Lear’s Fool on Film: Peter Brook, Grigori Kozintsev, Akira Kurosawa

doi:10.1017/9781108589727.002

Chapter 2 - Lear’s Fool on Film: Peter Brook, Grigori Kozintsev, Akira Kurosawa

from Part I - Surviving Lear: Revisiting the Canon

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 September 2019

Samuel Crowl

Edited by

Victoria Bladen ,

Sarah Hatchuel and

Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin

Show author details

Victoria Bladen: Affiliation:
University of Queensland
Sarah Hatchuel: Affiliation:
Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier
Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin: Affiliation:
Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier

Book contents

Get access

Summary

The chapter studies three remarkable films of King Lear created in England, Russia and Japan by three directors of international stature: Peter Brook, Grigori Kozintsev and Akira Kurosawa. The films are all set in the past and all are culturally specific. Because the Fool’s role is so central to the substance and structure of Shakespeare’s play, investigating – using a mixture of thick description, cultural appropriation and cinematic formalism – how these three directors reimaged the Fool to speak out from their particular cultures to a global audience provides insight into the ways each reinvents Shakespeare’s bleakest tragedy for the screen.

Keywords

screen film adaptation King Lear Peter Brook Akira Kurosawa Grigori Kozintsev Fool

Type: Chapter
Information: Shakespeare on Screen: King Lear , pp. 33 - 46

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108589727.002 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Beauman, S., The Royal Shakespeare Company: a History of Ten Decades (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).Google Scholar

Brook, P., The Quality of Mercy (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2014).Google Scholar

Griggs, Y., Shakespeare’s ‘King Lear’: the Relationship between Text and Film (London: Methuen, 2009).Google Scholar

Holland, P., ‘Peter Brook’ in Holland, P. (ed.), Brook, Hall, Ninagawa, Lepage, vol. XVIII of Great Shakespeareans (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2013), 7–46.Google Scholar

Jorgens, J., Shakespeare on Film (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977).Google Scholar

Kott, J., Shakespeare Our Contemporary, trans. B. Taborski (New York: Anchor Books, 1966).Google Scholar

Kozintsev, G., ‘King Lear’: the Space of Tragedy, trans. M. Mackintosh (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977).Google Scholar

Kurosawa., A., Ran (Boston and London: Shambhala, 1986).Google Scholar

Leggatt, A., Shakespeare in Performance: ‘King Lear’ (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991).Google Scholar

Lehmann, C., ‘Grigori Kozintsev’, in Burnett, M. T., Lehmann, C., Rippy, M. and Wray, R., Welles, Kurosawa, Kozintsev, Zeffirelli, vol. XVII of Great Shakespeareans (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2013), 92–140.Google Scholar

Otto, B., Fools Are Everywhere: the Court Jester around the World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010).Google Scholar

Rothwell, K. S., A History of Shakespeare on Screen: a Century of Film and Television (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).Google Scholar