The Shakespeare Films of Grigori Kozintsev
Sizing Shakespeare to the compressed view of the camera lens is no small feat. This undertaking is covered in these pages, which reveal a remarkable director’s kaleidoscopic vision as he takes a text from stage to film. Out of this emerge new ways for an ordinary reader to view Shakespeare, and a greater understanding for those who teach his plays, particularly the challenging King Lear.
Critic Richard Dyer of the Boston Globe wrote of Grigori Kozintsev’s work, “Paradoxically, the two most powerful films of Shakespeare plays were made not in Great Britain but in the Soviet Union.” Acclaim for Hamlet and King Lear has been universal. Sir Laurence Olivier ranked the lead actor Innokenti Smoktunovsky as the best Hamlet, better than his own portrayal.
Grigori Kozintsev was born in 1905 in Kiev, and died unexpectedly in 1973 in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, only months after King Lear was screened in America.
Michael Thomas Hudgens teaches Philosophy at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, USA. He received his PhD from the University of South Dakota, USA, and his Master of Arts degree from Loyola Marymount University, USA. His doctoral work was devoted to the English Modernist movement, and his Master of Arts to Medieval literature. Before returning to university to complete his degrees, he was a reporter and editor in Houston, Texas. He later became arts and entertainment editor for the Houston Post and regularly reviewed theatre and film. He has written several books, including Sisters of Fate: The Myths that Speak Themselves (2013) and Donald Barthelme, Postmodernist American Writer (2000).
"This book is akin to watching the movies unfold with the director telling you the backstory, all the while feeling contempt for the despicable daughters, being chilled by the description of the tapestry-lined castle, and forever haunted by the image of the fool and his flute. A unique exploration of these plays, a gift to those teaching Shakespeare."
Trudy Severson South Dakota School of Mines and Technology
Buy This Book
