1936 Paul Czinner Production

The 1936 film directed by Paul Czinner starred Elisabeth Bergner as Rosalind; Laurence Olivier as Orlando; Sophie Stewart as Celia; and Leon Quartermaine as Jaques.

In his pioneering 1971 book Shakespeare and the Film (30-32), Roger Manvell wrote that this big-budget Hollywood production “made little mark, even though Laurence Olivier” starred as Orlando, with the director’s wife, Elisabeth Bergner, as Rosalind (30), who, according to Manvell, offered an “anxiously inappropriate characterization and the velvety coo of her foreign [German] accent,” although he noted that at least one critic was impressed by her performance (31).

Assessing this film in a 1983 article titled “Babes in the Woods: or The Lost Boys,” Samuel Crowl called it comparatively tame (187); said “Olivier’s performance is what makes … [it] worth watching”; praised one of his moments as “film acting at its most intelligent and witty” (188); joked that “Bergner plays more coy than boy”; and mocked her accent at length (189).

In his 1992 book Shakespeare Observed, Crowl asserted that Czinner’s production suffered from an “attempt to create a studio spectacular court world placed in contrast to an Arden too easily recognized as film’s version of a pastoral idyll” (67). He said the film was perhaps best remembered for Olivier’s comment that Shakespeare and film did not mix well (68). But this was Olivier’s first role in a Shakespeare film, and obviously he later changed his mind, directing and starring in various later such films (68). Crowl thought that Czinner tended “to minimize the intellectual vibrancy of Shakespeare’s comedy and to maximize … sentimental clichés which flirt with cute rather than clever” (68). He noted Czinner’s habit of using cameras to provide “the viewer with a superior, overhead, perspective gradually moving us down and into the action” (69), concluding that Olivier “makes this As You Like It worth watching,” adding that “the expression which plays in his eyes and along his lips when Ganymede asks him to call him/her Rosalind is film acting at its most intelligent and witty” (69).

Writing in the 1999 first edition of his important overview A History of Shakespeare on Screen, Kenneth S. Rothwell, on the other hand, suggested that “Olivier looks all the more gloomy and morose, better suited as Oliver than as Orlando, for being paired opposite the effervescent … Bergner,” whose “sprightly Rosalind,” in Rothwell’s opinion, “saves the picture from utter ruin.” He speculated that although her “special knack for Peter-Pan giggling and wriggling may have charmed the film’s advisory-scenarist, J.M. Barrie [author of Peter Pan], … it irritated some estimable critics, like the late Roger Manvell” (49). Calling the film “too stagey,” Rothwell nonetheless praised the camera work and editing for making the play seem “plausible” on-screen as when one “brief scene” is shot “from every angle on the compass, whether in two-shot, close-up, or over-the-shoulder and in a half-dozen [other] camera set-ups.” He even admired Bergner’s “charmingly accented” performance, finding Olivier’s acting “quite dull” and unfocused by comparison (50). Rothwell mocked Leon Quartermaine’s performance as Jaques and considered Touchstone’s threat to William “more grotesque than funny, in fact downright cruel” (51). Noting the film’s relative brevity, Rothwell regretted that several important scenes had been eliminated or pruned (51) and that the melancholy note often found in Shakespeare’s comedies had also been minimized. He wrote, for instance, that ultimately “Elisabeth Bergner steps in, oozing charm, to steal the show with a wonderful epilogue in which, cross-dressed as a man, she brandishes her favorite switch while admonishing the women, and then magically dissolves into a white virginal gown as she flatters the men.” Rothwell generously concluded that “Bergner’s Rosalind and Laurence Olivier’s Orlando may not be exactly as you like it, but in the realm of filmed Shakespeare no one has yet succeeded in being more likeable” (51–52).

Daniel Rosenthal, commenting on this film briefly in his 2000 book Shakespeare on Screen, described this production as a “sprightly entertainment” that “present[ed] Shakespeare’s play as two parts fairy-tale to one part pantomime,” although he also commented that “[a]part from the palace sets and the livestock, there is little in Czinner’s vision that you could not find in a theatre” (14).

Writing about the Czinner film in 2000 in Shakespeare in the Movies (89–93), Douglas Brode described some of its visual imagery, some of its editing, and the ways it sometimes “plays as light comedy while mimicking Shakespeare’s life-as-a-theater theme” while also celebrating, ultimately, the way “deep friendship” develops into “Romantic attraction” between Rosalind and Orlando, suggesting a relationship destined to last. He closed by regretting that a “terrible case of miscasting”—Bergner as Rosalind—“has always kept this otherwise fine film in eclipse” (93).

A year later, in 2002, Stephen Buhler, in his book Shakespeare in the Cinema: Ocular Proof, commented in passing that “[w]hile in male drag as Ganymede, this Rosalind is anxious to telegraph her ‘true nature’ and accordingly exhibits a wide array of coquettish mannerisms.” He then described audience reactions to the film as well as responses from critics (131).

In his 2013 book Small-Screen Shakespeare (114–16), Peter Cochran noted the many qualified people involved in making this film and called it “well worth seeing” for that reason alone. Nevertheless, he found it too bourgeois, as in presenting Touchstone and Audrey but also other lower-class characters (114). He noted its lack of bawdiness and thought Bergner lacked sex appeal and other sorts of appeal as well, partly because of her small size, her trimmed eyebrows, and her annoying laugh. In contrast, he found Olivier very good-looking and quite humorous. He commended the photography, the convincing set, and the camera work (115). He particularly praised Jacques’s famous speech but thought Jacques’s role had been excessively pruned (116). He also noted a couple of other unfortunate changes (116).

In 2016, Peter E. S. Babiak, in Shakespeare Films: A Re-evaluation of 100 Years of Adaptations (51–53), mentioned Czinner’s use of “rapid swish pans” (52) as well as his use of “techniques specific to film to find analogues for the theatrical experience” (53), while in 2018, Robert Shaughnessy, in his study of As You Like It for the Shakespeare in Performance series (159–66), wrote that the Czinner film, thanks to VHS, DVD, and the internet (where it was freely available) had now been seen by hundreds of thousands of viewers. He reported that YouTube comments, by 2011, were “overwhelmingly positive, and the ‘likes’ outnumbered the ‘dislikes’ by twenty to one” (160). After summarizing the film’s previous reception, much of it negative (159–61), he said that he understood such reactions but regretted that commentators had often failed to appreciate the film in its historical contexts and failed to acknowledge that “its staginess is the result not of accident or ineptitude but of a conscious strategy of theatrical and cultural commemoration,” especially its focus on preserving Bergner’s performance as Rosalind, which had succeeded well in theaters (161). Shaughnessy cautioned that “Bergner’s performance, and Czinner’s film, are temptingly easy to patronize,” especially if one “presupposes a standard of naturalness [in acting] that is historically insupportable” (165). Shaughnessy quoted some early reviews to show that the film was often appreciated in its own day, especially the speech in which Leon Quartermaine, playing Jacques, discussed the “seven ages of man, which elicited astonishingly strong praise from one London critic, who called it ‘probably the most heroic feat ever accomplished in the history of the movies.’” Shaughnessy himself admired the film’s “simple, innocent charm” (166).

1963 Elliott/Eyre Production

A 1963 television production of the play, directed by Michael Elliott and Ronald Eyre, famously starred Lynn Redgrave as Rosalind; Patrick Allen as Orlando; Rosalind Knight as Celia; Max Adrian as Jacques; and Patrick Wymark as Touchstone. It had originally been performed onstage, to great success, by the Royal Shakespeare Company and was not only preserved on film but was also recorded for sale on long-playing (LP) records. Unfortunately, it is now difficult to find, having not yet been re-released for streaming or on DVD.

Robert Shaughnessy reported in his important 2018 book on the play in performance (54–59) that when he was able to view this production in 2015 he thought it “had stood the test of time remarkably well,” despite being “filmed over two days in a studio set” in an attempt to convey some sense of the theatrical staging while also coping with the demands of television. Its set featured a large tree around which various events revolved (57), but its real strength was Redgrave’s performance, with one contemporary reviewer describing her as “‘blinding’: ‘radiating and sparkling, soaring and swooping, tender and pert by terms, boyish without being principally boyish, uninhibitedly woman.’” Shaughnessy concurred, writing that “Redgrave is captivating: this is a performance radiant with life, generosity and longing” (58). He reported that although the courtship scenes were basically preserved, many cuts were made elsewhere, especially in the second half and especially involving “the Phoebe and Silvius subplot” as well as scenes involving Touchstone and Audrey (59).

In his 2019 book Screening the Royal Shakespeare Company, John Wyver (43–47) reported that the “surviving archival print features pin-sharp monochrome images and a clear sound track,” and although he was less impressed with the set he called the recording “a delight.” Like Shaughnessy, he mentioned some substantial cuts, noting that even “Rosalind’s epilogue was … excised and the broadcast version ends with Jacques’s exit and an extended wedding dance” (46). He considered the acting “almost uniformly exceptional” (46), singling out various performances and commenting that “Redgrave effortlessly brings to the verse the sound of a young woman blossoming in the age of pop and the pill” (46) and adding that her “performance radiates innocent joy, playful confidence and engulfing love” (46–47). Multiple cameras were used for in-studio shooting featuring “close-ups and reverses,” even though a few errors managed to sneak in. Wyver praised the script, the ways performers were framed and juxtaposed, some “under-stated but always motivated moves, and the use of a crane to rise above the characters and pin them to the forest floor. Viewer response was strikingly positive,” he observed, “with the broadcast achieving a Reaction Index of eighty” (47), an impressive score for such a production.

1978–79 BBC Television Shakespeare Production

This production, first broadcast in Britain in 1978 and then the following year in the United States, was directed by Basil Coleman and featured Helen Mirren as Rosalind; Brian Stirner as Orlando; Richard Pasco as Jaques; Angharad Rees as Celia; and James Bolam as Touchstone.

Henry Fenwick, describing the production for the 1978 BBC booklet that accompanied the first broadcast of the film, first explained the genesis of this particular production and of the whole BBC series. He mentioned director Basil Coleman’s desire to make the most of the outside setting (at Glamis Castle), including a sometimes-uncooperative flock of sheep. Coleman saw the play as moving from winter to early spring but could only film in the latter season; he wanted to avoid making the production too pretty and intended to use the castle for harsher scenes, such as the banishment (22–23). Love scenes were filmed under a particularly large chestnut tree (23). Set designer Don Taylor described his duties in detail (23–24), as did costume designer Robin Fraser-Paye, who emphasized rustic gray/green colors and tried to make the costumes somewhat sexually alluring by making them tight (24–25). Script editor Alan Shallcross made few cuts, while Helen Mirren (playing Rosalind) often—but not always—enjoyed the realism of an outdoor setting. She grew to admire the play, finding it more complex than she had originally assumed, with its emphasis on what she called “realistic love.” Coleman, the director, stressed its beauty, its celebration of nature, and its focus on achieving liberty (25–26).

R. Alan Kimbrough, reviewing the production in 1979, shortly after it was first broadcast, wrote that it “demonstrates the range of television’s potential” but commented that the decision to film outside was responsible for “[m]any of the production’s visual delights and many of its visual disasters. … Those delights strike immediately: the elegant yet sufficiently forbidding fairy-tale castle, its gracious gardens, the splendidly pastoral forest, and the bucolic patches of meadowland,” but among the disasters Kimbrough mentioned the constantly chirping birds. He thought that “[c]ostume designer Robin Fraser-Paye manages some notable successes in the contrasting blacks and whites for the romance villains and heroes” but suggested that “the location shooting limits severely and forces some disquieting contradictions between what the characters say and what we see,” as when they complain about winter in a lush spring landscape. Turning to the acting, Kimbrough asserted that “[o]nly after she falls in love, and even more after she adopts her Ganymede identity, does Helen Mirren make Rosalind become captivatingly alive and dominant” (5). Kimbrough found this production’s Audrey more attractive than Touchstone does; commented that “Pasco’s alienating facial features—heavy eyelids, bulging eyes, pronounced bags under those eyes, and minimal change in expression—work … well for this cynical Jaques”; but asserted that much of the play’s “subtlety escapes this production,” especially “when the camera work is so utterly conventional” (6).

In a 1986 essay titled “‘As You Like It’ and the Perils of Pastoral,” James C. Bulman wrote of the BBC production that “Jaques was key to [director] Coleman’s conception, a figure whose bitter railing against the world undercuts any easy acceptance of pastoral romance. Coleman cast Richard Pasco, one of the RSC’s finest tragic actors, as Jaques; and Pasco played him as a melancholic, alcoholic, almost tragic visionary.” After examining two scenes featuring this Jaques, Bulman wrote that “Coleman’s production is not to everyone’s taste. Indeed, it is too dark and self-conscious to do justice to the spirit of festive comedy. But it is,” he thought, “at least consistent. Coleman chose to alienate us from pastoral artifice and to make the retreat to Arden a game that the players play only to keep from acknowledging the darker lessons of human nature that Jaques insists on. We ought not to dismiss this bias before considering how it reflects, or speaks to, our age” (9).

In their 1988 collection Shakespeare on Television, James C. Bulman and H. R. Coursen reprinted excerpts from brief early reviews of this adaptation. One reviewer called it a “colorful production” that is “escapist entertainment at its most sublime”; another thought it was a “mistake” to film the play outdoors; yet another criticized the outdoor setting, the “blocking and framing,” and the “compositions” and editing; while a fourth called it “marvelous” and praised the clarity of the speech. A fifth reviewer found it “[v]isually appealing”; while a sixth considered it the best of the BBC broadcasts to that point (251) and especially praised Helen Mirren, Tony Church, and Richard Pasco for a production exhibiting “coherence and … intelligence” (252).

Assessing the production in his 2013 book Small-Screen Shakespeare (116–17), Peter Cochran admired its nasty Oliver but thought its Orlando did not seem especially masculine or exhibit much vitality. He thought most of the actors failed to realize that this play is supposed to be funny (116), although he considered Jaques intriguing and felt that Helen Mirren holds her own. He called the realistic setting unnecessary and found this production’s Hymen weak (117).

Philippa Sheppard, in her 2017 book titled Devouring Time: Nostalgia in Contemporary Shakespeare Screen Adaptations (232ff), briefly commented that Rosalind in this production is not a convincing male and that the production in fact steers clear of any hint of homoeroticism (232–33). She wrote that “[a]t the conclusion, the transformation back to womanhood is again achieved off-screen. Rosalind and Celia appear with Hymen (John Moulder-Brown) in flowing white Grecian robes, white flowers in their long, loose hair. Mirren’s Rosalind has not enjoyed her stint as a man, and throughout her performance gives the impression of barely containing her femininity, which bursts out at the seams in almost parodic feminine gestures, giggles, and squeals” (240).

But Robert Shaughnessy, in a much more substantial assessment in his book on the play (168–75), observed that the realistic, outdoor locations “were chosen with care, and that Coleman did not envisage the forest as a mass of undifferentiated, decorative greenery” (168). Like Sheppard, he found “zero sexual ambiguity” in this version, “not least because throughout Mirren makes no attempt to play either man or boy.” But he thought the production, “[f]lawed as it is,” was worth watching as a reflection of its era’s own assumptions about Shakespeare on screen (170). He noted that almost eighty percent of the original viewers gave the program either an A or A+. Respondents “‘found the production involved them closely and just over three-fifths of the total sample watched all of it,’ and that the programme ‘gained a very good response from the sample audience who had thoroughly enjoyed the experience.’” Early viewers enjoyed the outside locations, the “beautiful costumes,” and the lack of “gimmicks,” with Shaughnessy commenting that, “[a]s a piece of Sunday-night television, the BBC As You Like It evidently worked” (174). But he suggested that subsequent reviewers have found this version less appealing (175).

1992 Christine Edzard Production

In 1992, British director Christine Edzard released a film of the play starring Emma Croft as Rosalind; Andrew Tiernan as Orlando/Oliver; Celia Bannerman as Celia; James Fox as Jaques; and Griff Rhys Jones as Touchstone.

Commenting on it in his 1996 book Shakespeare in Production, H. R. Coursen mainly seemed to be surveying others’ (often negative) reviews rather than offering his own opinions in any detail. He did, however, write that “Edzard’s film is not quite that easily dismissed, however. It realizes a splendid moment when Rosalind puts down Jaques …. Here, Jaques is not just ‘the refuser of festivity’ … but one whom festivity rejects.” Coursen felt that this film’s strength “is in Celia Bannerman’s splendid Celia, wonderfully able to adapt to life in a construction shack, and Emma Croft’s fetchingly boyish Ganymede, speaking truths about love that she discovers as she utters them” (101). He admired the way the film conveyed a sense of literal cold, thereby emphasizing the wintry aspects of Shakespeare’s text.

In a 1999 essay titled “There Is No Such Thing as … a Forest,” Alessandro Abbate, regarding this adaptation as a response to Thatcherite Britain, wrote that “Edzard’s film, with its social and topographical dualism,” presents London as “a microcosm representing all the contradictions and deficiencies of a global scale partition between North and South, haves and have-nots, citizens and outcasts” (42–43). Also publishing in 1999 in an essay titled “A Girl’s Got to Eat,” Patricia Lennox wrote that “Christine Edzard’s As You Like It is unique by Shakespeare-film standards in its retention of nearly all of the play’s text, and it is equally singular, by any standard, in is careful avoidance of stereotyped characterizations of the women’s parts.” Praising the film’s “sensitive use of literature and the careful rendition of individual characters” as typical of Edzard (52), Lennox asserted that this film emphasizes “mutuality between women” as well as the ways their “relation to food … provides details about their lives and personalities, augmenting and sometimes even undercutting their speeches” (59).

Kenneth Rothwell, in his History of Shakespeare on Screen, also published in 1999, noted that Edzard’s film had “created quite a stir among academics,” adding that its “low budget, technical glitches, and impenetrable British diction, however, condemned it to a short life even though the cast includes some well-known British actors.” He explained that because it was set in “a starkly realistic urban jungle,” it was often negatively reviewed. Contrasting it with the “studio opulence” of the 1936 film, he commented on its “urban grime” (216). But Rothwell actually considered this movie “fresher and livelier, if less polished” than the 1936 version, although he quickly added that the first truly successful film of this challenging play has yet to be seen (218).

Daniel Rosenthal, in his book from 2000 titled Shakespeare on Screen (16–17), spoke for many viewers when he said that Edzard’s film “leaves the audience bored and baffled,” calling it “hopelessly misguided” (16) and asserting that “[n]onsensical casting is compounded by lifeless direction, with every scene played at the same, gentle pace.” He found it “doubtful, though, that any director could have made a success of the ‘forest’ segment, shot in London’s docklands. If Edzard had been bold enough to rewrite Shakespeare’s poetry to match the setting,” Rosenthal concluded, “the film might have stood a chance” (16).

Douglas Brode’s Shakespeare in the Movies, from 2000 (94), quoted one critic who called the film “misguided and also perversely endearing,” commenting that it could appeal to viewers “who enjoy the offbeat and experimental” and even quoting one “rave” review from a writer (Ilona Halberstadt) who praised its “immediacy” and “modern context.” Brode himself, however, implied that the film was unsuccessful and noted that it had not yet been shown in the United States (94).

Samuel Crowl, in his important 2003 book Shakespeare at the Cineplex (155–62), wrote that “Edzard takes a bold approach” that “seiz[es] upon the play’s ‘idealistic strains’” to “fashion a Dickensian social critique” of conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s London (156). He considered it typical of many recent Shakespeare films that express the author’s “words and images through its own language”—films in which initial scenes often prove crucial in “creat[ing] an opening that invites the viewer into the Shakespearean material through the language of film” (157). Crowl considered “[m]irrors, reflections, and doublings … all essential to [Edzard’s] project,” saying these were evident in casting (as when the same actors played the “good Duke/bad Duke, good brother/bad brother.” He also praised, in part, this film’s “seven ages of man” speech, saying it “humanizes both Jaques and his reading of the human condition” (158), although later he called the treatment of the speech “uncritical,” suggesting that “Shakespeare’s stagecraft exposes Jaques’s easy cynicism by having Orlando enter with Old Adam in his arms after Jaques has just dismissed man’s final age as ‘sans everything.’” “Adam,” according to Crowl, “is a vibrant representative of seniority’s loyalty, commitment, and wisdom, which totally escapes Jaques’s worldly posturing” (160). Crowl also complained that Edzard omitted “Shakespeare’s mocking humor,” so that whereas “Shakespeare displays a light-hearted ability to send up some of the very things he clearly cherishes, Edzard is more serious and dogged” in emphasizing an unquestioned ideology opposed to Shakespeare’s (162). Although Crowl felt that “Edzard’s film takes interesting chances with Shakespeare’s text,” he reported that he and his students had found it “a more interesting work to debate than to enjoy. Its virtues have emerged as it takes its place in the context of the recent proliferation of Shakespeare films precisely because it was never headed to the cineplex. It says no to Hollywood and Shakespeare’s potential commercial appeal as strongly as it says no to Mrs. Thatcher’s London” (162).

Maurice Hindle, in his fine 2007 book Studying Shakespeare on Film (83-84), wrote that frequently in Edzard’s production “the gap between the Elizabethan text and the modern film setting is unbridgeable,” especially when Elizabethan “words or phrases” make no sense in a modern setting. He also regretted the absence of an actual audience that might help “bring the comedy alive” (84). And in his 2008 Norton Guide, Samuel Crowl argued that the Edzard film “reveals a burdensome emphasis on politics” but ironically thought “the production will probably endure” precisely “because of its ‘radical credentials’” (92).

Assessing this production in his 2013 book Small-Screen Shakespeare (118–19), Peter Cochran reported that many people have called this the worst movie ever released. Cochran himself called it “rivetingly incompetent” (118). He disliked the settings and the way Jaques’s famous speech was relocated and misinterpreted; thought Rosalind resembled a man and that Celia was too old; and objected to various cuts involving Oliver and Charles (118). He criticized the ways the text did not fit the settings; faulted the clumsy editing; and suggested that Edzard did not comprehend the play, although he did praise the photography and competent speaking of the lines (119).

Phillippa Sheppard, in her 2017 study Devouring Time (233–34), saw the Edzard film as a “critique of Thatcher’s England and of ‘conspicuous consumption’” (233), adding that “Edzard, it would seem, is suggesting that Rosalind and her banished father are trying to cure England of its Thatcherism in their solidarity with the homeless. They are healing political ills—the rich and poor are together in the final scene, with little distinction in clothing” (234). But she regretted that the actress playing Ganymede “hardly bothers to seem ‘masculine.’ She skips and pirouettes around Orlando, movements few straight male teenagers today would be caught making in front of their straight male peers.” Her few efforts to seem a convincing male seemed unconvincing to Sheppard, who also thought the actor playing Orlando did not react as most males of the 1980s would have reacted when another male kisses him, even though he eventually wipes his lips. “What message,” Sheppard asked, “is Edzard trying to convey with this action? Is Orlando discreetly wiping away the kiss? Or is he savouring it in disbelieving delight? Is he secure enough in his heterosexuality to allow a kiss from a boy pretending to be and closely resembling his true love? Or, finally, does he suspect that Ganymede is a girl?” (241). Sheppard left these questions unanswered but clearly found this moment intriguing.

Robert Shaughnessy, in his superb 2018 book on the play (177–84), mocked the Edzard film as a “cackhanded attempt to bom-Bard As You Like It with youth culture, black music and style,” saying it “sounded like a wicked parody of the well-intentioned efforts of educators and theatre-makers to get Shakespeare down with the kids, but it was meant in earnest” (178). He did quote from two positive reviews but reported that most reviewers agreed with one commentator who called the effort “a dead-as-mutton film that is poor Shakespeare and even worse cinema” (178). Noting once again the play’s clear indictment of Thatcherism (180), Shaughnessy ended by asserting that the “strangely ambivalent and tentative quality of Rosalind and Orlando’s wooing is at odds with Edzard’s claim that hers is a ‘truly cheerful’ film, and it is difficult to determine whether this is intentional. The uncertainty of tone,” he continued, “is most evident in the final scene, which returns the lovers and exiles to the space of the court, now transformed by draped polythene sheeting, fairy lights and orangey-yellow wash into a place of slightly dreamlike, festive reconciliation” (183).

2006 Kenneth Branagh Production

In 2006, Kenneth Branagh released the closest thing As You Like It had come to receiving a big-budget Hollywood-style production since 1936. Directed by Branagh, it starred Romola Garai as Celia; Bryce Dallas Howard as Rosalind; David Oyelowo as Orlando; Kevin Kline as Jaques; and Alfred Molina as Touchstone.

In his 2007 book Filming Shakespeare in the Global Marketplace (158–63), Mark Thornton Burnett discussed this version’s genesis, especially the decision to set it in Japan (158–60) as well as the various problems Branagh faced in producing it (160–62). Three years later, in 2010, in Contemporary Shakespeare Production (165–68), Herbert R. Coursen suggested, in passing, that As You Like It might work well on television because it requires little variety in the kinds of shots necessary (165). He criticized Branagh’s late nineteenth-century Japanese setting and also argued that Branagh had simplified the play’s gender issues (166). Discussing the ways Shakespeare depicted women playing men in other plays, he thought this film’s Japanese setting here prevented Rosalind from making the most of her male disguise (166–67). He faulted such other details as the opening deposition scene, the way William and Audrey are introduced, the way Touchstone’s language is sometimes neutered, and the way some of Rosalind’s words to Sylvia are trimmed (167). He did, however, admire Adam’s sudden appearance, carried by Orlando, saying it refuted Jaques’s claims, in his “seven ages of man” speech, about old age (168), adding that other cuts to the script had blunted the play’s implied criticism of Jaques (168). Coursen praised Bryce Howard as an actress but found her attempt to play a male unconvincing, but he particularly admired Romola Garai as Celia as well as various other actors (168).

L. Monique Pittman, in her 2011 book Authorizing Shakespeare on Film and Television: Gender, Class, and Ethnicity in Adaptation (35–56), noted that in this film Brian Blessed, one of Branagh’s regular band of actors, once again plays father figures (the two dukes), as he had already done in Branagh’s 1996 Hamlet (37–38). But she accused the present film of repeatedly “displac[ing] Western practices of aggression and internecine conflict onto the Japanese other” (38). Commenting that the “bad” duke imitates Japanese customs while the “good” one does not, she found this contrast too simplistic, saying it contributed to making the film itself a kind of colonial enterprise (38). More positively, she wrote that this movie “deploys Branagh trademarks—a lavish and emotionally stirring orchestral scoring, traveling camera movement, virtuosic continuous takes, color-blind casting, and a commitment to the clear transmission of Shakespearean language” (38), although she also accused it of “stunt casting”—such as involving familiar stars, such as Kevin Kline and the then-up-and-coming Bryce Howard (director Ron Howard’s daughter)—as he had done in earlier Shakespeare films such as Much Ado about Nothing and Hamlet. Pittman found problems with Branagh’s use of color-blind casting in some earlier films, saying the black actors either stuck out in various ways or were variously typecast (40). Regretting that in this film many of Rosalind’s lines had been cut, so that Bryce Howard, an American, lost out in many ways to Celia, played by the English actress Romola Garai, Pittman also observed that although the film is set in Japan, it features almost no Japanese actors (41) and also associates Japanese culture with violence (44). She thought that the Kabuki dancer featured early in the film acts in a way that seems artificial, in contrast to the naturalism Branagh usually prefers (44), asserting that the dancer is feminized, presented as vulnerable, and made to seem artificial and unnatural, especially in his cross-dressing, unlike the cross-dressing Rosalind, since she, when cross-dressed, continues to look very much like herself despite her boy’s costume (45). Nonetheless, she found Rosalind’s disguise unconvincing (45) and disliked the way Celia’s violent father is associated with Japanese culture (46), while the court-in-exile of Rosalind’s father is associated with appreciation of Japanese culture, with a lack of any sense of an oppressively hierarchical power structure, with the tolerance of playfulness, and with various kinds of equality and freedom. All of these attractive features contrast, according to Pittman, with the court of Duke Frederick, which is associated with Japanese dress, Japanese hierarchy, and Japanese violence, as in the “bad duke’s” Japanese sumo wrestler, who is not even given lines to speak (47). Observing that “[t]hroughout the film, the Japanese language is only spoken in moments of violent conflict” (47), Pittman also wrote that this version of the play “invokes Japanese culture only to deploy it in highly controlled and contained ways that served to exonerate benevolent patriarchs, the art of Shakespearean adaptation, and the West itself” (48). She added that the most ludicrous characters and most uncontrolled lovers—Phoebe and Silvius—are dressed in Japanese costumes and that Audrey is startled by a Japanese person, William, who is treated “as a figure of fun” and who is also mocked later in the film and is physically intimidated by Touchstone, although the score tries to make this encounter seem funny (48). “In each of the above cases,” Pittman asserted, “the inclusion of Asian figures in As You Like It does not voice Shakespeare in an expanded and Global register as Branagh claims to do but rather serves to underscore the rightful preeminence of British appropriations of the Bard’s language and plot.” She added that although “the film’s opening neatly projects onto Japan the flaws of the pre-Arden—its artifice and violence—the final images … present English culture typified by the Morris dance as the curative for social ills. Read most cynically, English culture corrects the flaws of Japan’s too-ritualized and overly hierarchical society” (49), so that the film declares Branagh’s own Englishness and his personal stature in English culture (50–51).

Kendra Preston Leonard, in an essay from 2012 titled “Rosalind’s Musical Iconicity in Branagh and Doyle’s As You Like It,” wrote that “[b]oth the flute and the violin, associated at the beginning of Act 2 with Rosalind, are featured solo instruments throughout the film. Frequently accorded the topmost lines of [composer Patrick] Doyle’s set pieces, they are easily heard against the accompaniment of the orchestra. The flute,” Leonard continued, “is used in conjunction with a Western orchestra and clearly indicates Rosalind’s role first as a beloved daughter and later as a young, independent-minded Englishwoman. Indeed, as the dazed Duke Senior walks into the forest looking at the picture of his daughter, it is the flute that accompanies him and indicates that his thoughts are on her rather than his own situation. At this point,” according to Leonard, “Doyle’s score also establishes a typical musical gender convention for Rosalind by associating her femininity with the flute, which is generally accompanied by the orchestra” (56).

In his 2013 book Small-Screen Shakespeare (51–53), Peter Cochran called this the best of Branagh’s Shakespeare films, perhaps because he does not act in it; thought the opening assault on the Old Duke is pilfered from Tom Cruise’s The Last Samurai (51); found the Japanese setting, the sumo wrestling match, and the equitable treatment of black characters unconvincing, but felt the film is nonetheless effective because we forget the opening (52). He considered the two lead actresses and the three black actors effective; thought Molina performs well as Touchstone; thought Brian Blessed is effective in both of his roles; and in general found the acting is very good (52–53) but considered Kevin Kline ineffective as Jaques, the doubling and tripling of roles for the actor who plays Corin quite confusing, and the sudden reappearance of Japanese actors at the end confusing as well (53).

Writing about the film in 2017 in her book Devouring Time (237–39), Philippa Sheppard found it “curiously old-fashioned,” especially in its relatively small multiethnic casting, and particularly in its sparse use of Japanese actors (238). She thought that the “same nostalgia for a ‘simpler’ time is evident in the way that Branagh removes any subversive challenge inherent in Rosalind’s cross-dressing by having her completely unbelievable as a young man. Of all the cross-dressed actresses” Sheppard had already described in other productions, she wrote that “Howard makes the most negligible attempts to seem boyish. Her voice is unchanged from her female scenes, and her costume does little to conceal her femininity,” thus “making everyone who is taken in by her disguise seem half-witted” (239).

Robert Shaughnessy, in his important book from 2018 (184–92), judged critical reaction to the Branagh film “mixed,” although he himself considered it the “deftest” attempt, of any film of the play, “in its adjustment of the text to the conventions of film narrative,” adding that it “also allows early sightings of key figures, the establishment of back-stories, and the anticipation of plotlines that are taken up later” (185). He called the “set-up … almost novelistic in its elaboration,” thus typifying the film’s habits of exposition, “as well as affording the [good duke’s] banishment a violent immediacy it generally lacks,” so that Rosalind seems “genuinely traumatized.” Shaughnessy noted that Jaques, Touchstone, and Audrey are all introduced earlier than usual (186). Writing that “the wrestling match epitomizes the brutalism of the new court,” he also called attention to some subtle camera angles and their implied meanings (188), remarking, for instance, that the “camerawork during the film’s first act is dominated by tightly framed interior shots and close ups, creating a sense of claustrophobic enclosure and entrapment. With the move to Arden, the perspective noticeably broadens” (189). Typical of Shaughnessy’s close attention to detail is his observation that

Jaques’s ‘I met a fool i’ th’ forest’ (2.7.13–61), here an ostentatious, pedantically illustrative star turn, is given a similar (two-minute plus) one-tracking-shot treatment, forcing both camera and court-in-exile to follow Kline as he preens and cavorts his way through undergrowth and 50 lines of text. The trick is repeated for the 21/2 minutes of ‘All the world’s a stage’, during which Branagh’s restlessly circling steadicam finally settles on Kline’s deep-contemplative face as he excruciatingly strings out the pause-punctuated final lines. Arden, we see, is where word-heavy ‘serious’ acting is given space to breathe. (190)

Adding that “[e]xtended actor-indulging takes are also the rule in the wooing scenes” (190), he also noted that Touchstone and Audrey receive more attention here than in any previous film of the play, a decision he found justified by “Molina’s likeably droll and doleful performance” (191), although he did think that when Molina chews out “the diminutive and disconcerted Paul Chan [playing William] … the humour seems more like racist bullying than amusing repartee; here, the film’s orientalism is particularly charmless” (192). Shaughnessy did, however, seem to like the self-conscious, illusion-breaking, and “light-hearted” way in which the epilogue is performed, writing that “it serves the text and the film well in that it refuses to take both too seriously” (192).

In her 2019 book Screening Gender in Shakespeare’s Comedies, Magdalena Cieslak devoted nearly thirty pages (69–98) to the Branagh film, often comparing it to the play itself and drawing on comments from many other critics. She discussed such matters as its Japanese setting, its use of both British and American actors (70), its avoidance of unsettling implications (including those involving “gender and sexuality” [71]), and its generally romantic heterosexuality (71–72). She surveyed issues of gender and cross-dressing in both Renaissance England and Japanese culture (72–73), thought the film “simplifies too much of the play’s crucial complexities around assuming and performing gender roles” (75), described Howard’s Rosalind/Ganymede performance as “stereotypically feminine” (76), and compared and contrasted Branagh’s film with Christine Edzard’s earlier production (76–77). Finding various flaws in Branagh’s treatment of gender (77), she thought his depiction of the relationship between Rosalind and Celia “depart[ed] from the play’s subversive potential” (84), partly by presenting it as merely a friendship. According to Cieslak, Branagh diminished the good duke’s authority by having Rosalind ignore him in the forest, although she admired the way his disabled authority was presented as “benign, unimposing, and unnecessary on the daughter’s way to love” (87).

This film, she thought, presented marriage not as a powerful social institution but as a personal romantic outcome (87), adding that “[a]lthough happiness is clearly achieved through normative solutions and restoration of the initial Order of Things, Branagh does not present this utopian vision as being ideological or systematic. Instead, the wedding sequence focuses on particular characters finding their own individual fulfillments and joys” (89). Despite noting that the epilogue “neatly translates metatheater to metacinema” (90), she also found the conclusion variously problematic (91). Cieslak considered both the film’s pastoralism and its treatment of Japanese culture beholden to a “nostalgic ideal” (94), negatively concluding that “Branagh’s film, avoiding the play’s complex portrayal of gender, sexuality, desire, and hierarchy, offers the viewer … an entertaining feel-good comedy. Its games and pretenses are as superficial and inconsequential as the film’s use of Japanese setting and culture, never moving beyond the purely decorative and pleasing” (95).

2009 Shakespeare’s Globe Production

This filmed staging at London’s Shakespeare’s Globe theater was directed by Thea Sharrock and starred Naomi Frederick as Rosalind; Laura Rogers as Celia; Dominic Rowan as Touchstone; Tim McMullan as Jaques; and Jack Laskey as Orlando.

Discussing this performance in his 2013 book Small-Screen Shakespeare (120–21), Peter Cochran praised the presence of a live audience; noted the production’s emphasis on movement; admired how the stage was used but wished there were leafy trees in Arden; and considered this Orlando insufficiently gullible (120). He found some fault with this staging’s Touchstone and Hymen but admired its Jaques while noting various cuts and concluding by commenting on “[s]ome good moments” and “some strange decisions” (121).

Bibliography