Thursday 5 May 2016

MY DVD COLLECTION 18

William Shakespeare 1564 - 1616

This year (as if you didn't know!) is the 400th Anniversary of Shakespeare's death. I consider myself lucky that I was not taught Shakespeare at school. My first real experience of the bard's work was the Olivier version of RICHARD III which I saw on its original release. Although only nine, I loved the film and years later I went to see it every year at the Academy Cinema in Oxford Street when they ran their annual "Olivier in Shakespeare" season. Naturally I bought it on DVD and now have the wonderfully restored Blu-ray. It remains my favourite Shakespeare play. I enjoy the plays, particularly in their film incarnations although I have an aversion to KING LEAR and I prefer the historical plays to the comedies (with the exception of THE TAMING OF THE SHREW). I am aware that their are some important films missing from my collection. The list of films below is divided into two parts. Part one is acknowledged adaptions and the second is the films inspired by Shakespeare's plots, parodies or films that have some connection to the writer.


HENRY V (1944)  RICHARD III (1955) HAMLET (1964) THE CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT (1965)  THE TAMING OF THE SHREW (1967) HAMLET (1969) THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH (1971)  KING LEAR (1971) JULIUS CAESAR (1979)  RICHARD III (1983) MACBETH (1983) HENRY V (1989) KING LEAR (1999) THE MERCHANT OF VENICE (2004) THE TEMPEST (2010) RICHARD II (2014) HENRY IV (2014) HENRY V (2014)

RICHARD III (1955)

Others

 THRONE OF BLOOD (1954) Inspired by MACBETH
FORBIDDEN PLANET (1956) Inspired by THE TEMPEST
THE BAD SLEEP WELL (1960) Inspired by HAMLET
ALL NIGHT LONG (1961)  Inspired by OTHELLO
WEST SIDE STORY (1961) Inspired by ROMEO AND JULIET
THEATRE OF BLOOD (1973) Inspired by the works of Shakespeare.
RAN (1985) Inspired by KING LEAR
LOOKING FOR RICHARD (1996) Inspired by RICHARD III
MY KINGDOM (2001) Inspired by KING LEAR
ANONYMOUS (2014) Inspired by the works of Shakespeare.
OTELLO (2014) Inspired by OTHELLO and the Rossini Opera  OTELLO




CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT (1965)

2 comments:

Cerpts said...

Ah yes, Billy Bard! Quite a fan, quite a fan.

The Shakespeare films in my OWN DVD collection: RICHARD III (1912), HAMLET (Olivier 1948), MACBETH (Welles 1948), OTHELLO (Welles 1952), RICHARD III (Olivier 1955), HAMLET PRINCE OF DENMARK (Schell 1961), HAMLET (Russian 1964), THE TAMING OF THE SHREW (Liz 'n' Dick 1967), ROMEO AND JULIET (1968), HAMLET (Nicol Williamson 1969), JULIUS CAESAR (Heston 1970), KING LEAR (Scofield 1971), KING LEAR (Russian 1971), MACBETH (McKellan 1979), TWELFTH NIGHT (Felicity Kendal 1980), HAMLET (Jacobi 1980), TAMING OF THE SHREW (John Cleese 1980), THE MERCHANT OF VENICE (Warren Mitchell 1980), RICHARD III (Ron Cook 1983), MACBETH (Nicol Williamson 1983), HENRY V (Branagh 1989), OTHELLO (Fishburne 1995), ROMEO + JULIET (Luhrman 1996), HAMLET (Branagh 1996), THE MERCHANT OF VENICE (Pacino 2004), HAMLET (Tennant 2009), THE TEMPEST (Mirren 2010), THE HOLLOW CROWN: RICHARD II (2012), THE HOLLOW CROWN: HENRY IV PART 1, THE HOLLOW CROWN: HENRY IV PART 2, THE HOLLOW CROWN: HENRY V, THE HOLLOW CROWN: HENRY VI PART ONE, THE HOLLOW CROWN: HENRY VI PART 2, THE HOLLOW CROWN: RICHARD III, MACBETH (Fassbender 2015), THRONE OF BLOOD, FORBIDDEN PLANET, STRANGE BREW, SCOTLAND PA., CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT, LOOKING FOR RICHARD and I'm probably forgetting some other adaptations in me vault.

Cerpts said...

Oh dear. . . I did forget some. . . THE TEMPEST (1908) as well as the two versions of TOWER OF LONDON: the first with Boris Karloff and the 60's one with Vincent Price.