Reviews


Richard III (Blu-Ray) - Criterion Collection

Colorama: The Blood-Soaked Brilliance of Laurence Olivier's Richard III

In 2012, Richard III's bones were discovered under a Leicester car park. It's an irony that Shakespeare himself would appreciate, considering it's all due to him that centuries later we still pour obsessively over the Richard III legend. Of course, Shakespeare was the one that spun the legend into the version we know today, the story of a hunchbacked tyrant who connived his way to the English crown and murdered his nephews in the Tower of London. In response to that tale, other versions of Richard have cropped up, ranging from a misunderstood hero to a pragmatic man who was no more or less brutal than his contemporaries. Yet even now, Shakespeare's version is the one that all others must answer to.

And if it's Shakespeare's tyrannical Richard you're interested in, there's no better version than Laurence Olivier's gorgeous 1955 retelling that Criterion recently restored and released in a dazzling new DVD. Anybody who's a fan of Technicolor, Shakespeare, political thrillers, or all of the above, needs to bump House of Cards off their Netflix queue and tune into this one instead.

For those who aren't devotees of 15th-century English history, the dizzying array of intrigues, plots and counterplots that make up the story of Richard III can make it difficult to follow at times. Our only true anchor through it all is our protagonist, Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Laurence Olivier). The play opens during the War of the Roses. The House of York has just won its greatest victory over the House of Lancaster. Edward IV (Cedric Hardwicke) is on the throne; he has two fine sons to succeed him, and a 'winter of discontent' has turned to 'glorious summer.' In one of the most famous (and epically sarcastic) opening speeches in all of theater, Edward's younger brother Richard lays out these facts for us, with a promise that he himself, being deformed and unfit 'to court an amorous looking-glass' will find joy in other things. And nothing will give him more joy than winning the crown for himself, even if he has to crawl over the bodies of foes and family members alike to get there.

Before the play is half over, Richard's already contrived the death of his brother Clarence (John Gielgud), seduced the wife (Claire Bloom) of one of his murder victims, and imprisoned all the kinsmen of Edward's wife, Elizabeth (Mary Kerridge). Through it all, he maintains the pose of being a humble, devout man, completely uninterested in power. Why, he'd never want to take up the burden of a crown, even if the kingdom begged him to take it.

By Richard's side throughout all this is his loyal partner in villainy, the Duke of Buckingham (Ralph Richardson), who never falters, no matter what Richard asks him to do. That is, until Richard demands one more uncomfortable favor. He wants his young nephews murdered. Buckingham's discomfort at child murder leads to a break in his alliance with Richard and the sudden unraveling of all their mutual schemes. Before long, a friendless Richard finds himself at the mercy of Henry Tudor's marauding army in the battle that will decide England's future.

With a dagger-sharp false nose and jet-black hair, Olivier looks as if he could slice through each frame of the movie just by walking across the set. His Richard is an unsubtle, unforgettable monster, a man seemingly cobbled together from a combination of children's nightmares and wartime propaganda cartoons. Olivier gives the character long spidery fingers, a capering gait, and best (or worst) of all, a high-pitched, insinuating voice that can coax or threaten with equal confidence.

Not surprisingly, Olivier's grasp of Shakespeare's dialogue is impeccable; but I found myself liking Richard's silent expressions just as much as his talk. By far, the most terrifying moment of the entire movie is when Richard's nephew innocently makes a comment about his uncle's twisted shoulder. Richard has been joking with him cheerfully, but at this he slowly spins around. All light leaves his eyes as he turns to look at the boy. His face distorts into a rictus of cold hatred, the mask of joviality dropping completely. In this moment, Richard doesn't just look evil; he looks horrifyingly empty. For some reason, Olivier must have second-guessed his own ability to put this across because he adds an over-the-top scare chord to the scene that doesn't do his performance justice. We know instantly what kind of a creature Richard is from the expression alone.

Olivier's Richard is such a stylized performance it can be hard to take. Here's Olivier hopping around and grinning foully, looking like he's about ready to take a flying leap onto someone's shoulder and start pouring brimstone into their ear. When Olivier utters the line, 'Was ever woman in this humor wooed,' regarding his successful seduction of Lady Anne next to her husband's corpse, he's frowning and you get the sense even he can't quite believe he's pulled it off. Yet he's able to knock everyone down like so many bowling pins, manipulating them with ease and dispatching them just as fast. It's impossible not to feel a temptation to throw something at the screen and shout at these credulous side characters to get a clue that the grinning guy dressed in black is the villain.


However, the genius of Richard III is the realization that the other characters, for the most part, do know this, but it doesn't matter. Richard gets his way not because he's well-liked or trusted, but because he knows how to play the political game. In Shakespeare's world, he's the best actor and the best actor is the one who wins.

Interpretations of Richard III in the past several decades have focused on the play's similarity to dictatorships and twentieth-century coups of which Richard's tactics are eerily similar. The 1995 Richard Loncraine film made the parallel explicit by setting the play in World War II, complete with Nazi imagery and costumes. I prefer Olivier's version, which doesn't beat you over the head with the allegory, but subtly brings it to mind with little touches here and there. Richard's high-pitched voice and almost comical mannerisms have more than a touch of Hitler to them. The film itself was made only a decade after the war and Olivier must have known that his audiences, still recovering from its horrors, could make the connection on their own.

Richard III is such a one-man show that it's hard for the other actors to grab much of the spotlight. Still, Olivier stacks the deck with an extremely formidable cast who are always a treat to watch, even when Richard's off-screen. Claire Bloom, playing Lady Anne, the target of Richard's seduction, was young and relatively unknown at the time. Bloom doesn't give my favorite interpretation of the role; she plays it more like Christine in The Phantom of the Opera, as if Richard's words are quite literally hypnotizing her. I prefer a Lady Anne who is forceful and determined. However, Bloom comes into her own in the scenes after she's married Richard. She gets across not just the despair, but the sad bewilderment of Anne, a woman reeling with the knowledge that she's sold her soul in order to bed down with evil.

This is one play that's all about the schemes of men. Bloom is really the only female character of any interest. Mary Kerridge, playing the victimized Queen Elizabeth is good, but so clearly overmatched by Richard that our sympathy for her is more obligatory than heartfelt.

The film's publicity at the time made a big deal of the fact that Richard III scored the coup of casting no less than four knights of the British Empire: John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson, and Cedric Hardwicke. Hardwicke isn't on-screen very long, but the others fully justify all the fuss. Gielgud plays Clarence, Richard's innocent and doomed brother murdered in the Tower, and he delivers a memorable, beautifully-spoken speech on his premonitions of the future. The fact that Olivier was critical of Gielgud's tendency to 'sing' Shakespearean verse gives the casting an edge; heavenly music plays behind Gielgud's speech, as if Olivier is nudging him in the ribs and telling him to stop milking it. Richardson is better, creating a Buckingham who's mild in manner, even genial, making his ruthless actions all the more mesmerizing. Olivier reportedly wanted Orson Welles for the part and only took Richardson out of friendship. Personally, Olivier underrated his friend, who really is charismatic enough to come off as a worthy ally and rival.

Directors who try to adapt famous plays to film run the risk of either being too faithful to the play's stagebound origins, resulting in stodgy, dry movies that never come to life, or of trying to open up the action, resulting in movies with pointless window dressing and frantically fluttering camera movements. Olivier, however, finds a way to embrace the 'stagy' nature of Richard III perfectly. He turns the flat, fake-looking stages of the play into an advantage, making Richard's world look purposefully small and claustrophobic. It's the perfect backdrop for a story of a monster trying to choke the whole country into submission. The vibrant Technicolor, especially the brilliant reds, leap out in the costuming and scenery, giving the movie the look of a medieval tapestry or a heraldic device.

Very few Shakespearean movies can lay claim to being as beautiful in looks as they are in words, but this version of Richard III comes pretty darn close. It's a twisted, mesmerizing piece of work, with one immortal performance threatening to burst the whole thing at the seams. Richard lives in a flat, fake world and he's the only one who seems to know it. It's distorted but oddly beautiful. Kind of like Richard himself, come to think of it.

Aubyn Eli blogs about color movies-and a whole of black-and-white ones-at The Girl with the White Parasol.