Olivier and Shakespeare

Laurence Olivier may be one of the greatest actors of the 20th century. He is also, undeniably, one of the major interpreters of the plays of William Shakespeare in the cinema. While other filmmakers rival Olivier's Shakespearean work -- most notably Orson Welles and Akira Kurosawa -- he has demonstrated a striking and intuitive sense of the language, and its meaning, of the Elizabethan bard. In our program, "Olivier and Shakespeare," we present three films -- two of which were directed by Olivier -- in which he presented his skills as both an actor and as a Shakespearean student.

It is appropriate that Olivier, who was born in 1907, would make his stage debut at the age of 14 as Kate in a school production of The Taming of the Shrew. Soon afterwards, he devoted his studies to acting at various schools and the Birmingham Repertory Company. He was encouraged in his dramatic studies by his father, an Anglican minister whose delivery of sermons were notoriously theatrical. His extensive training, combined with his own natural good looks, made it possible for Olivier to enter film acting in 1930.

His earliest films are, on the whole, uninteresting. Though he grew a moustache in order to emulate his screen idol, Ronald Colman, he did not succeed as a romantic leading man. His screen career would not really begin until 1935, when he signed a contract with the British producer Alexander Korda. It would be these early Korda films, as well as a variety of stage roles, that would begin to attract critical attention to Olivier. By 1937, he had joined the Old Vic theater company and had successfully played such roles as Hamlet, Henry V, and Macbeth.

Though Olivier was the star of one of the few major Shakespearean films of the 1930s, As You Like It (England 1936), he was not totally pleased with the stylistic approaches which the cinema had taken to Shakespeare's plays. Paul Czinner's production of As You Like It was most opulent and avoided the excessive superficiality of some of the other Shakespearean productions of the period. Like the other films, however, it made extensive cuts to both the text and the language in an attempt to reach a broader audience.

Fidelity to the text was not, however, Olivier's chief concern. In his own production of Hamlet (England 1948), he was willing to make numerous cuts to the text (in fact, he removed nearly an hour's worth' of footage from the film in order to bring it down to its release length). A fidelity to both the language and the spirit of the text were, however, very important to Olivier.

It is not surprising that his first film as director would be the 1944 production of Henry V, a role which was a favorite of his. The film was made by Olivier as a patriotic epic and it was produced by the British Ministry of Information as a morale booster during World War Two. Prior to the war, Olivier felt a hesitation about performing the part on stage because he felt that the audience might not accept the role's suggestively jingoistic sensibility. The hardships and devastation brought about by the war, however, convinced Olivier to produce the film.

In directing Henry V, Olivier attempted to unite the theatrical language of Shakespeare with the naturalistic qualities of the photo­graphic image. The film opens and closes within the confines of the Globe Theater, Shakespeare's own theater. By bracketing the vividly realistic scenes of the film between the opening and ending shots of the Elizabethan stage performance, Olivier attempted to bridge the distance between the artificiality of the theater and the realism of the cinema.

The making of Henry V had exhausted Olivier and he swore that he would never attempt a Shakespearean film ever again. With the 1948 production of Hamlet, he fortunately proved incapable of keeping that oath. He had also intended to only direct Hamlet, not to act in it. Money for the production, however, was only available if Olivier played the role. With great reluctance, he again functioned as both actor and director in a demanding production.

The filming of Hamlet took place during a difficult period in Olivier's career. He and his wife, Vivian Leigh, were just recovering from a Hollywood boycott against them that was allegedly sponsored by David 0. Selznick when they had bolted from their contract with him. In turn, a variety of strains were being placed on the marriage due to Leigh's increasingly deteriorating mental condition. Likewise, rumors of an alleged affair between Olivier and his co-star, Jean Simmons, did not help either.

In filming Hamlet, Olivier selected black and white as the photo­graphic tone for the work, contrary to the vibrant colors which dominated Henry V. He also decided upon using "deep focus" for the photographic structure of the film, thereby stressing the spatial relationships of the film's sets and giving an equal compositional balance to the film's characters. The fact that he achieved this complex balance in Hamlet is a tribute to Olivier's skills as an artist.