Shakespeare on Screen

September 3, 2010 - October 29, 2010

Next, September 5

William Shakespeare has provided plenty of inspiration for filmmakers around the world, and our fall series—copresented with California Shakespeare Theater—offers up some of the most eclectic. Whether respectful or irreverent, set in the modern-day or centuries ago, Shakespeare on Screen presents a dizzying array of global versions on the Bard. To name just a few: a silent take on Hamlet, Laurence Olivier’s magisterial retelling of Henry V, Aki Kaurismäki’s restaging of Hamlet in Finland’s evidently cutthroat rubber-duck industry, a Radiohead-humming Leonardo DiCaprio in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, and a glowering Toshiro Mifune in Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood. No matter what era, style, or nation they’re told in, Shakespeare’s tales and words will always inspire.

Friday, September 3, 2010
6:30 p.m. Hamlet
Sven Gade, Heinz Schall (Germany, 1920). Bruce Loeb on Piano. Asta Nielsen is a marvel of expressive restraint as a girl raised to be a prince in this 1920 film drawing on pre-Shakespearean sources. “One of the most intriguing screen adaptations of Shakespeare ever.”—Elliot Stein, Village Voice (110 mins)

Friday, September 3, 2010
8:40 p.m. Hamlet Goes Business
Aki Kaurismäki (Finland, 1987). Elsinore as HQ of the Finnish rubber-ducky industry. "Shakespeare isn't desecrated so much as rematerialized in gleaming black and white."—Premiere (86 mins)

Sunday, September 5, 2010
4:00 p.m. Romeo and Juliet
Franco Zeffirelli (UK/Italy, 1968). Producer Zeffirelli gave a sixties youth-in-revolt sheen to his successful adaptation of the Shakespeare classic, and caused controversy by casting a 15-year-old and a 16-year-old as the star-crossed lovers. With music by Nino Rota. With puppet-animation short, Next. (143 mins)

Thursday, September 9, 2010
7:00 p.m. Henry V
Laurence Olivier (U.K., 1945). Lush Technicolor version of the Shakespeare play, made during World War II to boost British hope and courage. Olivier’s directorial debut. (137 mins)

Sunday, September 12, 2010
4:00 p.m. A Midsummer Night’s Dream
William Dieterle and Max Reinhardt (U.S., 1935). Hollywood studio power meets theatrical German Expressionism in this ornate post-Code collaboration between Warner Bros. and Max Reinhardt, starring James Cagney, Mickey Rooney, Olivia de Havilland, and Dick Powell. “A triumph of vulgarity.”—Village Voice (132 mins)

Friday, September 17, 2010
9:00 p.m. King Lear
Jean-Luc Godard (France, 1987). “More Cocteau and Beckett than Shakespeare” (TIFF Cinematheque), Godard’s take on King Lear features one of the most eclectic casts ever assembled: Woody Allen, Peter Sellars, Norman Mailer, Burgess Meredith, Molly Ringwald, and Godard himself. “A grand statement about the power of moviemaking.”—The New Yorker (90 mins)

Thursday, September 30, 2010
7:00 p.m. Angelic Conversations
Derek Jarman (U.K., 1985). Jarman’s home-movie-like, poetic Super-8 images are juxtaposed with a soundtrack by Coil and Judi Dench reading fourteen of Shakespeare’s sonnets in this “meditation on the pleasures of looking….(It) feels like the missing link…between the Eisenstein of Que Viva Mexico and Kenneth Anger.”—Walker Art Center (78 mins)

Saturday, October 9, 2010
6:00 p.m. Throne of Blood
Akira Kurosawa (Japan, 1957). Kurosawa’s Noh-influenced version of Macbeth is “the most brilliant and original attempt ever made to put Shakespeare on screen.”—Time (107 mins)

Thursday, October 14, 2010
7:00 p.m. Chimes at Midnight
Orson Welles (France/Spain/Switzerland, 1966). Plus rare footage from the PFA Collection. Welles embodies Shakespeare’s Falstaff in “a dark masterpiece, shot through with slapstick and sorrow.”—Time Out (113 mins)

Sunday, October 17, 2010
4:00 p.m. Romeo + Juliet
Baz Luhrmann (U.S., 1996). Leonardo diCaprio and Claire Danes are the two star-crossed lovers in this delightfully over-the-top, mid-‘90s beach-culture vision of Shakespeare, complete with souped-up roadsters, tattoos, Radiohead, and drag queens. From the director of Strictly Ballroom and Moulin Rouge. “Shakespeare has never been this sexy on-screen.”—Rolling Stone (120 mins)

Saturday, October 23, 2010
8:30 p.m. King Lear
Grigori Kozintsev (U.S.S.R., 1970). Pioneering Russian director Kozintsev (New Babylon; Devil’s Wheel) returns Shakespeare to the harsh, barren natural world in this windswept, stark CinemaScope epic. Adapted by Boris Pasternak; music by Shostakovich. (140 mins)

Sunday, October 24, 2010
4:00 p.m. Antony and Cleopatra
Charlton Heston (U.K./Spain/Switzerland, 1972). Heston stars in and directs this sweeping adaptation, filmed in Spain and recalling some of the epic scope of Ben Hur. “Impressively mounted and well played . . . a neat balance of closeup portraiture and panoramic action.”—Variety (160 mins)

Friday, October 29, 2010
9:05 p.m. Macbeth
Orson Welles (U.S., 1948). Welles restores Shakespeare’s tragedy to its roots in Scots legend with an experimental fusion of the Bard and the B picture. (119 mins)

Copresented by the California Shakespeare Theater.



Curated by PFA Curatorial Intern Garbiñe Ortega and Kathy Geritz. This series was inspired by Film Society of Lincoln Center’s series “The Bard Goes Global: Shakespeare on the International Screen,” curated by Richard Peña. Thanks to Isa Cucinotta, FSLC, and Gary Handman, Media Resources Center, UC Berkeley, for research assistance. We would like to thank our colleagues at Cal Shakes. We also acknowledge the assistance of Fraser Heston, Agamemnon Films; Peter Meyer, Corinth Films; Brian Block, Criterion Pictures; Oliver Laqua, Deutsches Filminstitut – DIF; Jenni Domingo, The Finnish Film Foundation; Haden Guest, Harvard Film Archive; Sarah Finklea, Janus/Criterion Collection; Mike Mashon, Library of Congress; Chris Chouinard, MGM Distribution Company; Emily Horn, Barry Allen, Paramount Pictures; Caitlin Robertson, 20th Century Fox; Steven Hill, UCLA Film and Television Archive; Dean Otto, Walker Art Center; and Benjamin Crossley-Marra, Zeitgeist Films.