Cinematic Shakespeare (Genre and Beyond: A Film Studies Series) - Hardcover

Anderegg, Michael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0742510913 ISBN 13: 9780742510913

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003

Synopsis

Cinematic Shakespeare takes the reader inside the making of a number of significant adaptations to illustrate how cinema transforms and re-imagines the dramatic form and style central to Shakespeare's imagination. Cinematic Shakespeare investigates how Shakespeare films constitute an exciting and ever-changing film genre. The challenges of adopting Shakespeare to cinema are like few other film genres. Anderegg looks closely at films by Laurence Olivier (Richard III), Orson Welles (Macbeth), and Kenneth Branagh (Hamlet) as well as topics like 'Postmodern Shakespeares' (Julie Taymor's Titus and Peter Greenaway's Prospero's Books) and multiple adaptations over the years of Romeo and Juliet. A chapter on television looks closely at American broadcasting in the 1950s (the Hallmark Hall of Fame Shakespeare adaptations) and the BBC/Time-Life Shakespeare Plays from the late 70s and early 80s.

About this title

About the Author:

Michael Anderegg is professor of English and film studies at the University of North Dakota. He is the author of William Wyler (1979), David Lean (1982), and the editor of Inventing Vietnam (1991). His most recent book is Orson Welles, Shakespeare, and Popular Culture (1999).

Review:

Anderegg's witty, user-friendly, and exquisitely detailed analysis of film's effort to retain even as it reconstitutes 'Shakespeare' for changing audiences at crucial historical junctures distinguishes this book as a vital contribution to the combined fields of Shakespeare and Film Studies, as well as a sheer delight to read. (Courtney Lehmann, University of the Pacific)

Zestfully and engagingly written, informed by a commanding knowledge of performance and cinematic traditions, Michael Anderegg's overview of the twentieth century's approaches to bringing Shakespeare to the screen is consistently fresh and provocative. His sharply-etched assessments of a remarkable range of films emphasize the ways in which Shakespearean actors and directors have used (and abused) the cinematic medium and its generic conventions. Anderegg's insightful commentary on the relatively neglected topic of Shakespeare on TV is especially welcome. His is a valuable and important contribution to the scholarship on Shakespeare's afterlife in moving pictures. (Douglas Lanier, University of New Hampshire)

This volume will be valuable to those interested in both Shakespeare and film adaptation. Recommended. (CHOICE)

A valuable guide to the ongoing challenge of "representing" Shakespeare as a textual and cultural classic. (Cineaste, Fall 2009)

Michael Anderegg follows up his wonderful book on Orson Welles and Shakespeare with an engaging and wide-ranging account of Cinematic Shakespeare. Anderegg casts his lively and judicious critical intelligence over film and television adaptions of Shakespeare from the big Hollywood studios to the Maurice Evans/George Schaefer Hallmark 'Hall of Fame' productions to the more recent films of Branagh, Nunn, Loncraine, Hoffman, and Noble. He has interesting and discerning 'takes' on all of these productions and his book is an important and welcome addition to the growing critical literature devoted to Shakespeare on Film. (Samuel Crowl, Ohio University)

About this edition

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0742510913
• ISBN 13: 9780742510913
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 248