Val Kilmer Remembered

(1959-2025)

I liked Val Kilmer. Not every movie was great, and he never developed, perhaps, to the higher level of performance to which he should have aspired, but I liked him. Which makes it odd to dedicate a blog post to him. I usually reserve that for artists I more than love, but revere. So why Val? For one thing, his is a filmography which has some great performances from him, wrought from many strong directors. For another, he had a torturous, painful illness while espousing the beliefs of Christian Science (I study 19th century American religious movements and, therefore, am inclined to such oddities). And, finally, Kilmer (like Adrien Brody, Edward Norton, and countless others) had a reputation for being “difficult to work with,” a concept that is controversial today, but shouldn’t be.

Maverick.

Kilmer, in his heyday, had crushing good looks (except for perhaps an oddly shaped mouth that betrayed a slight lisp). He was the physical equal of Elvis, Brando, and Newman as an American Hollywood ideal. Such actors are interesting because one can’t take your eyes off them despite whether the performance is erratic or, worse, less good than it should be. It is a great source of irony that Brando and Kilmer both appeared in the much-maligned The Island of Doctor Moreau. That two actors who hypnotize you (yes, Brando, even in his corpulent years—no longer beautiful, but uncanny) and were notoriously known for their difficulty were in one film that nearly drove John Frankenheimer insane.

Kilmer began his film career in the sadly little-known parody-comedy Top Secret! created by the same folks who gave us Airplane! and the Hot Shots! films. Kilmer used his Elvis-like lip-curl in terrific parodies of ‘50s rock-n-roll in a Cold War adventure plot set in East Germany. Kilmer’s comic skills were equally as adept as dramatic. Like Robert Hayes and Leslie Nielsen before him, he instantaneously had a flair for deadpan delivery. He was a rare thing: a matinee idol who could play legitimate comedy.

Ol' Doc.

His career hit off in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s with appearances in Top Gun, Willow, The Doors, and Tombstone. Depending on your geek fandom, these movies are the Hamlets of their particular genres: the buddy-aviation flick, the legendary fantasy, the rock biopic (a coarser one and, perhaps, more realistic), and one of the more revered Westerns of the late 20th century.

Get 'em, Val.

His career hit both its apex and its nadir in the same year—1995. Kilmer was invited to join the outstanding, all-star cast of Michael Mann’s masterpiece Heat (a kind of proto-Departed) and accepted the invitation to replace Michael Keaton in the first Warner Bros. Batman film series. On the one hand, the boy who started off in slick comedies and action films simultaneously became one of the big boys (Heat, in a terrific performance) and a bona fide Hollywood star anchoring a franchise. Watching Batman Forever recently, I realized Kilmer wasn’t as bad as I had thought at the time (I and many millions still smart that Keaton and Burton didn’t return) and it’s certainly better than Batman and Robin. What that’s saying—I’m not sure.

A better Bruce than Batman.

Then came Moreau and curiosities like The Saint. With these pictures, Kilmer began to be labelled “difficult to work with.” This phrase is rather commonplace in Hollywood, but we think of it in this day and age as strictly placed on women as a way of further oppressing them No one stops to consider that…they just might be difficult to work it, which is a real phenomenon, not some misogynistic “code”. I’ve known such actors. Particularly those who use some warped American notion of an imaginary “method” which derives from what Stanislavski stole from others. Some people become so difficult to work with, they don’t do movies anymore. If you think about it, all businesses work to filter out undesirables, especially if what you’re producing costs in the millions upon millions—think of insurance, etc.

But this label hovered over the rest of his career in which he had only spotty successes. He voiced Moses (and God) for The Prince of Egypt (not a great film, but a good score and some striking visuals) and turned in two pitch-perfect performances in 2004—as Philip II of Macedonia in Oliver Stone’s lost masterpiece Alexander and as the lead in David Mamet’s Spartan, another under-appreciated movie because it aspires to be a great B-picture. The following year, he co-starred in Shane Black’s off-kilter, profane comedy Kiss Kiss Bang Bang with Robert Downey, Jr. Some like this movie. I like Black, but KKBB is lost on me.

Life-saving inventions. Out of household material.

From there, he had one final great turn—as the villain in Will Forte’s film expansion of his Saturday Night Live character MacGruber—a movie which I hated the first time I saw it, but like many Will Ferrell comedies, it has grown on me in recent years, so much so that it actually got a low spot on my Top Films of 2010-2019. As the cap on Kilmer’s career, computer-based voice work helped restore his voice for the follow-up to one of the most successful films of the 1980s: Top Gun: Maverick. Prior to then, Kilmer was in the grips of throat cancer and his public appearances were tapering off and the ones we saw were painful to see. Never the box office draw of some of his contemporaries, Val had a brief moment in Hollywood and it seems he passed away with many fans mourning. You never know how movies touch people’s lives.

In 2017, Kilmer told reporters he had actually experienced a “healing of cancer.” In point of fact, the cancer was only getting worse, which brings us to Mary Baker Eddy. One of many eccentric but fascinating American characters of the 19th century, Eddy grew up in a century where America was experimenting with religion, it being the first nation on Earth not to put an official stamp on what religion a person should espouse. Eddy was, she claims, perpetually sick and experienced a “fortunate fall” in Massachusetts on an icy lake that left. her lame and then healed herself through prayer. The result was a new sect: The Church of Christ, Scientist. Notable Christian Science practitioners include fiction writers like J. D. Salinger and Danielle Steel (wow, who knew those names would ever be in a sentence together?), playwrights like Horton Foote, and performers as varied as Robert Duvall, Kelsey Grammer, Pearl Bailey, Joan Crawford, Carol Channing, Colleen Dewhurst, Georgia Engel, and Spalding Gray.

Eddy.

Unlike the Watchtower Society (Jehovah’s Witnesses), who are only opposed to blood transfusions or practicing Jews who prefer bovine parts to porcine in surgical replacements, Christian Scientists use only the King James Version of the Bible and a Baker-penned tome called Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. In other words, there are no doctors. If you’re even considering doctors, it is time to get with a practitioner and do some reading and prayer which often means, imminent death for its members where it could be avoided.

Sweet Georgette.

I was particularly struck by Engel’s death. You might remember her as the sweet-voiced Georgette from The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Although she lived another four years longer than 65-year-old Kilmer, she did not even consult with doctors. Nevertheless, one could say seventy can be a mortal age, but in most cases, especially with women, it shouldn’t. She passed away in 2019. In times like these, I try to temper any disgust I might have with such practices because I believe most strongly in the first amendment and freedom of religious choice second only to speech. And yet, Christian Science nudges the limits of what you can understand about faith and illusion. Christian Science itself is most content by dwindling down to mere thousand, partly due to its horrific consequences.

Kilmer eventually did take chemotherapy and had two tracheotomies. He looked in rough shape and, yet, there was something still suave and debonair about him, even in later years. We’ve lost more of an interesting personality than a great actor. And yet, sometimes when I watch him work, I wonder what he might have been capable of if he had not been difficult, if he had not been so handsome, and, most tragically, what he could have done if he had no Eddy to influence his life.

Goodnight, sweet prince.

Down with the Sickness (To Thine Own Shelf Be True)

A shadow of the sickness.

"Let me tell you a little about my books."

-Steve Zissou, paraphrased

It’s a sickness really—the hoarding of books. There are many places where my collection is spread—from my office to two different attics to a church building. My collection began, I suppose, from always loving having books around me as a child. I couldn’t read them well, but that came with time. Going to the library was not enough. I had to own books. I’ve bought them, traded them, bid on them, stolen them. The evidence of the influence of books is everywhere in my life.

The collection circa 2014.

Then, did I mention two teachers retired leaving me their separate collections—one on the theatre and the other on religion?

I am slowly bringing all the books down from the attics to one central location, but I wonder how they’ll all fit. 3,000 books is a conservative estimate.

A stash in the closet. I forgot to mention that one. And, yes, that is the original Star Wars trilogy on VHS with no edits.

There are some books I cherish more than others of course—my copies of the Baptist Hymnal (perhaps the most influential book in my life in many ways), my full collections of authors’ works and a handful of signed books as well—works by Tony winners David Henry Hwang and James Lapine, Obie winner Craig Lucas, playwright/fiction writer/filmmaker Neil LaBute, humorist Lewis Grizzard, singer/actress Carol Channing, novelist/screenwriter Mark Jude Poirier, producer and biographer Steven Bach—plus a signed copy of a play in which I am thanked, a Pulitzer finalist book from my playwriting teacher, and various first editions (Jay McInerney, Norman Mailer, etc). And then, there are the books that I live by: the ones I read the most—eclectic titles include Music by Philip Glass (by Philip Glass), Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita (the greatest English prose ever written), Ulysses (the greatest novel of all time), Jerry Seinfeld’s Seinlanguage, The Norton Shakespeare, Raymond Carver’s final work A New Path to the Waterfall, George Pierce Baker’s seminal Dramatic Technique, John Gassner’s rare Masters of the Drama, and a handful of books by friends and books forever out of print due to legal issues.

A special little place. Sondheim and the yearbooks of all the schools I attended through '21 and the one in which I taught.

When moving my stuff to Montgomery in 2014, we did not think of the weather and a good 1/5 of my collection was destroyed by rain, including many precious textbooks and books of photography. My mother couldn’t understand why I was so upset. My brother says, “It’s his life.” I guess he’s right. Yes, I listen to audiobooks voraciously and I indulge very rarely in ebooks, but my true heart is with the smell of bound pages, sometimes a century old. I’ll probably die under a collapsed bookshelf, but that would be prudent. Here’s to many more years of reading before that happens!

The book I'm tackling now for my #365scripts project.

In a strange way, I can compare the sickness of book collecting with writing. I have written two books—one small theoretical book on playwriting (the world needs more books about plumbers than playwrights) and a scholarly work on Scripture. With the last one, which was full-length, my back would ache, my fingers would cramp, my eyes got worse, I laid awake looking at it on another app, perfecting punctuation. But it reminded me of something Spalding Gray said about writing his novel Impossible Vacation: “it’s disgusting.”

A still life. The next few books plus a monkey and a duck decoy.

Still, I am not here without these books and this will to write. To a dusty shelf we aspire and, although, my shelf is mostly empty, I’ve thrown a few pieces out into the world until someone discovers me or I discover them. So, I am a part of my own shelf in an addition to my own self.

Shakespeare & the Cinema

An early version of this article, "A Sense of Shakespeare in Film" appears in Everyone Else is Wrong (And You Know It): Criticism/Humor/Non-Fiction, available from Holly Grove Press. However, the piece seems better illustrated and some of the text needed a brush-up. My Shakespeare needed brushing up to, as a matter of fact.

Many Shades of Bard.

There have been over six hundred film adaptations of the thirty-seven plays of William Shakespeare, who, for all intents and purposes, was the greatest playwright of any age. This is not because he was always particularly good with plotting or that all his plays are assured successes, but because he had an eye and heart for the human being, who is at the center of the drama. Not only have so many of his idioms entered the everyday speech of people world-wide, but he spoke politically, philosophically, comically, and tragically without ever forgetting that his plays should first and foremost reflect life as it is lived and as it should be. He wrote during a flourish of English drama, was a product of the thought of the day, and yet his plays have transcended time and culture to be adapted into works in Japan, every European country, the United States, Africa, and Latin America.

But he has never flourished quite the way he has in any other form than in film. Since the beginning of cinema, producers have taken his works and adapted them—sometimes with disastrous results, sometimes as movies intended for teenage audiences, and sometimes these products of the Hollywood, British, and Japanese film industries have set the standard for Shakespearean performance and interpretation. This article hopes to highlight some of the greater moments, laugh alongside some of the weakest, and re-think some of the over-looked film adaptations of the comedies and tragedies that have risen in popularity somewhat slower than some of the others.

Comedies

I was the littlest Puck...in the World!!!

Shakespeare’s comedies have been as sought after by Hollywood producers as the great tragedies. This goes as far back, if not farther, than Max Reinhardt and William Dieterle’s shamelessly hokey 1935 version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream starring (unbelievably) Jimmy Cagney as Bottom and Mickey Rooney as Puck. This was also the movie which famously included the screen credit “Written by William Shakespeare with additional dialogue by…” for its screenwriters.

Whereas Twelfth Night, or What You Will has never been successfully adapted to the screen, all of Shakespeare’s other major comedies have been translated on both sides of the Atlantic. Though reading a lot of Shakespeare’s comedies (like reading a lot of Moliere) will show you quickly the belabored formulae he utilized in these sixteen-odd pieces, there are a few that stand out as exceptionally popular.

Olivier as Matinee Idol

Though never as sold out as audiences for Midsummer, Shakespeare’s early pastoral comedy As You Like It has pleased crowds for centuries. In fact, it has been the subject of one of Kenneth Branagh’s Shakespearean adaptations and has a rarely seen, but joyous screen adaptation in 1936’s Paul Czinner film starring Laurence Olivier.

Those familiar with Olivier’s seminal screen performances as Hamlet, Henry V, and Richard III, will be surprised at how unconscious Olivier’s performance as Orlando really is. This film catches him right in between his status as a matinee idol and as a serious actor, showing off some of his rawer talent (usually buried underneath his sumptuous dictation). Though the film does have that same 1930’s hokum associated with Cagney’s Shakespearean debut, As You Like It remains as jaunty and lovely as the play.

Joy etched in celluloid.

Another joyous screen adaptation is Branagh’s Much Ado About Nothing. No other adaptation of the comedies comes as close to retaining the full spirit of the source material than this celebrity-infused (and beautifully shot) film. Though Keanu Reeves is probably the strangest casting since Rooney, he doesn’t have much screen time. The sweetest scenes are between former husband and wife Branagh and Emma Thompson, who is at her most glowing as Beatrice. The film is also interesting for highlighting young Robert Sean Leonard and Kate Beckinsale in some of their early screen roles. Many Branagh favorites—such as Brian Blessed and Richard Briers—fill the rest of the casting palate, with delightful supporting roles played by Michael Keaton and Denzel Washington. Still, Branagh is the main draw—fretting and pouting and using his wild expressions to fully bring an Elizabethan character to life.

Oh, who cares? Just have fun!

On the flip side of Much Ado About Nothing—a critical and box office success—there is Branagh’s later comedy (in fact, musical comedy) Love’s Labour’s Lost—adapted from another early comedy more akin to As You Like It. Though still retaining the verve of the play, the film confused audiences and put off critics who were holding Branagh up to the standards of Much Ado.

Branagh’s idea of cutting half of Shakespeare’s text and replacing it with songs of the 1930’s only half works. But, his direction of the musical scenes is not meant to be taken seriously, making the film wildly akin to Woody Allen’s Everyone Says I Love You—another all-star cast musical where the cast can’t sing that well and it’s just pure fun. In a screen highlight, Berowne’s “Love, first learned in a lady’s eyes” speech from Act IV lovingly fades into Irving Berlin’s “Cheek to Cheek.” Also, the cast’s version of “They Can’t Take That Away from Me” is likely to bring tears to your eyes.

Still, Branagh’s odd casting of Alicia Silverstone (way past her box office prime) and horror/slapstick film regular Matthew Lillard seem completely out of place. Nathan Lane—as with most of his film performances—comes off as a distraction, even utilizing unnecessary ad-libbing. And yet the film is not the disaster that everyone thinks it is. Though a major setback for Branagh (who has continued to harp on the Bard comedies in most recent years), the film is a delight if you’re not expecting wit.

There's a child in that closet!

Franco Zeffirelli—though his career is full of misgivings—might be the best at translating Shakespeare to the screen. This is because he has never forgotten that Shakespeare is loud and his characters (although they talk a lot) think from the gut/pelvis and not from the brain. This is something even Olivier forgot in a major way. Zeffirelli’s version of The Taming of the Shrew features Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton at the height of their public romance even though it was originally a vehicle for Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni.

Always loud and boisterous, Taylor still has a glimmer of her great early roles as Kate, while Burton plays Petruchio with his usual panache. While Taylor plays the Act V speech in all seriousness, Zeffirelli still leaves us questioning the Shrew’s “taming.”

Growing up-- my biggest crush on the left and my favorite kid actor on the right.

On the complete opposite end of the spectrum is an offering from the late twentieth century that translates The Taming of the Shrew to a contemporary high school setting. Though Shakespeare is never directly credited with the creation of the story, 10 Things I Hate About You in no way hides its Elizabethan origins. Though made in 1999, it shares a lot with Zeffirelli’s ‘60s-era Shakespeare films. Using teenagers as replacements for the action-before-words Elizabethans, the film gets closer to how Shakespeare ought to be performed rather than the “Over 40 and Feelin’ Foxy” crowd who drench his texts in thoughts and preambles.

Though Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles get the most screen time, it is Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Larisa Oleynik as the Lucentio-Bianca couple who are the key to the success of the movie as well as some hilarious adult supporting actors in the multitalented Larry Miller and Alison Janney. Kate (“Kat” in the film) is still a shrew, Petruchio (“Patrick”) is still kind of an over-bearing bounder. And yet the taming becomes an excellent coming-of-age story rather than a stifling of Kate’s spirit.

Tragedies

While his comedies can be fun (yet only sporadically funny), the wealth of Shakespeare’s gifts are stored in his tragedies, which have always provided the meat of an actor’s cravings on stage and screen. They also have translated well in any film period that has passed us by. The early Hollywood obsession with Roman epics, the golden ages of American and British cinema, and the best of darker, contemporary offerings.

Shakespeare’s Roman plays, though full of anachronisms, do showcase some of his less self-conscious plotting and some of his most unique characterization. The greatest of the adaptations of these is, hands down, Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Julius Caesar.

Who'd'a'thunk'it?

This 1953 Caesar makes some of Branagh’s star-studded casts pale in comparison. John Gielgud, James Mason, Marlon Brando, Greer Garson, Deborah Kerr—some of the best actors and persona-players of their day. The adaptation—though a product of Hollywood—remains elegant and stirring and some of Mankiewicz’ best direction is on display as well.

Some of the other Roman tragedies have not translated as well to the screen as Caesar, but their having been made at all has kept the Roman plays in the consciousness of modern movie-goers. An over-looked achievement is the 1972 Antony and Cleopatra, co-written, directed, and starring Charlton Heston. Though perhaps one of the most recognized stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood, Heston languished in the ‘70’s with a string of box office flops, many of them with financial connections to Europe. Antony and Cleopatra­—the film that almost stopped dead his Shakespearean career—is a visually stunning and emotionally engaging film.

If you have a library card, you can watch this on Kanopy.

Antony and Cleopatra seems an excellent source of film adaptation with its short and cinematic scenes. And yet its reputation as a Shakespeare script is considered dubious even to something less known—such as Coriolanus. Heston only directed two films and the poor reviews of this one was enough to keep him out of the director’s chair for most of his career. Still, though Heston has entered the American pop culture as a bit of a blowhard, his performances of Shakespeare’s work are always dynamic. This alone is enough to put Antony and Cleopatra in your queue.

Shakespeare’s earliest tragedy—what used to be his most confusing in terms of scholarly research and is now growing in recognition—is Titus Andronicus. The ultra-violent and character-deficient play is being used in theatres across the country as a paradigm of our age. The director who has brought the most attention to it is Julie Taymor, who wowed the world of theatre with her visually charged productions such as Broadway’s The Lion King (oddly enough, an adaptation of Hamlet). She has spent the greater part of her time on Titus and this was cemented with her 1999 film adaptation starring Anthony Hopkins, Jessica Lange, and Jonathan Rhys Meyers.

No words.

Though impressive as a film debut, upon closer examination, Titus remains an empty experience. Using Shakespeare’s half-thought metaphors with a heavy-handedness that directors usually try to avoid (when Titus compares Rome to a den of tigers, suddenly tigers leap toward the audience), it never quite makes any point. As proof of its inconsistency, Titus is not a story that can be simply told. One would have to bring something to it to make it work. What Taymor brings is an un-formed idea early on that the film is about violence in children’s media. But Titus Andornicus, like it or not, was probably a play Shakespeare thought highly of as a young man but rose above quickly—eventually rising above the achievements of Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Kyd.

Shakespeare’s later tragedies have always been the Holy Grail of Shakespearean films—sometimes they have resulted in films that have fallen short and sometimes they have represented the best in modern interpretation. Othello, the Moor of Venice is a unique Shakespeare play in that its language is advanced far above most of Shakespeare’s works and it is the only tragedy without the plot influences of the supernatural. The characters are required to stir in their own problems without the help of gods or ghosts. And yet it has never come off too well on screen.

One of the earliest attempts at giving it a shot in the movies was the 1952 Orson Welles version. Orson Welles, of course, had a great mind but an uneven artistic temperament that left most of his screen work unfinished and muddied. Othello was one of the most tortured shoots of his career. Because of funding, he had to take incredibly long breaks in photography which weakens his attempts at uniting the film’s direction.

Of course, the elephant in the room is the casting of Welles in the role of a moor (regardless of what scholars say, someone of African and not Arabic descent). This has not kept the great actors from playing the tortured soldier, from Olivier and down to Anthony Hopkins (incredibly, on television, in the 1980’s!).

Inspired casting; poor direction.

It would be an incredible forty-three years before a cinematic Othello would be portrayed by a Black man. And this man was Laurence Fishburne. Perfect casting, only complimented by the perfect casting of Branagh in the role of Iago. And yet, Oliver Parker’s wildly uneven scripting and direction makes the 1995 Othello a disappointment. Even later, a mildly controversial high school drama—O—directed by Tim Blake Nelson and starring Mekhi Phifer missed the point of the play entirely. Like it or not, Othello is not a story about race, but about jealousy.

Unfortunately, this great play has never made a great film, except in its operatic version by Giuseppe Verdi. Franco Zeffirelli brought the power of his opera staging to a rare 1986 film version of Otello starring Placido Domingo. As powerfully acted and dynamic as Zeffirelli’s other screen ventures, it remains the best cinematic exploration of the jealousy and envy of Othello.

We know a brae where Mrs. McBuckley lives...

No Shakespeare play has been adapted more times than Macbeth—the “cursed” Scottish play with as many different authorial interpolations as one could manage while remaining a unified and excellent Shakespeare text. Orson Welles, who had once adapted Macbeth to a Caribbean setting for a WPA theatre production, attempted Macbeth (in an unfortunate full Scottish brogue) for his 1948 adaptation.

Even over-looking the critical and commercial disaster the film was on both sides of the Atlantic, the film is nearly unwatchable. Using an odd screen adaptation (twisting of the story is more the idea) and sets inspired by German expressionism (without the…you know…craft), the film, in all its various running times, is a nightmare. It would be a while before the real story of Macbeth would be shown in the cinema.

Roman Polanski’s 1971 version of Macbeth (more aptly titled in Europe as The Tragedy of Macbeth) is by far the greatest cinematic translation of the work of Shakespeare. Following shortly after Sharon Tate was mercilessly killed by the Manson Family, Polanski (along with co-scriptwriter Kenneth Tynan) gave us a Macbeth that was realistic, chilling, powerful, violent, and entirely un-sexy (despite the copious amounts of nudity).

A true horror masterpiece.

Whereas so much Shakespeare is performed by people of great diction and flailing arms, no actor in Polanksi’s Macbeth knows their next line is coming. The dialogue is as natural and labored as real speech. Despite a hectic production schedule, Polanski’s Macbeth also comes closest to adapting Shakespeare’s sense of how violence affects people and how greed can be suicide. A fully nude Lady Macbeth rubbing her hands of the invisible blood, the pissing Porter, Macbeth “seeing” the dagger, and the opening shot, where on the grey beaches of Scotland, a warrior needlessly beats a dead soldier just to see more blood are among the many stunning images that represent the best of Polanski’s career. To get the money required, the producer’s credit has the unfortunate name of Hugh Hefner, but without him, the film might never have been made.

What sets this film apart, however, is not its brutality or the barren eyes of its anti-heroes, but the fact that Polanski (a victim of the Holocaust and Tate’s murder) needed to make it. It was a film Polanski had to make as it seems like a script Shakespeare had to write. It’s the only time Shakespeare and a present-day director have had that sort of “working” relationship. Still another elegant adaptation is in Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood, which has risen in popularity through the years of some of that director’s best work.

Master to Master.

Of course, the most well-known tragedies, we save for last. The other most adapted tragedy is Romeo and Juliet. In some critical ages, the play has been dismissed as precious; in others, it has marked the turning point for Shakespeare’s more serious writing. In the end, it is play about the folly of youth and the ignorance of the aged (or simply the ignorance of the ignorant). Regardless, it is beloved, and yet for years, the characters of Romeo and Juliet (roughly 19 and 14, respectively) had been played by people in their thirties—until Franco Zeffirelli changed everything.

A movie about innocence destroyed, not the "naughty" film you've heard about recently.

Casting the remarkable Olivia Hussey (surely one of the greatest finds of any film director in the ‘60s) and Leonard Whiting, who were the actual ages of the characters, Zeffirelli crafted a crude and enthralling adaptation in 1968 that has set the bar for classic interpretations of Shakespeare ever since. It was also box office gold and brought Romeo and Juliet to another generation of young people at a time when young people were beginning to dictate society.

One of these movies doesn't belong.

On the other end of the spectrum—nearly thirty years later—the story resurfaced and was re-imagined by the MTV generation for another box office success in “William Shakespeare”’s Romeo+Juliet—directed by Baz Luhrmann. Both films are unique for their view of young love and their heavy cutting of the text. And yet both are perfect in very different ways. Whereas Zeffirelli’s version retains the medieval Italian setting, Luhrmann posits us on a post-apocalyptic California beach where media and guns have replaced the Church and swordplay. Leonardo DiCaprio, who is certainly one of the most genuine stars of his generation, and the luminous Claire Danes play the star-crossed lovers with a genuine bent that matches Whiting and Hussey in the original. Romeo “plus” Juliet still proved that Shakespeare could pack in audiences and, like 10 Things I Hate About You, proved that youthful verve still matched Shakespearean text in a way that makes everything else seem pretty phony.

The Shakespeare play that has most entered the consciousness of the English-speaking world is, of course, Hamlet. It has been represented on screen but a few times, though recorded in performance more than perhaps any other play. It has also been re-imagined more times than the chair, recently in 2000 by Michael Almereyda with Ethan Hawke as Hamlet in an American corporation known as Denmark (Ha ha). But the three biggies remain the ones directed by the best Shakespeare film directors: Olivier, Zeffirelli, Branagh.

Sir Larry's brainy take.

The best is Olivier’s. Though tied up in Freud’s shameful pseudo-science, Olivier delivers the performance of his career in this 1948 film. Hamlet is a very difficult text. At an unwieldy length, you can cut a lot out and still retain the plot and yet, if you cut too much, you miss the philosophical gems that have enlightened audiences for years. Olivier’s is a perfect combination of the two. While running smoothly at just over two hours, it still captures the bravura essence of the tragedy and has some excellent supporting performances, including Jean Simmons as Ophelia and a hilarious Felix Aylmer as Polonius.

One must respect Olivier’s moody, atmospheric, and brisk adaptation as he would’ve known Hamlet might’ve been his greatest film, and yet it never seems like a masturbatory star vehicle.

Zeffirelli's folly.

Years later, in a casting decision that would’ve turned the heads of the film community today, Mel Gibson was cast as the lead in Zeffirelli’s version of Hamlet. It is, by far, the weakest of Zeffirelli’s Shakespearean work and of the big screen Hamlets. It was one in a long stream of ‘90s costume dramas that left people scratching their heads (Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is another example of this). While Gibson is not great, he’s not particularly good. But the problem is the script.

Cutting and rearranging like a madman, it seems they were using Welles’ Macbeth screenplay as a jumping off point. Regardless, there’s lots to like. Alan Bates is the best screen Claudius while we also get to see Pete Postlethwaite (impressive in Romeo+Juliet as Friar Lawrence), Helena Bonham Carter, Paul Scofield, and Glenn Close in excellently cast parts.

Everything that made Branagh’s Henry V and Much Ado About Nothing successes back-fires in his 1996 Hamlet, following closely on the tail of Zeffirelli’s version and yet, excising none of the text, making for a four-hour film that never really feels epic. His celebrity casting, energetic performance style, and elegant crafting in his screenplays are sadly absent. The big problem is not the length (though films are the best places to cut Shakespeare’s texts), but the setting.

Don't point that toothpick at me, Blondie!

It seems to be set during the Prussian War in one of those nameless, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, cropped-haircut European countries that no one cares about. Basically, it never feels like the Denmark of Shakespeare. Using Blenheim Palace, the film is always pretty without ever being visually compelling—except for Branagh’s few directorial touches using the mirrors for moments such as the “nunnery” scene. Branagh’s interpretation of the character is perhaps more correct than Olivier’s (getting rid of Freud and his Oedipal overtones), but virtually every other cast member doesn’t come off very well. Rufus Sewell slurs and sputters around as Fortinbras, Derek Jacobi and Julie Christie seem to have not played emotion in years, and there is absolutely no excuse for Jack Lemmon coming off on screen like he has no clue how to do his job. If Lemmon looks bad, believe me, it’s the director’s fault. Some of the scenes with virtually excisable characters come off the best. I happen to like Billy Crystal as the Gravedigger (though it would make more sense if he and Robin Williams had switched roles) and Gerard Depardieu’s tiny scene as Polonius’ henchman is chilling.

Conclusion

Shakespeare lived, wrote, and died a long time ago. And yet, we’ve never let him rest. Operas, theatrical adaptations, films, musicals, parodies, and centuries later, we still revel in what he revealed about us humans—our frailties, our foul-ups, and the times where we seem like supermen. A sense of him has been captured on the screen. A whiff, really. His achievements are too much to be captured. This review, I hope, points to how many times we’ve tried to even bring his sense to the screen—his wit and his humor and his compassion for human life.

Films Referenced in the Article

Comedies

Max Reinhardt and William Dieterle’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935)

Screenplay by Charles Kenyon and Mary C. McCall, Jr. Starring James Cagney, Dick Powell, Mickey Rooney, Olivia deHavilland, and Billy Barty.

Paul Czinner’s As You Like It (1936)

Screenplay by R. J. Cullen, from J. M. Barrie’s treatment of the adaptation by Carl Mayer. Starring Laurence Olivier.

Kenneth Branagh’s Love’s Labour’s Lost (2000)

Screenplay by Kenneth Branagh. Starring Kenneth Branagh, Alicia Silverstone, Carmen Ejogo, Matthew Lillard, Adrian Lester, Emily Mortimer, Richard Briers, Nathan Lane, and Timothy Spall.

Kenneth Branagh’s Much Ado About Nothing (1993)

Screenplay by Kenneth Branagh. Starring Kenneth Branagh, Emma Thompson, Richard Briers, Keanu Reeves, Kate Beckinsale, Robert Sean Leonard, Denzel Washington, Michael Keaton, Imelda Staunton, Brian Blessed, and Ben Elton.

Franco Zeffirelli’s The Taming of the Shrew (1967)

Screenplay by Franco Zeffirelli, Suso Cecchi d’Amico, and Paul Dehn. Starring Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and Cyril Cusack.

Gil Junger’s 10 Things I Hate About You (1999)

Screenplay by Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith, from the play The Taming of the Shrew. Starring Heath Ledger, Julia Stiles, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Larisa Oleynik, Gabrielle Union, Larry Miller, Alison Janney, David Leisure, and Gil Junger.

Tragedies

Charlton Heston’s Antony and Cleopatra (1972)

Screenplay by Federico De Urrutia and Charlton Heaton. Starring Charlton Heston.

Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet (1948)

Screenplay by Laurence Olivier. Starring Laurence Olivier, Peter Cushing, Stanley Holloway, Felix Aylmer, Jean Simmons, and Christopher Lee.

Franco Zeffirelli’s Hamlet (1990)

Screenplay by Christopher De Vore and Franco Zeffirelli. Starring Mel Gibson, Glenn Close, Alan Bates, Paul Scofield, Ian Holm, Helena Bonham Carter, and Pete Postlethwaite.

Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet (1996)

Screenplay by Kenneth Branagh. Starring Kenneth Branagh, Richard Attenborough, Brian Blessed, Richard Briers, Julie Christie, Billy Crystal, Judi Dench, Gerard Depardieu, John Gielgud, Rosemary Harris, Charlton Heston, Derek Jacobi, Jack Lemmon, John Mills, Rufus Sewell, Timothy Spall, Robin Williams, and Kate Winslet.

Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet (2000)

Screenplay by Michael Almereyda. Starring Ethan Hawke, Kyle MacLachlan, Sam Shepard, Bill Murray, Leiv Schreiber, Julia Stiles, Steve Zahn, Jeffrey Wright, Casey Affleck, and Tim Blake Nelson.

Joseph L. Mankiewicz’ Julius Caesar (1953)

Screenplay by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Starring Marlon Brando, James Mason, John Gielgud, Greer Garson, Deborah Kerr, and Alan Napier.

Orson Welles’ Macbeth (1948)

Screenplay by Orson Welles. Starring Orson Welles, Jeannette Nolan, Roddy McDowall, and Alan Napier.

Roman Polanski’s Macbeth (1971)

Screenplay by Roman Polanski and Kenneth Tynan. Starring Jon Finch and Francesca Annis.

Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood (1957)

Screenplay by Shinobu Hashimoto, Ryuzo Kikushima, Akira Kurosawa, and Hideo Oguni. Starring Toshiro Mifune.

Orson Welles’ Othello (1952)

Screenplay by Jean Sacha and Orson Welles. Starring Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine.

Franco Zeffirelli’s Otello (1986)

Screenplay by Franco Zeffirelli and Masolino d’Amica, from the opera by Giuseppe Verdi and Arrigo Boito. Starring Placido Domingo.

Oliver Parker’s Othello (1995)

Screenplay by Oliver Parker. Starring Laurence Fishburne and Kenneth Branagh.

Tim Blake Nelson’s O (2001)

Screenplay by Brad Kaaya, from the play Othello. Starring Mekhi Phifer, Josh Hartnett, Andrew Keegan, Julia Stiles, Martin Sheen, and John Heard.

Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet (1968)

Screenplay by Franco Brusati, Masolino d’Amico, and Franco Zeffirelli. Starring Leonard Whiting, Olivia Hussey, Milo O’Shea, and Laurence Olivier.

Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet (1996)

Screenplay by Craig Pierce and Baz Luhrmann. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Claire Danes, John Leguizamo, Pete Postlethwaite, Paul Sorvino, Brian Dennehy, Paul Rudd, M. Emmet Walsh, and Jamie Kennedy.

Julie Taymor’s Titus (1999)

Screenplay by Julie Taymor. Starring Anthony Hopkins, Jessica Lange, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and Alan Cumming.

A List of Noted Films Based on Other Shakespeare Plays

Comedies

Michael Radford’s The Merchant of Venice (2004)

Screenplay by Michael Radford. Starring Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons, and Joseph Fiennes.

Michael Hoffman’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1999)

Screenplay by Michael Hoffman. Starring Rupert Everett, Calista Flockhart, Kevin Kline, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Stanley Tucci.

Trevor Nunn’s Twelfth Night (1996)

Screenplay by Trevor Nunn. Starring Ben Kingsley, Helena Bonham Carter, Nigel Hawthorne, and Imelda Staunton.

Tragedies

Akira Kurosawa’s Ran (1985)

Screenplay by Akira Kurosawa, Hideo Oguni, and Masato Ide, from the play King Lear. Starring Tatsuya Nakadi.

Billy Morrissette’s Scotland, Pa. (2001)

Screenplay by Billy Morrissette, from the play Macbeth. Starring Maura Tierney and Christopher Walken.

George Cukor’s Romeo and Juliet (1936)

Screenplay by Talbot Jennings. Starring Norma Shearer and Leslie Howard.

Histories

Laurence Olivier’s Henry V (1944)

Screenplay by Dallas Bower, Alan Dent, and Laurence Olivier. Starring Laurence Olivier and Leslie Banks.

Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V (1989)

Screenplay by Kenneth Branagh. Starring Kenneth Branagh, Derek Jacobi, Brian Blessed, Paul Scofield, Emma Thompson, Richard Briers, Robbie Coltrane, Judi Dench, Ian Holm, and Christian Bale.

Laurence Olivier’s Richard III (1955)

Screenplay by Laurence Olivier, including interpolations by Colley Cibber and David Garrick. Starring Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, and Ralph Richardson.

Richard Loncraine’s Richard III (1995)

Screenplay by Ian McKellen and Richard Loncraine. Starring Ian McKellen, Annette Bening, Jim Broadbent, and Robert Downey, Jr.