King Lear is a 1971 British film adaptation of the Shakespeare play directed by Peter Brook and starring Paul Scofield. Filmed in stark black-and-white, the film was inspired by the absurdist theatre of playwrights such as Samuel Beckett and upon release was noted for its bleak tone and wintry atmosphere.
Directed by Peter Brook
CAST
Paul Scofield as King Lear
Irene Worth as Goneril
Susan Engel as Regan
Anne-Lise Gabold as Cordelia
Jack MacGowran as Fool
Alan Webb as Gloucester
Robert Langdon Lloyd as Edgar (as Robert Lloyd)
Ian Hogg as Edmund
Tom Fleming as Kent
Cyril Cusack as Albany
Søren Elung Jensen as Duke of Burgundy
Patrick Magee as Cornwall
Barry Stanton as Oswald
Peter Brook’s version of King Lear was prompted by an essay by Polish critic Jan Kott titled “King Lear or Endgame”, where Katt writes that Shakespeare's play is a tragedy of the grotesque, “an ironic, clownish morality play, […] a mockery of all eschatologies: of the heaven promised on earth, and the heaven promised after death.” The film was shot in 16mm black-and-white and mostly made in the mid-winter dune country of the Jutland Peninsula of Denmark.
Copyright - All rights reserved to their respective owners.
Read Shakespeare's Complete Works online for free: https://shakespearenetwork.net/works/
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Screen Adaptation - Co-Production : MISANTHROPOS – Official Website - https://www.misanthropos.net
Adapted by Maximianno Cobra, from Shakespeare's "Timon of Athens", the film exposes the timeless challenge of social hypocrisy, disillusion and annihilation against the poetics of friendship, love, and beauty.
IMDb page: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6946736/
Directed by Peter Brook
CAST
Paul Scofield as King Lear
Irene Worth as Goneril
Susan Engel as Regan
Anne-Lise Gabold as Cordelia
Jack MacGowran as Fool
Alan Webb as Gloucester
Robert Langdon Lloyd as Edgar (as Robert Lloyd)
Ian Hogg as Edmund
Tom Fleming as Kent
Cyril Cusack as Albany
Søren Elung Jensen as Duke of Burgundy
Patrick Magee as Cornwall
Barry Stanton as Oswald
Peter Brook’s version of King Lear was prompted by an essay by Polish critic Jan Kott titled “King Lear or Endgame”, where Katt writes that Shakespeare's play is a tragedy of the grotesque, “an ironic, clownish morality play, […] a mockery of all eschatologies: of the heaven promised on earth, and the heaven promised after death.” The film was shot in 16mm black-and-white and mostly made in the mid-winter dune country of the Jutland Peninsula of Denmark.
Copyright - All rights reserved to their respective owners.
Read Shakespeare's Complete Works online for free: https://shakespearenetwork.net/works/
_______________________________
Screen Adaptation - Co-Production : MISANTHROPOS – Official Website - https://www.misanthropos.net
Adapted by Maximianno Cobra, from Shakespeare's "Timon of Athens", the film exposes the timeless challenge of social hypocrisy, disillusion and annihilation against the poetics of friendship, love, and beauty.
IMDb page: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6946736/
Category
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LearningTranscript
00:00Filmways, in association with the Royal Shakespeare Company, presents a Peter Brook film.
00:09Paul Schofield in William Shakespeare's King Lear.
00:13Turn all her mother's pains and benefits to laughter and contempt,
00:19that she may feel how sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child.
00:27Judith Christ, New York Magazine.
00:32What a movie Brook has made.
00:34A film for even non-Shakesperians to revel in.
00:37Drama of the highest order.
00:39Can's tell how an oyster makes his shell?
00:42No.
00:43Nor I neither.
00:44But I can tell why a snail has a house.
00:47Why?
00:48Why?
00:49To put his head in, not to give it away to his daughters.
00:53Oh, let me not be mad.
00:58Not mad, sweet heaven.
01:00Charles Champlin, Los Angeles Times.
01:02Sheer power.
01:04Brook has made a stunning movie of Lear.
01:06A work of art not to be missed.
01:08Jack Kroll, Newsweek.
01:10A film of real poetry and power.
01:13A unique addition to the history of the cinema's confrontation with Shakespeare.
01:19Kevin Kelly, Boston Globe.
01:21A masterpiece.
01:23A shattering dramatic experience.
01:25Brook has made a permanent contribution to the history of great movies.
01:30Thou art a boil of plague, sore, embossed carbuncle in my corrupted blood.
01:36But I'll not chide thee.
01:38Let shame come when it will.
01:42Dynamic.
01:43Schofield at the height of his talents.
01:45The most notable Lear of our time.
01:48Arthur Knight, Saturday Reveal.
01:52With Tom Fleming.
01:53Cyril Cusack.
01:55Patrick McGee.
01:57Jack McGowran.
01:59Alan Webb.
02:01And starring Irene Worth.
02:03And in his first film since his Academy Award winning performance in A Man for All Seasons,
02:09Paul Schofield as King Lear.
02:13A King Lear of splendor and shock.
02:16Bravely conceived.
02:18Magnificently active.
02:20Brook at his manic best.
02:22Schofield speaks the lines as if they'd just been created.
02:26Vincent Kendi, New York Times.
02:30Torrenting wind, thunder, fire of my daughters.
02:37I tax out you, you enemy, with unkindness.
02:42King Lear.