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This piece is a continuation of a previous article; find the first half (Movies 1-5) here ! Adapting Shakespeare to the screen presents a myriad of problems and opportunities for the filmmaker. After all, centering a camera on a soliloquizing actor as they stare off into the nothingness of filmic space could, in fact, be perceived as stagey and artificial to a film-going audience of the early 21st century. None other than Laurence Olivier thought to have solved this problem with his version of “Hamlet” from 1948, by rendering Hamlet’s monologues as products of a voiced-over, interior, thought process. Audiences and critics seem to have responded, granting the film the Oscar for Best Picture, and Olivier himself the award for Best Actor. A filmmaker such a Roman Polanski can choose to focus on atmosphere and setting when adapting the Bard, as in his 1971 version of “Macbeth,” where the cold, rocky crags of Scotland help to inform the bloody-minded bleakness of events as they unfold, s...
The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome By Michael Parenti The New Press, 2003 276 pages History Review by Mark Polzin “How many ages hence/Shall this our lofty scene be acted o’er” remarks Cassius after the murder of Caesar in William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (III.i.112-113). When that scene has been acted on stage or written about by historians, Caesar is generally depicted as a tyrant, and his assassins as defenders of republican liberties. In The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People’s History of Ancient Rome, author Michael Parenti strongly challenges that portrayal. Parenti argues that Caesar was assassinated not because he was a tyrant that abused his power, but because he was a reformer who looked out for the common people of Rome. The wealthy elites of the Roman Senate struck him down to avoid sharing their own wealth and power as a result of future reforms like those Caesar had already implemented. The depiction of Caesar as...
Adapting Shakespeare to the screen presents a myriad of problems and opportunities for the filmmaker. After all, centering a camera on a soliloquizing actor as they stare off into the nothingness of filmic space could, in fact, be perceived as stagey and artificial to a film-going audience of the early 21st century. None other than Laurence Olivier thought to have solved this problem with his version of “Hamlet” from 1948, by rendering Hamlet’s monologues as products of a voiced-over, interior, thought process. Audiences and critics seem to have responded, granting the film the Oscar for Best Picture, and Olivier himself the award for Best Actor. A filmmaker such a Roman Polanski can choose to focus on atmosphere and setting when adapting the Bard, as in his 1971 version of “Macbeth,” where the cold, rocky crags of Scotland help to inform the bloody-minded bleakness of events as they unfold, some of which are spoken by a fantastically naked trio of witches. Baz Lauhrman’s version of “R...
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