Maggie Smith is right at home; as Richard's mother and the grandmother of his victims, she curses him so venomously that even Richard has pause. [But] the movie is really McKellen's, and with director Loncraine, his co-writer, he comes up with one sly touch after another to make Richard a satisfactory villain. Given an apple to feed to a pig, he throws it at the animal and nods with quiet satisfaction at its squeal….

Traditional adaptations of Shakespeare [sometimes have a tendency to be] reverent, yet not filling. Now here is that bane of the purists, a modern-dress Shakespeare, which works in the way the play should work. Perhaps that is because the 1930s period and decor match the tone of the play; decadent royalty strutted on the European stage, having a last dance before the Nazi beast pounced.

The following is taken from a Denver Post interview by Howie Movshovitz that appeared Jan. 13, 1996:

I asked [Ian McKellen] if doing Shakespeare is different from working with the writing of others.

He smiled the way people do when they taste something unusually wonderful. "Mmmnh. Yes," he answered. "You know it when you do other people's work. There's no playwright so supportive to actors. There is within the plays all the information you need. And within the language - the rhythms, rhymes and metaphors - a whole world a thousand times bigger than what's being spoken about. He's elemental.

"For Shakespeare, the poetic is the essence of reality. It's not removed from reality. The breadth of his interest (and technique) is astounding. Shaw, for instance, basically uses the same tricks of grabbing the audience - irony, wit - over and over…." McKellen clasped his hands in excitement. "Poetry and reality are the same for Shakespeare. And it's warming for an actor that this great mind invented theater for his medium. He might have been an essayist, a composer or a painter. But what he liked was people getting together - a social world."

McKellen, 56, has been performing Shakespeare for more than 30 years. He loves it. When he talks about Shakespeare his eyes shine and he sounds as if he could go on forever. He's such a good and lively talker, listening to him well into the future would be just fine….

This version of "Richard III," directed by Richard Loncraine from a screenplay by Loncraine and McKellen, sets the action between the two world wars. Over the course of the play, Richard and his minions dress increasingly in black with uniforms like those of Hitler's SS, and the monumental art direction is right out of Leni Riefenstahl's Nazi-sponsored documentary "Triumph of the Will."

But McKellen offers no apologies for Shakespeare. He doesn't hype Shakespeare as a 16th- or 17th-century Steven Spielberg or any other current entertainer, and he's not trying to update Shakespeare's play into a palatable setting for our sensibilities. He wants to give us Shakespeare directly.

Adapting Shakespeare to the movie screen, he said, "depends on what your intentions are. If the intent is to update and pander to the fears that Shakespeare is above the audience, that he would do westerns now, then we'd have Richard looking just like Adolf Hitler. You can go down that track."….

"My approach is to do nothing that will get in the way of the audience appreciating what I appreciate, stripping away the unhelpful sense that Shakespeare, because he wrote

400 years ago, is difficult. As if we must apologize for Shakespeare."

To make "Richard III" roughly contemporary is what Shakespeare did. He set his plays in his time. As Chaucer made the ancient Greek and Trojan warriors into late medieval knights, Shakespeare turned Hamlet and Macbeth into men of the early 1600s. As McKellen said, "Shakespeare didn't make 'The Merchant of Venice,' he made 'The Merchant of London.'

"A critic said that 'Richard III' was not authentic. But Shakespeare did it all in modern dress. I just want to borrow fascism to show that Richard was not just a charismatic jolly villain. We have to take him seriously."….

The following is taken from an article by Mark Lawson that appeared in The Guardian (UK), April 19, 1996:

McKellen insists that the main alterations [in adapting "Richard III" for the screen] concern concept rather than text. He points out that, having performed the play 300 times before starting his script, he was perhaps more familiar with the source material than any previous screenwriter faced with a classic text.

'My job on the production was to stick up for Shakespeare. I was his agent. And, hand on heart, there is nothing on the screen that did not spring from the text or my understanding of it. But you have to keep asking yourself: will they understand it? Do they know what I'm talking about? That will affect the way I speak it.

Loncraine—RICHARD III—8

It will affect the way the characters are introduced, what they wear.' Because budget and fashion demanded a short film, McKellen's script took an axe to the structure of the text familiar to play-goers, but tried to use only a scalpel on those parts of the play that were retained. Because of the setting, the introduction and identification of some characters was changed, so that, for example, the 'Lord Chamberlain' becomes 'Prime Minister'. The main stylistic decision was that thees or thous would be removed and the line 'Cousin, thou wast not wont to be so dull' was altered to 'Buckingham, you never used to be so dull', because, in McKellen's view, 'wast' was too fustian and 'not wont' might be heard by modern popcorn-crunchers as a double negative.

The longest agonies concerned the soliloquies. 'I thought Richard could have a confidant he spoke to. Or he could be speaking to himself, gnawing away. But I don't believe people speak to themselves like that. Nor does Shakespeare. The soliloquies are direct communication with someone. It's part of Richard's need to tell people what is going on. [Film audiences] just have to go along with it, although it is worrying in cinema to break the convention of the fourth wall.'…. -------------------- James Beardinelli, review: Richard III - it's Shakespeare that has nothing to do with Kenneth Branagh. Actually, at first glance, this film doesn't appear to have anything to do with the Bard's play, either. Opening in a 1930's England war room with a tank crashing through a wall, one is immediately struck by the realization that, whatever this movie is doing, it certainly isn't preserving the story's original time frame. However, while the sets and costumes have been moved to a mythical, Nazi-like pre-WWII England, the dialogue, characters, actions, and themes remain unchanged from the original text by Shakespeare. While this curious clash between a near-modern setting and the much older source material might seem confounding, it actually serves to energize the play, as well as making it more palatable to present-day audiences. Being released at the same time as a new version of Othello (which has Branagh, along with Laurence Fishburn and Irene Jacob), Richard III is likely either to usher in a new, mini-era of screen Shakespeare revival, or show that two Shakespeare films

are capable of glutting a small marketplace. Othello is a far more traditional interpretation than Richard III, and, other than authorship, about the only thing the movies have in common is that both excise significant portions of dialogue from the original text in the interest of saving time. Richard III is the last in the series of Shakespeare histories to chronicle England's tribulations during the period before the Tudors took the throne (an event which occurs at the end of Richard III, when Henry VII, the first of the Tudors and grandfather to Shakespeare's Queen Elizabeth, becomes King). This play tells of the machinations of Richard (Ian McKellan), a royal prince with a twisted spine and grotesque physical appearance, to place himself in power. Richard is a spiteful person who kills without compunction and, in the process, earns nothing but enmity from all around him. There are four bodies that impede his march to the crown: two of his brothers -- Clarence and King Edward -- and the king's two young sons. One-by-one, Richard has them removed, caring only that he should one day rule England. Sir Ian McKellan, a veteran of screen and stage, takes the title role of Richard and turns in a performance that is equal parts captivating magnetism and chilling menace. It's an amazing piece of acting that is worthy of notice at Oscar nomination time. A fine cast supports McKellan, including Kristin Scott-Thomas (Four Weddings and a Funeral) as Anne, Richard's wife; Annette Bening (The American President) as Queen Elizabeth; Nigel Hawthorne (The Madness of King George) as Clarence; John Wood (Sabrina) as King Edward; Jim Broadbent (Enchanted April) as Buckingham; Maggie Smith (The Secret Garden) as the Duchess of York, Richard's mother; and Robert Downey Jr. (Chaplin) as the queen's brother. Does Richard have a conscience? Can evil such as his triumph completely, with no recompense expected on this side of the grave? Can the British monarchy exist without venom and corruption filtering up to the highest levels? These are a few of the more cogent questions addressed by Richard III, and McKellan and director Richard Loncraine make sure that they remain intact in the final version of the film.

COMING UP IN THE FALL 2011 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS XXIII: November 22 Frida, Julie Taymor (2002)

November 29 Revanche, Götz Spielmann (2008) December 6 My Fair Lady, George Cukor (1964)

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