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Date: 2016-05-07

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Play On! Silent Shakespeare Proiezione di film muti tratti da Shakespeare con il maestro Antonio Coppola che eseguirà brani dal vivo King John (1899), The Tempest(1908), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1909),King Lear (1910), Twelfth Night (1910), The Merchant of Venice (1910) and Richard III(1911). In the British Mutoscope & Biograph Company’s production King John (1899) not much happens other than grand British actor Herbert Beerbohm Tree writhing on King John’s throne, attended by a caring Prince Henry. The scene of less than a minute is played in front of a painted flat for scenery. The one-reel film The Tempest (1908), produced in England by the Clarendon Film Company, is the first film in the collection that attempts to tell a story. Prospero, with the young Miranda, seeks refuge away from the world on an island. Calaban is discovered on the island. The fairy Ariel is freed from a tree. Prospero then concocts the tempest. A ship is wrecked and Ferdinand, washed ashore, promptly begins wooing Miranda. Prospero intervenes turning Ferdinand into a lumberjack. Love prevails however. Antonio and party are tricked by Ariel. Everything doesn’t quite gel however. The film is successful only at stringing together pastiches of Shakespearean scenes. Studio photography with painted flats a la Méliès is combined with location work. The filmmakers do pull off a tricky in-camera matte shot, with scale model and live photography combined in the matte. Vitagraph’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1909) starring Maurice Costello, Julia Swayne Gordon and a very young Gladys Hulette is a fairly entertaining film, with William V. Ranous as Bottom being a comic standout. The film audience would still have had a passing familiarity with the play to make sense of the lengthy expositional intertitles. The film covers a lot of Shakespearean ground in the length of a reel, but there is some semblance of a beginning, middle and end to the story. Who can tell how funny this film would have been to 1909 audiences? Today, at least, the film is entertaining and quite watchable. King Lear (1910) is a Film d’Arte Italiana production starring Ermete Novelli and Francesca Bertini. Once again, much is packed into a film lasting just 16 minutes. Novelli makes an interesting and visually striking Lear. Twelfth Night (1910) is another Shakespearean Vitagraph production in one reel. Again, as appears to be Vitagraph’s style, we have lengthy expository intertitles. One can see evidence that Vitagraph lasted longer than the other pioneering film companies by producing films of higher quality. The Merchant of Venice (1910) is another Italian production starring Ermete Novelli and Francesca Bertini. The film looks as though it has been shot on location in Venice. Novelli, here again, makes a pleasing Shylock. However, Olga Novelli is a mannish-looking woman who disguises herself as a male lawyer, looking every bit like a man dressed as a woman dressed as a man. Will Barker’s Richard III (1911) was produced in England. The staging is routine and theatrical, with painted backdrops and scenery, but with a higher number of extras in the frame than usual for a production shot entirely in a motion picture studio. The floorboards of the studio are clearly visible in the foreground of each shot. Sir Frank Benson’s Richard is more flexible and mobile than other interpretations of the character    

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