Capital Celluloid 2016 - Day 109: Mon Apr 18

King Lear (Brook, 1970): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6pm


This screening is part of the Shakespeare on Film season at BFI Southbank.

Time Out review:
Made on location in what looks like a perilously cold Denmark, Brook's only Shakespeare on celluloid found a similarly frosty reception, especially as it came out just after Kozintsev's grandly conceived Russian version. Peter Brook's filming is graceless - looming close-ups, perverse camera moves - but there are some remarkable performances (developed from his much praised stage production a few years before with Paul Scofield). The conception is consistent with the influential views of Jan Kott, who saw Lear as a precursor to Beckett's plays about human blindness and nothingness (a line reinforced by the casting of Jack MacGowran as the Fool, and Patrick Magee as the Duke of Cornwall). A bleak interpretation, in every sense.
David Thompson

Here (and above) is an extract.

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