Ep# 84 - William Shakespeare in the 60s

What-ho, Cinema60 fans! Six seasons we hath returned, recorded, and bearing our newfangled episodes. In this, our triumphant premiere we speaketh, perchance to wax lyrical, about the works of The Bard – on this April 23, his day of birth! Well enow, we'll cease our foolishness. But there were quite a few direct Shakespeare adaptations in the decade, let alone movies inspired by Shakespeare (West Side Story, anyone?). Whether you've read or seen these plays a thousand times, or are a first timer, the ‘60s offer a nice evolution from stage-bound adaptations to fully fledged cinematic delights.

In this episode, Bart and Jenna dive deep into a multitudinous flote of Shakespearean films in one fell swoop. Bart, a once English major, finds these films bedazzling. Jenna, green-eyed monster that she is, complains heartily about the lackluster source material – but the lady doth protest too much, methinks. They has’t a lively debate over how to approach these films, and about what it takes to adapt something as stylized as Shakespeare to a medium that leans so heavily towards realism. Though they each have their personal favorites amongst the episode’s selections, there’s one that they can agree is one of the decade’s greatest successes by any standard.

The following films are discussed:

• Hamlet (1964)
Гамлет
Directed by Grigoriy Kozintsev
Starring Innokentiy Smoktunovskiy, Mikhail Nazvanov, Anastasiya Vertinskaya

• Chimes at Midnight (1965)
Campanadas a medianoche
Directed by Orson Welles
Starring Orson Welles, Keith Baxter, John Gielgud

• Othello (1965)
Directed by Stuart Burge
Starring Laurence Olivier, Frank Finlay, Maggie Smith

• The Taming of The Shrew (1967)
Directed by Franco Zeffirelli
Starring Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Michael York

• Romeo and Juliet (1968)
Directed by Franco Zeffirelli
Starring Leonard Whiting, Olivia Hussey, John McEnery

• A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1968)
Directed by Peter Hall
Starring Judi Dench, Helen Mirren, Ian Holm