At this point, we are shifting the focus of the blog towards reading and discussing William Shakespeare's Richard III, and we are opening up the digital space for cross-campus collaboration. Specifically, Oakridge welcomes both Hockaday and Greenhill students to collaborate and share their thoughts, words, images, reactions, etc., as we read this text together.
Thanks to Dr. Moreland of The Hockaday School for providing the following web videos - each of which presents a clip of an actor working through Richard's opening soliloquy. The first is from Laurence Olivier's famous 1955 version:
The next clip is a more modern adaptation - both in terms of its release (1995) and its narrative setting - and it stars Ian McKellen:
Lastly, we have Al Pacino working with the scene in the documentary, Looking for Richard (1996) - take a look:
I encourage students to watch these clips after reading the opening soliloquy by the Duke of Gloucester. Feel free to discuss and react to the different versions via the comment mechanism below this post.
Perhaps think about the following: What do the actors bring to each clip? How do they engage audience? Consider the role of the camera in the staging of the scene. Most importantly, enjoy them!
Greetings from Greenhill! Thanks very much for the videos, Dr. Moreland. One thing I noticed (not yet sure I like it) about the Pacino soliloquy is his busy moving, his paranoid sidelong glances. Although I get how these choices might be appropriate for a drama of palace intrigue, I see Richard there as more of a SHAPER of that intrigue than a worrier over it. McKellen's matter-of-factness seems to fit R's certainty better--the viewer there is a men's-room confidant, not a partner in anxiety. JG
ReplyDeleteYes, thank you Dr. Moreland for the clips. We viewed them in class today, and we were struck by the difference of use in camera work between Olivier's 1955 version and the McKellen version from 1995 (exactly 40 years later). The camera remains passive, still, and singular in shot in Olivier's rendition, while the 1995 film actively makes use of the camera in ways that transcode (if that's the appropriate word here) text into image such that the first 13 lines of the play take on a very different meaning and tone.
ReplyDeleteIt seems that film strategies of the 50s were still too reliant on considerations of staging the play whereas the '95 version demonstrates how film work had departed completely from influences of stage theatre...