The Winter Of My Dis-comment?

Last time on Shakespearetember I commented how Kenneth Branagh is the “foremost cinematic Shakespeare interpreter since Laurence Olivier.” Well, this week we have…

Film, 1955 

Director: Figure it out. 

Story 

The eeeeeeevil Richard, Duke of Gloucester, plots and schemes to take the throne of England. This involves killing his brother, his nephews and a lot of other ignorant dolts-er, I mean poor defenseless victims. Yep, that’s basically it. Oh, and some minor theme about complacency and collaboration being the means through which the people allow dictatorships to exist at all, but that’s not important.

What is important is that the crown of England is very *big*.
How do they wear that?

Review 

The sets are cool, the cinematography is cool, Olivier is an acting god, etc. etc. etc. Richard III just might the greatest Shakespeare movie ever, and so on and so on and so on.

What I really want to talk about today is DVD commentaries.

Yes, DVD commentaries. In a post about Olivier’s Richard III, in the middle of a month on this site dedicated to William Shakespeare.


What are DVD commentaries for anyway? Or should I say, movie commentaries, because Criterion (who made the DVD that I have of Olivier’s Richard III and whose commentary track for which I will talk about in a bit, incidentally enough) actually started the trend with their old Laserdisc releases in the 80s and 90s. Do they exist to let the director or actors inform the viewer how the film was made and what went on while they made it? Any behind-the-scenes documentary can do that – and it seems that these “making-of” programs are being shot at the same time as the movies all the time nowadays… it is like the filmmakers are anticipating the DVD releases while making their films.

Ralph Richardson does not approve.

The worst thing is, as I have said, that all modern movies will basically have a commentary track on their DVD or Blu-Ray… even if they don’t deserve one. I remember going into a video rental place (remember those?) a few years ago and watching a bit of what they had playing on the store TVs while I browsed. They were playing the completely unmemorable, throwaway Christmas comedy movie Fred Claus… with the director’s commentary on. So I got to learn all about how the movie was made, and about all of the important directorial decisions that had to be made to ensure the success of the mighty cinematic effort that was… Fred Claus. I stopped browsing after a while and focused on the screens – I became more and more engrossed with the banality of it the more it went on. The breaking point for me was the moment where the director said during a quiet scene, “when I was reading the original script, this is the scene that made me decide to make this movie.” You didn’t decide to make *anything*, moron. You took this movie because you’re a low-level hack director, and the choice from your studio overlords was either this, or Saw XXXVII: Naked Co-Ed Tubeslide Deathtrap Terror, and you took this. Do not try to puff yourself up as a real director. If you are lucky you will eventually amass enough talent and/or sleep enough with the right people to move up the Hollywood ladder enough to make a film that audiences will remember for more than ten minutes after they leave the theatre, but right now you make movies like Fred Claus… WHICH DOES NOT NEED A DIRECTOR’S COMMENTARY!!

Anyways, the point of this diatribe is that most movie commentary tracks are useless and usually highly egocentric for the people making them. The only commentaries I have genuinely loved have been the those for Ghostbusters (the original DVD release had MST3K-style silhouettes ad the bottom of the screen pointing out specific things that the makers were talking about), Evil Dead II (Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell and Robert Tapert riff their own movie and it is hilarious) and… Richard III.

Speaking of Evil Dead II:  Richard about to swallow a soul.

Criterion’s commentary track for their DVD of Richard III is not like most other commentaries, even ones by Criterion. Since the movie is an adaptation of Shakespeare, the commentators are stage director Russell Lees and Dr. John Wilders, who not only taught Shakespeare at a University level but was a member of the board for the Royal Shakespeare Company. As a consequence this has to be the most informative DVD commentary I have ever experienced. Not only in the making of the film (which isn’t gone into that much, actually) or the editorial decisions by Olivier in regards to the play (Olivier massively edited Richard III, moving around whole scenes and lines of dialogue and even cutting out a few characters all in order to make for a better cinematic experience)

Translation: this whole movie, historically, is bullshit.

but in Shakespeare and Shakespearean acting in general. For example, the question I asked in my review for Antony and Cleopatra about how the original play could handle the large load of rapid scene changes was answered on the commentary for this by Mr. Lees (the original Shakespearean stage was very sparse and didn’t have any real scenery to begin with). My greatest lesson though was in verse acting and how it can actually help actors remember their dialogue and how Shakespeare employs it in his plays. In short (because I’m getting too long) this commentary is what a commentary should be, a true learning experience and not just mindless chatter or directorial bloviating and self-aggrandizing. Watch Richard III and then watch it with this commentary track and you will learn something.

 Like how to woo ill-humored women.

Well, that was a lengthy, almost off-topic rant.  Sorry about that, but I just wanted to share a new experience that I had.  You see, this was the third time I watched Olivier's Richard III and I decided to watch it with the commentary this time and I enjoyed it and learned from it so much that I decided to write about that instead of doing a straight-up review.  I will talk about an actual Shakespeare movie next time though, I promise.




Next Week: Fairies!