''King Lear'' is a 1971 British film adaptation of the

Shakespeare play Shakespeare's plays are a canon of approximately 39 dramatic works written by English poet, playwright, and actor William Shakespeare. The exact number of plays—as well as their classifications as tragedy, history, comedy, or otherwise—is a ...

directed by Peter Brook and starring Paul Scofield. Filmed in stark black-and-white, the film was inspired by the

absurdist theatre The Theatre of the Absurd (french: théâtre de l'absurde ) is a post–World War II designation for particular plays of absurdist fiction written by a number of primarily European playwrights in the late 1950s. It is also a term for the style of ...

of playwrights such as

Samuel Beckett Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish novelist, dramatist, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. His literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal and tragicomic expe ...

and upon release was noted for its bleak tone and wintry atmosphere.

Cast

* Cyril Cusack as Albany * Susan Engel as Regan * Tom Fleming as Kent * Anne-Lise Gabold as Cordelia * Ian Hogg as Edmund *

Søren Elung Jensen Søren Elung Jensen (7 July 1928 – 22 January 2017) was a Danish film actor. He appeared in 22 films between 1960 and 1999. He was born in Odense. He died from lung cancer on 22 January 2017 in Hellerup. He was 88. Filmography * '' Besa ...

as Duke of Burgundy * Robert Langdon Lloyd as Edgar (as Robert Lloyd) *

Jack MacGowran John Joseph MacGowran (13 October 1918 – 30 January 1973) was an Irish actor, probably best known for his work with Samuel Beckett. Stage career MacGowran was born on 13 October 1918 in Dublin, and educated at Synge Street CBS. He establis ...

as Fool * Patrick Magee as Cornwall * Paul Scofield as King Lear * Barry Stanton as Oswald *

Alan Webb Alan Webb may refer to: * Alan Webb (actor) (1906–1982), English actor * Alan Webb (runner) (born 1983), American track athlete * Alan Webb (footballer) (born 1963), retired English association football player See also

* Allan Webb (disambigu ...

as Gloucester * Irene Worth as Goneril

Production

Peter Brook’s version of King Lear was prompted by an essay by Polish critic

Jan Kott Jan Kott (October 27, 1914 – December 22, 2001) was a Polish political activist, critic and theoretician of the theatre. A leading proponent of Stalinism in Poland for nearly a decade after the Soviet takeover, Kott renounced his Communist P ...

titled “King Lear or Endgame”, where Kott writes that Shakespeare's play is a tragedy of the grotesque, “an ironic, clownish morality play, ��a mockery of all eschatologies: of the heaven promised on earth, and the heaven promised after death.” The film was shot in

16mm 16 mm film is a historically popular and economical gauge of film. 16 mm refers to the width of the film (about inch); other common film gauges include 8 and 35 mm. It is generally used for non-theatrical (e.g., industrial, educ ...

black-and-white and mostly made in the mid-winter dune country of the Jutland Peninsula of

Denmark ) , song = ( en, "King Christian stood by the lofty mast") , song_type = National and royal anthem , image_map = EU-Denmark.svg , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark ...

Review

Brook's film starkly divided the critics: Pauline Kael said "I didn't just dislike this production, I hated it!" and suggested the alternative title ''"

Night of the Living Dead ''Night of the Living Dead'' is a 1968 American independent horror film directed, photographed, and edited by George A. Romero, with a screenplay by John Russo and Romero, and starring Duane Jones and Judith O'Dea. The story follows seven peop ...

"''. Yet Robert Hatch in ''

The Nation ''The Nation'' is an American liberal biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper tha ...

'' thought it as "excellent a filming of the play as one can expect" and Vincent Canby in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' called it "an exalting ''Lear'', full of exquisite terror". The film drew heavily on the ideas of

, in particular his observation that ''King Lear'' was the precursor of

: in particular, the film has parallels with Beckett's ''

Endgame Endgame, Endgames, End Game, End Games, or similar variations may refer to: Film * ''The End of the Game'' (1919 film) * ''The End of the Game'' (1975 film), short documentary U.S. film * ''Endgame'' (1983 film), 1983 Italian post-apocalyptic f ...

''. Critics who dislike the film particularly draw attention to its bleak nature from its opening: complaining that the world of the play does not deteriorate with Lear's suffering, but commences dark, colourless and wintry, leaving (in Douglas Brode's words) "Lear, the land, and ''us'' with nowhere to go". Cruelty pervades the film, which does not distinguish between the violence of ostensibly good and evil characters, presenting both as savagery. Paul Scofield, as Lear, eschews sentimentality: this demanding old man with a coterie of unruly knights provokes audience sympathy for the daughters in the early scenes, and his presentation explicitly rejects the tradition (as Daniel Rosenthal describes it) of playing Lear as "poor old white-haired patriarch".Rosenthal p.83.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:King Lear (1971 UK Film) 1971 films British drama films 1971 drama films British black-and-white films Films directed by Peter Brook Films based on King Lear Filmways films 1970s English-language films 1970s British films