1 - Shakespeare and the Film Industry of the Pre-Sound Era

Summary

Approximately 300 Shakespeare films were made in the film industry’s silent era. They range from the filmed record of a theatre production to the film conceived as an autonomous work of cinema; the brief allusion to the full-blown drama; the narratively precise retelling of a play to a skittish borrowing from it; the historically placed production to the radical update. They emerged from production companies in Britain, the US, Italy, France, Germany and Denmark. Collectively, they are revealing both about the changing priorities of the film industry and of the broader history of Shakespeare on screen. This chapter considers the impulses that inspired them, what they achieved, how they were exhibited and received and the nature of their legacy. Moments selected for illustrative focus include the Herbert Beerbohm Tree King John (1899), The Tempest (1908), films of the Shakespeare Tercentenary (1916), Asta Nielsen’s Hamlet (1920), Emil Jannings’ Othello (1922), John Gielgud in the Romeo and Juliet balcony scene (1924) and the use of live lecturers. The chapter ends with the creative engagements silent Shakespeare films have recently prompted, including in the Kit Monkman Macbeth (2018).