Milestone Film & Video presents Silent Shakespeare …

Milestone Film & Video presents



        Silent
     Shakespeare
    Such stuff as dreams are made on...




                                   Released by
                        MILESTONE FILM & VIDEO
                 PO Box 128 · Harrington Park, NJ 07640-0128
     Phone: (201) 767-3117 · Fax: (201) 767-3035 · Email: milefilms@aol.com
                        Toll Free Phone: 800-603-1104
                           Email: Milefilms@aol.com
                            www.milestonefilms.com
Silent Shakespeare: Such stuff as dreams are made on...
1899­1911. 88 minutes. B&W, Tinted and Original Hand-Stenciled Color. Original score by Laura
Rossi. Digitally Mastered from the Original 35mm Nitrate Materials by the British Film Institute's
National Film & Television Archive.

"A rare opportunity to see these beautiful early films."
-- Martin Scorsese

"Fascinating! Painstakingly restored... A priceless document in the history of both Shakespearean
acting and the cinema"
 -- London Daily Telegraph

"Shakespeare in Love might have carried off the Oscars, but the silent cinematic versions of William
Shakespeare's plays still have the power to be a hit." --London Observer Review

In the early days of the cinema, pioneer filmmakers created these seven charming, moving and
magical films based on the plays of William Shakespeare. Considered a "lowbrow" medium, the
fledgling movie industry sought to elevate its status by immortalizing the classics and hiring the
greatest actors of the day. As most of these early photoplays were only one or two reels long,
adapting the Bard proved to be both challenging and inspiring. Whatever these films gave up in
language and length, they made up for in exuberance, cinematic artistry, visual wit and bravura
acting.

Digitally restored to video by the British Film Institute's National Film and Television Archive, the
tape features King John (Britain, 1899, with Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree), The Tempest (Britain,
1908), A Midsummer Night's Dream (USA, 1909), King Lear (Italy, 1910, with Francesca Bertini),
Twelfth Night (USA, 1910), The Merchant of Venice (Italy 1910, with Francesca Bertini) and Richard
III (Britain, 1911, with Sir Frank Benson).

© 1999 British Film Institute

                                             Background

Silent Shakespeare films were made because the cinema of the time had need of them. In the early
years of the 20th century there was a film industry sensitivity towards its low class reputation.
Producers and cinema owners sought to elevate their product, as a matter of pride, as a means of
placating censorious authorities, and with the hope of attracting a moneyed, middle-class audience.
A major strategy adopted was the imitation of the theatre. Cinemas copied theatre furnishings, film
producers signed up stage stars, and stage plays were turned into films. The greatest challenge was
Shakespeare, and scores of films were made of his plays in the pre-First World War era, when films
were only one or two reels long. Viewed now, the surviving examples of such films can seem merely
quaint, but it is a mistake to view them as failed stage plays. They must be judged according to their
own outlook, as texts in their own right. What we must acknowledge is not the original play, but the
film made of that play. It is a simple but very important distinction. Silent Shakespeare films have
much to tell us about contemporary staging, acting styles, cultural assumptions, how the early
cinema saw itself, and (of course) about Shakespeare. These movies, selected from the rich collection
of Shakespearean films in the National Film and Television Archive are marked by their exuberance,
invention and conviction.

                                              The Films
King John (Great Britain 1899)
Director: W-K.L. Dickson Production company: British Mutoscope and Biograph Company
Herbert Beerbohm Tree............King John
Dora Senior..................................Prince Henry
F.M. Paget ....................................Robert Bigot
James Fisher .................................Earl of Pembroke

This is the first Shakespeare film ever made, and features Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree (1853-1917),
one of the great actor-managers of his day. It was released both as a film in variety theatres and as a
peepshow Mutoscope ('What the Butler Saw') on 20 September 1899, the same day as Tree's
production of King John opened at the Her Majesty's Theatre, London. Filmed only a few days
beforehand, this was one of four scenes (the other three are lost) from the play, which did not in any
way tell the story of the play, but served rather more as an advertisement for it. The film was taken
in the open air at the Biograph company's studio on the Thames embankment. It was long believed
to be lost, until a print turned recently in the Netherlands. Tree is also well-known as the father of
famed director Carol Reed.

The Tempest (Great Britain 1908)
Director: Percy Stow Production company: Clarendon Film Company
Cast not known

Clarendon was a small British film company, based in Croydon, which made modest but inventive
social comedies and amusing farces. Nothing else in their output gives any indication of an ambition
to attempt the classics, and we do not know why this film was made any more than we know who
the actors were. Whatever its conception, the film is a delight. No other one-reel silent Shakespeare
is so adept at translating both the substance and the spirit of the play to the demands of the medium.
The titles alone are a model of rationality. This is not so much a simplification, rather a discovery of
the play's simplicity.

A Midsummer Night's Dream (USA 1909)
Director: J. Stuart Blackton/Charles Kent Production company: Vitagraph Company of America
William V. Ranous.....................Bottom
Maurice Costello.........................Lysander
Walter Ackerman........................Demetrius
Julia Swayne Gordon .................Helena
Rose Tapley..................................Hermia
Gladys Hulette ............................Puck

Vitagraph (based in New York) was the most prominent American company of the pre-Hollywood
era. They made a specialty of 'quality' productions from literary or historical sources, including
numerous Shakespeare adaptations made between 1908 and 1912. Vitagraph tended to be too much
in awe of the original play, cramming in more action and characters than one reel of film could
sensibly support, but there are ample compensations in their dramatic verve and in the quality of the
performances. This version of A Midsummer Night's Dream benefits greatly from being filmed in
the open air, and conveys a delightful sense of play. Significant additions to its attractions were Julia
Swayne Gordon and Maurice Costello, two of the most popular screen actors of the time. Given
Vitagraph's fidelity to Shakespeare, the introduction of the character Penelope instead of Oberon
seems impossible to explain.

King Lear (Re Lear) (Italy 1910)
Director: Gerolamo Lo Savio Production company: Film d'Arte Italiana
Ermete Novelli ............................King Lear
Francesca Bertini.........................Cordelia

Film d'Arte Italiana was the Italian branch of Film d'Art, a French company devoted to the
production of art films, by which was meant the filming of classic stage productions with famous
actors, often (as here) with rich stencil coloring, painted directly onto the film. Re Lear is a model of
its kind, with an intelligently simplified plot, fine use of locations, and a performance by Ermete
Novelli (1851-1919), one of the most celebrated figures in Italian theatre history, that is true and
affecting. Francesca Bertini was soon to become one of the greatest of Italian silent screen actresses.

Twelfth Night (USA 1910)
Director: Charles Kent Production company: Vitagraph Company of America
Florence Turner ..........................Viola
Charles Kent ................................Malvolio
Julia Swayne Gordon .................Olivia
Tefft Johnson...............................Orsino

Vitagraph's Twelfth Night possesses all the virtues and vices of the company's Shakespeare films. A
cluttered plot with too many characters can only have baffled those new to the play, but there are
three fine performances that help make this a production of great charm. Florence Turner, one of
the very first genuine film stars, is a charming Viola; Charles Kent, Vitagraph's most experienced
Shakespearean performer, ably personifies Malvolio in mime; and an unknown actress is an
irrepressible Maria.

The Merchant of Venice (Il Mercante di Venezia) (Italy 1910)
Director: Gerolamo Lo Savio Production company: Film d'Arte Italiana
Ermete Novelli ............................Shylock
Olga Giannini Novelli...............Portia
Francesca Bertini.........................Jessica

Another example of a prestige Film d'Arte Italiana production, filmed in Venice, with the great
Novelli again proving himself a master at conveying the essence of his part with the essential
gestures. His large wife Olga (also seen as one of Lear's daughters in King Lear) is an improbable
Portia, but Francesca Bertini again shows her star quality. The surviving print is handsomely stencil
colored but incomplete, with some abrupt cuts that would not have featured in the original, and the
ending is missing.

Richard III (Great Britain 1911)
Production company: Co-operative Film Company
F.R. Benson..................................Richard III
Alfred Brydone ............................Edward IV
James Berry...................................Henry VI
Eric Maxon...................................Richmond
Murray Carrington.....................Clarence
Moffat Johnston..........................Buckingham
Constance Benson ......................Lady Anne

The renowned Shakespearean company of Sir Frank Benson (1858-1939) was the precursor of the
Royal Shakespeare Company, and this is a faithful reduction of one of their Stratford productions.
One of a series of Shakespeare films made by the F.R. Benson Company for the Co-operative
Cinematograph Company (and the only one to survive), this primitive but compelling production
makes no pretensions to be anything other than a record of the stage play, and as such takes us
directly back to the theatre of 1911, though as with others of these silent Shakespeare films we seem
nearer to the theatre of Shakespeare's day than that of our own. The titles give us more of
Shakespeare's words than we have had previously, and Benson has a magnetism that we can
recognize later in Olivier.


Film Notes by Luke McKernan
©1999 British Film Institute

                                            Bibliography

Ball, Robert Hamilton, Shakespeare on Silent Film (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1968)
Rothwell, Kenneth, A History of Shakespeare on Screen (New York: Cambridge U. Press, 1999)

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                                    Milestone Film & Video
                        PO Box 128 · Harrington Park, NJ 07640-0128
            Phone: (201) 767-3117 · Fax: (201) 767-3035 · Email: milefilms@aol.com