Shakespeare, Film and Nationalism: Henry V

Abstract

It is difficult to ignore the name of Kenneth Branagh in recent discussions of Shakespeare on screen; indeed, he is credited with inspiring the current wave of film adaptations with his production of Henry V, a film which initiated the comparisons drawn between himself and the other big name in the Shakespeare-on-screen industry — Laurence Olivier — a comparison he allegedly shuns. Oliver Parker’s Othello (1995), Richard Loncraine’s Richard III (1995), Trevor Nunn’s Twelfth Night (1996), Adrian Noble’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1996), Baz Luhrmann’s William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (1996), Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet (1996) and Michael Hoffman’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1999), with a cast which includes Kevin Kline, Michelle Pfeiffer, Rupert Everett, Christian Bale and John Sessions have all been released in the last five years of the twentieth century. Inevitably, discussions of these films involve comparisons with their predecessors; and, similarly, the Shakespeare-on-screen phenomenon of the 1990s is considered in relation to the golden age of the 1940s and 1950s.1 If we see Branagh as, in many respects, responsible for the current revival of interest in Shakespeare on screen, then it is worth exploring how far he departs from and how much he copies Olivier’s cinematic successes.KeywordsSymphony OrchestraCurrent RevivalReligious AtmosphereIdeological ForceHenry VersusThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.