1955 Olivier Production

Directed by Laurence Olivier and starring Olivier in the title role, this production also featured Cedric Hardwicke as King Edward IV; Nicholas Hannen as Archbishop; Ralph Richardson as Duke of Buckingham; John Gielgud as George, Duke of Clarence; Mary Kerridge as Queen Elizabeth; Pamela Brown as Jane Shore; Paul Huson as Edward, Prince of Wales; and Claire Bloom as the Lady Anne.

In an essay from 1956 titled “Shakespeare Through the Camera’s Eye: III,” Alice Griffin called this film clear if not subtle; said it maintains a particular “point of view” and presents a clear “message”; and considered all the characters “brilliantly depicted” (235). She considered this Richard less challenging than Hamlet but, partly for that reason, “the finest of Olivier’s Shakespearian film portrayals,” calling him “a villain conceived in human proportions, a man heroic in stature and with brilliant endowments which he turns to evil ends,” so that, “[w]hile fearing and hating Olivier’s Richard, one cannot but admire” what she worried might be perhaps too sympathetic a portrayal. She thought that Olivier definitely “overdoes the humor, but his human rather than beast-like Richard is plausible, and it is an interpretation fitting to the intimate medium of the screen, for a superhuman villain with all stops out would be ridiculous and unbelievable in the motion picture, which brings the viewer eye to eye with the character” (236). According to Griffin, “Possibly Olivier’s greatest contribution to the role is his subtlety and sensitivity, and here the close-up is of great aid,” allowing us to see into Richard’s eyes and note the shifts in his moods. She thought that “[i]n the battle scenes he displays true heroism; yet in his death throes (and these are excessive) he is again the ugly boar, a contrast to the stalwart Richmond” (237).

Constance A. Brown, in an essay from 1967 titled “Olivier’s Richard III: A Re-Evaluation,” wrote that this movie “offers as much as can reasonably be expected of a film,” particularly in its “intricate, subtle, coolly ironic plunge into one of those recesses of human nature” we usually avoid confronting. She thought that in “its rather stylized way, Richard is an extraordinarily honest film” (23) and found in our responses to the central character a “delicate ironic balance … between condemning Richard as a tyrant and loving him for it, which reflects the ambivalence of the human attitude toward tyrants and, by extension, the intrinsic ambivalence of tyrants themselves.” As for Olivier, Brown wrote that the “only ideal [he] seems committed to is telling the truth, and telling it as excellently as possible” (32).

In his 1971 book Shakespeare and the Film, Roger Manvell suggested that the “continuous emphasis of the production is on betrayal—betrayal of the innocent and of conspiratorial supporters alike,” in which all the persons betrayed have “at least the appearance of helplessness.” According to Manvell, after Richard has been crowned as king, “he abandons any further pretence of goodwill or even ironic humour” (50). Otherwise, Manvell did not offer much general discussion of this play.

Jack Jorgens, in his 1977 volume Shakespeare on Film, wrote that, “[l]ike Shakespeare, Olivier nods toward the ‘human’ Richard. He hints at the deep-seated feelings of neglect since childhood, the envy of the pretty, well-formed Princes, the masochist’s need for punishment, [and] the insatiable lust for power which drives him to destruction,” adding that “Olivier lends several authentic touches to Richard’s hatred of romance, music, dancing, fertility, and harmony, which places Richard among Shakespeare’s other unfestive outsiders—Malvolio, Shylock, and Iago.” But “the real emphasis,” Jorgens continued, “is upon Richard the virtuoso role-player” (142) who is physically “very striking—long sharp nose, piercing eyes, jet black hair with spears of it cutting into his brow, a gloved claw of a hand. He is good-looking,” Jorgens said, “having a Byronic attractiveness, limp and all, and is extremely mobile compared to the static characters around him both at court and in battle. His list to one side often makes him the most pronounced diagonal in the frame; the camera shows him askew in a world in which he does not belong”—an actor playing a “double performance (one for the other characters, one for us).” Jorgens thought that “Olivier also stresses Richard’s power by having him look down on his victims from heights when they are unaware of his presence, and the camera consistently takes his point of view. His entrances are always calculated and spectacular, and his costumes either boldly declare his evil nature (Satanic blood red or funereal black) or parody ‘high fashion’ by juxtaposing it with his own deformity” (143). According to Jorgen, “[i]f the lesser characters have any depth, it is forced on them by Richard, for, dramatically speaking, he is the Prime Mover,” so that his henchmen “positively glow when in his service—being evil moons to his evil sun.” Jorgens wrote that “[s]tylistically, Olivier’s elegant, decorative Richard III resembles his Henry V. We find … the same tableau effects, emblems, and fairytale nearness (it must be the cleanest movie ever made—everything is freshly painted and even the sheets in Clarence’s cell are spotless white and carefully pressed),” and “the same vivid colors and rich dark costumes … make the chief characters stand out against stylized, pastel settings.” Jorgens considered the imagery “simple but effective,” as when a young prince plays on the throne in the background while Richard conspires against him in the foreground. No wonder, according to Jorgens, that this movie “properly remains one of the most admired and popular of Shakespeare films” (147).

Discussing this adaptation in his 1988 book Filming Shakespeare’s Plays (65–82), Anthony Davies discussed how the film opened; commented on “the narrative authority of the camera” (68); noted the many “speeches which Richard directly addresses to the camera” (69); suggested the audience’s “complicity in Richard’s voyeurism” (70); and noted the ways characters are placed on screen (71). He pointed to “the recurrence of a symmetrical composition” (94); the use of a “tapestry effect” (95); a “spatial strategy which gives [the film] a sustained theatrical stamp” (76); its use of “motifs which link shots and localities” (76); its use of “shadow effects” (78); its “suggestion that Richard is a grotesque parody of Henry V” (79); and its use of “seasonal shifts” (80–81).

Discussing the film in his 1989 overview of performances of the play (58–64), Hugh Richmond noted its use of “close-ups”; the “intimacy and delicacy of inflection” they help create; and the “dextrous alternation of poetic textures [that] allowed Olivier to display his remarkably full vocal range, from the intimate confidences … to the shouted aggression of vehement ambition.” Richmond praised the “dexterity of the camera-work in matching its shifting perspectives to this oscillation of feeling and of the resulting vocal levels” and admired the way the “unitary studio set which covers the film’s London scenes also captures much of the fluidity and facility in scene-changing of the permanent Elizabethan stage” (59), but he thought that Olivier’s “treatment of the women’s roles generally is also a betrayal of Shakespeare’s sympathetic investigation of their situation. The powerful indictment of Richard by Queen Elizabeth after the murder of her children is dropped, with all its catalogue of Richard’s crimes which prepares us to accept his downfall,” while Richard’s “outrageous” courtship of Anne brings it “dangerously near to melodrama, not to say farce”—an effect Olivier tries to forestall by “break[ing] the scene into two parts, allowing the widow more time to accept [the] improbable conjunction.” But Richmond found the “ultimate effect of this … more dislocating than clarifying, and Olivier does not help its plausibility by truncating the seduction and abandoning its moral dimensions in the subtle temptation of Anne to enjoy her power to damn and then redeem her admirer.” Thus, for Richmond, “[i]nstead of falling to so flattering an interpretation, Anne emerges as pathologically susceptible to Richard’s monstrosity from the start” (60). He thought that a “similar loss of psychological subtlety and of moral refinement characterises most of the other cuts in the play made for the film. The most typical of these is the editing-out of the bizarre but highly significant debate between Clarence’s murderers over the sleeping duke,” with such change suggesting that “Olivier has almost no theological interest and only a stage-manager’s understanding of ritual” and Elizabethan religious thought. Therefore, although “the coronations and processions may give a sumptuous texture to the film’s visual impressions, they contribute little to our understanding of the moral and political forces destroying the Yorkist family” (61). Generally, however, Richmond admired the film. He noted, for instance, its “potent … use of shadows in association with Richard” (62) and thought that “despite [various] limitations, Olivier’s interpretation of the role of Richard III remains the measure of all subsequent performances, which thus tell us much about Olivier and our own tastes, as well as of the potentialities of Shakespeare’s script” (64).

In his 1991 book Still in Movement, Lorne Buchman wrote that by uniting “language and action, Olivier features the power of Richard’s greatest weapon—words. The filmmaker demonstrates that Richard controls the space of the drama, that to describe is to enact, and that a parallel exists between Richard and his world and a playwright and the scene. Interestingly,” Buchman noted, “Olivier excises the character of Margaret, and with her go the curses that help to structure Shakespeare’s play—she serves in the original as a counterpart to Richard, as one whose words carry with them a force of enactment” similar to Richard’s (93). Buchman noted the film’s emphasis on “close-ups, quick cuts, high- and low-angle shots (which [Olivier] uses especially in the scene immediately after Richard is crowned), special effects (the translucent ghosts of Act 5, scene 3)” as well as the contrast between these active strategies and the various “theatrical set pieces, long shots, stage tableaux, windows, doors, and archways, all of which give the mise-en-scene a theatrical feel,” so that the “filmmaker emphasizes the theatricality of his film through the new spatial relationships he builds, relationships possible only in the cinema” (97–98).

Commenting on this film in an essay from 1994 titled “The English History Play on Screen,” Michael Manheim saw Olivier’s Richard as a dark parody of the Chorus in Olivier’s Henry V (125–26). He thought that repeated shots from an overhead corridor emphasized this resemblance; compared and contrasted Olivier’s Henry and his Richard in other ways; and considered them both Machiavellian manipulators, even in their wooing scenes. He thought the film about Richard was indebted to “traditional nineteenth-century melodrama, with menacing music, … snide asides, and lengthening shadows of the villain” (128) and reiterated that “both Olivier’s Richard III and his Henry V—an obvious villain and an apparent hero—closely resemble each other” (128).

Herbert R. Coursen, in his 1999 book Shakespeare: The Two Traditions, called this Richard III “a brisk and vivid film that stands up well on re-viewing,” saying it “incorporates more of the ambiguous politics of the play than some believed it did at the time, and it even raises the issue of the destiny of Richard’s soul by showing us that spasmodic final effort to look upon the cross.” He noted that the “film ends where it began, with a crown hanging in the air” (140).

Also in 1999, Kenneth Rothwell, in his overview of a century of Shakespeare films, mentioned Olivier’s use of Technicolor and a “spectacular widescreen process known as VistaVision” while also reporting that “the movie was transmitted on North American television on the afternoon of March 11, 1956 by 146 NBC stations in 45 states on the same day that it was released in movie theatres,” meaning that most of its supposed 25 million original viewers first saw it in black-and-white (62). Rothwell called it a “remarkable movie, which lacks the cinematic complexity of Henry V but deserves a separate trophy for sustained acting brilliance” from an “outstanding cast.” Commenting that the “royal crown of England functions … [here] as Olivier’s framing device, appearing in the beginning and then at key stages during the movie” (63), he also mentioned the “iterative shadows providing visible evidence of Richard’s poisonous miasma tall on the walls, on the floors, and even on the Lady Anne’s white gown.” According to Rothwell, “In Shakespeare s second longest play. and arguably the most sprawling, the character of Richard … must hold center stage. Without his dynamism, the audience would soon be coughing, shuttling, and wriggling,” but “Olivier plays the role brilliantly” (64), with his “magical cadences and rhythms … captur[ing] the seriocomical villainy that allows Richard to say the vilest things with a touch of wit, and that in asides to the audience may make him seem downright likeable, scoundrel that he is.” Rothwell thought that Olivier managed to convey “the grandeur of evil” and that the “editing further energizes Richard’s swift judgments with segues and quick cuts” that stress is dynamism as well (66).

Christopher Andrews, in an essay from 2000 titled “Richard III on Film: The Subversion of the Viewer,” discussed the film’s manipulation of the audience, so that we first find ourselves attracted to Richard until we later realize how he has helped compromise our own morals. In another essay from 2000—“Cutting Women Down to Size in the Olivier and Loncraine Films of Richard III”—Marliss C. Desens argued that both the Olivier and Loncraine films cut many lines the plays give to women (260–62) and that both entirely cut Queen Margaret’s role (262). Desens compared and contrasted the ways the two productions deal with female characters, arguing that women’s powers (but also sometimes their flaws) are thereby diminished (268). She asserted that whereas Olivier emphasized the “stylized suffering of women,” Loncraine’s presentation of women was part of “the 1990s post-feminist backlash” (299).

Discussing the Olivier film in his book from 2000 titled Shakespeare on Screen (112–13), Daniel Rosenthal wrote that “Olivier shuns elaborate camerawork, allowing static scenes to run for as much as ten minutes, fuelled by the brilliance of script and cast. There is,” Rosenthal asserted, “not a dull moment. Stressing the darkness in Richard’s soul, Olivier is repeatedly shown as a humped shadow, limping across the floor,” knowing that “his extraordinary vocal delivery would still cast a spell. He overemphasizes odd syllables, often at close to shrieking pitch. He suddenly accelerates through the last few words of a sentence—a tactic he strengthens by following moments of stillness with abrupt surges of movement” (112). Praising the performances of many of the other actors, especially the actress silently playing Jane Shore, Rosenthal wrote that only “in the film’s set-piece finale does Olivier’s directing disappoint. Although no amount of cinematic flair could have made the Battle of Bosworth Field equal the victory-against-impossible-odds impact of Henry V’s Agincourt sequence, Olivier delivers a disappointingly muddled affray” (112). Meanwhile, Douglas Brode, in his 2000 book Shakespeare in the Movies, saw in Olivier’s Richard III “the influence of Alfred Hitchcock, who fifteen years earlier awarded the young actor his first choice film role in Rebecca. For Hitch,” Brode observed, “good and evil were never opposing extremes; they always coexisted within a single human frame. That was Olivier’s approach here,” and eventually a defeated Richard “is reduced to Everyman—a lesson in humility learned too late” (34).

Michael Anderegg, in his 2004 book Cinematic Shakespeare (102–6), wrote of this film that if “Richard continually bustles, moving quickly from place to place, from room to room, from court to tower and back, other characters seem frozen into place, posed as on a tapestry or in a waxworks display.” He noted that the “camera is almost constantly in movement, reframing the action in ways that pointedly stress the relationships among the various characters, isolating factions and selecting out temporary alliances as they form and re-form in the course of the scene.” But Anderegg also suggested that Olivier was “participating in the ‘long-take’ style of directors like William Wyler” and various others, including Orson Welles (106).

Anthony Davies, describing his own 2005 essay (“Richard III: The Films of Olivier and Loncraine/ McKellen”) in an end-of-the-book abstract, wrote that his article was “essentially a critique of the Loncraine/ McKellen film of Richard III.” Noting that “[b]oth films substantially cut texts,” Davies argued that “the cinematic devices used in the Loncraine/McKellen film—the historical period transposition to the 1930s, the presentation of Richard and the system of which he is a part as military-fascist, the agile inclusion of allusions to other films, and the stripping of the text in the interests of narrative pace and simplification—make for cinema that is clever rather than exploratory.” He thought that “[w]hile McKellen’s Richard is essentially … [concerned with] the material, physical pain of existence, Olivier’s characterisation incorporates an ultimate awareness of the supernatural,” thereby “reach[ing] with more effect for the cinematic integration of the play’s text.”

Kevin De Ornellas, in an essay from 2005 (“‘Thou Elvish-marked, Abortive, Rooting Hog’: Images of the Boar in Filmed Richard IIIs”) he described himself in an end-of-the-book abstract, noted that “Richard is compared to swine several times in Richard III. The trope of the boar is a vital association which film directors have seized on engagingly and seriously. … In Laurence Olivier’s 1955 film version of Richard III, the King brings Catesby into his confidence. Catesby’s seduction by Richard is connoted by his tight framing underneath a boar-emblemed flag: he is overwhelmed by the heavy boar that now characterises his allegiance to Richard.”

In an end-of-the-book abstract for her essay from 2005 titled “‘But Did’st Thou See Them Dead?’: Performing Death in Screen Adaptations of Richard III,” Sarah Hatchuel wrote that “in fictional productions, whether theatrical or cinematic, death is always played by a paradoxical, oxymoronic living corpse. After surveying the differences between staged death and cinematic death, I examine the performance of King Richard’s death in screen versions of Richard III. The films by Frank R. Benson (1911), James Keane (1912), Laurence Olivier (1955), Richard Loncraine (1995) and A1 Pacino (1996) insist on an analogy with the theatre. The histrionic character of Richard dies a histrionic death: his death is over-played, or its illusion is being openly disclosed or comically diverted.”

Russell Jackson, in an end-of-the-book abstract of his essay from 2005 titled “Olivier’s Film of Richard III: A Legend of the Crown—Among Other Stories,” examined this film partly in the context of the British popular culture of its day; the 1952 film of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II; the British film industry; and Olivier’s own life and marriage.

Lucy Munro, in an end-of-the-book abstract of her 2005 essay titled “‘Little Apes and Tender Babes’: Children in Three Film Versions of Richard III,” examined the ways the princes are presented in films directed by “Frank R. Benson (1911), Laurence Olivier (1955) and Richard Loncraine (1995)” and argued that “[t]hrough their different treatment of issues such as textual adaptation, mise-en-scene and casting, the films engage with theatrical tradition, with film tradition, and with early modern, modern and postmodern concerns about the nature of children and their relationship with adult tragedy and tyranny.”

Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin, in an end-of-the-book abstract of her article from 2005 titled “Evil Tongues in Richard III on Screen,” compared and contrasted the way Olivier and Loncraine deal with the issue of evil speech, suggesting that they downplay the most notorious uses of such speech in order to focus instead on slander and rumor.

Paul Prescott, in his 2006 book on Shakespeare’s play (142–45), wrote that in Olivier’s film a “cavalier attitude to the textual integrity of Richard III is evident throughout, whether in the highly creative inter-splicings and rearrangements of scene sections” or in other ways (143) and commented that the “mise-en-scène … centres on a large chamber defined only by the throne and the bodies within it. Windows and doors allow the camera —usually under Richard’s effective direction—to peep in and out of this symbolic space. The casting of Richard’s shadow forms another motif, as do the musical signatures and variations of William Walton’s score. Situations such as Clarence’s death or most notably the wooing of Anne are decompressed and spread out over two scenes in the interests of suspense and psychological plausibility” (144). But he thought that ultimately “it is the image and the sound of Olivier’s performance that continues to cast its spell” (145)—an opinion shared by Samuel Crowl in his 2008 Norton Guide (27–28, 146–47), who called Olivier ideal for the role and discussed his frequent direct address to the camera (27) while explaining how Olivier uses this technique effectively (28).

In his 2007 book Studying Shakespeare on Film (152–58), Maurice Hindle discussed various features of Olivier’s style; noted the similarities of the film’s beginning and ending; saw the camera as a probing narrator; found a balance of theater and film in this work; and observed its emphasis on Olivier as an actor (153). Hindle commented on such matters as Olivier’s efforts to provide a backstory to the plot; his use of crown imagery in the film’s opening (153); and his use of the shot/reverse shot method and the strategy of having Olivier stare directly at us (154). According to Hindle, this Richard often breaks through the “fourth wall” and treats the audience as if we are a listening character, while Olivier the director slows down Richard’s courtship of Anne (155); makes effective use of shadows, including to imply “sexual conquest” (155–56); and makes vivid, sometimes “chilling” use of Walton’s music (156–57). Noting that Olivier often makes us share Richard’s perspective and also effectively uses different kinds of shots (such as deep-focus, wide focus, and close-ups [157]), Hindle also pointed to Richard’s “strangely attractive combination of the demonic and the witty.” He commented that although Richard, in the play, is killed by merely one man, in Olivier’s film he is “somewhat comically” mobbed (158).

Anthony Guneratne, in his 2008 book Shakespeare, Film Studies, and the Visual Cultures of Modernity (54–56), discussed Olivier’s film in terms of its technological innovations; rapid speech delivery (54); use of “panoramic compositions”; close-ups reserved for “revelations of true character” (55); “various cuts and retentions; emphasis on shadows overpowering bright colors” (55); and “vivid, painterly quality of the images” (56).

In another book from 2008—Filming Shakespeare, from Metacinema to Metatheatre—Agnieszka Rasmus defended the ways Olivier addresses the camera, sometimes from a great distance (70–71); said his Richard was so influential that it intimidated later actors (71); noted the film’s emphasis on doors and windows; and commented that Richard is almost a director of the other characters (82–83).

Peter Cochran, writing in his 2013 book Small-Screen Shakespeare (37–39), suggested that Richard’s death in this film was modeled on a nineteenth-century performance; noted that Olivier included a patriotic statement at the beginning; praised the film’s use of color; but found the conclusion a bit too optimistic (37–38). He reported that Olivier added lines not present in Shakespeare’s play; that he altered the play’s structure; and that Olivier offers two—not one—scenes in which the queen spits on Richard. Cochran considered Richard’s artificial nose overdone and called the limp “inconsistent” but did admire Olivier’s delivery of his lines (39).

In his 2014 book Shakespeare and the English-Speaking Cinema (24–27), Russell Jackson commented on such topics as the influence of medieval art (24); the details of the opening scene (24–25); and the differences between this film and Olivier’s Henry V (24–25). While in his 2016 survey of a century of Shakespeare films (63–64), Peter E. S. Babiak wrote that Olivier’s Richard III emphasizes cinematic rather than theatrical techniques (63–64) and discussed its use of various kinds of shots (64). Babiak said that Richard behaves both as an actor and a director (64) and that his “decline is emblematized by his loss of control” of the film (65).

Jennifer Barnes, in her 2017 book Shakespearean Star: Laurence Olivier and National Cinema (82–116), discussed the film in light of Olivier’s career, the status of the British film industry at the time the film was made, and the place of the film in various other contexts of its era. She explored such matters as the role of Alexander Korda in the film industry of this era; the relevance of King Richard III to Olivier’s thoughts about his own life and career (especially in the king’s rapid rise and sudden fall) and the various ways Olivier identified with the king; the film’s emphasis on crown imagery; and its relationships with previous historical stagings and previous historical performances of the royal role. Barnes wrote that “[a]s with Henry V, … the symbolism of Olivier’s body, visually and culturally coded with signifiers of the Shakespearean past and present, is central to meaning-making in Richard III” (101). Focusing on such scenes as the opening, Richard’s courtship of Anne, the leap down from the bell rope, the Battle of Bosworth Field, and the exaggerated depiction of Richard’s death, she reported Olivier’s own discussions of his performance and performance strategies and discussed cuts to the script; debts to Western films; and the ways Walton’s score is used.

In her 2021 book Shakespearean Drama, Disability, and the Filmic Stare, Grace McCarthy wrote that “Olivier presents … a full, humanized integration of Richard’s impairments into the character, a technique that would be abandoned in later film adaptations. Olivier plays down the visibility of Richard’s limp, withered arm, and hunchback; the arm and hunch are small, and the limp could, at times, be mistaken for a cocky swagger.” She felt that for “Olivier, however, a minimalist approach to the visibility of the impairments works to consistently make them a visible part of Richard. Olivier composes his scenes in a consistent pattern of wide shots and medium close-ups and two shots. As a result, the limp and hunch are almost always in frame.” Thus, by “leaving the impairments in frame but minimizing their visual impact, the slightly canted framing is subtly highlighted, giving shots and scenes an uneasy feeling without pulling focus away from Richard’s emotional arc or using the impairments as a quick and simple explanation for the angst. By allowing the impairments to be present but not overwhelming, the moments in which Richard does interact with his own impairments are stronger” (46). According to McCarthy, “by allowing Richard’s disability to be a property of (primarily) the mise-en-scène, the disability is one aspect of Richard, rather than the entirety of Richard or the narrative. Olivier’s Richard has moments of traditional martial masculinity unencumbered by his physical body, a romantic relationship from which he does not shy away, and a complex, nuanced relationship with his impairments.” Therefore “Olivier struck a unique balance with Richard and Richard’s impairments, one that did not survive in future film adaptations of Richard III” (49).

1960 Age of Kings Production

An Age of Kings was a 1960 British television miniseries based on all of Shakespeare’s history plays. Two episodes—“The Dangerous Brother” and “A Boar Hunt”—focused on Richard III and starred Paul Daneman as Richard; Patrick Garland as George, Duke of Clarence; Jill Dixon as Lady Anne; Edgar Wreford as Duke of Buckingham; Kenneth Farrington as Earl Rivers; and Leon Shepperdson as Lord Grey. For more on the entire series, see An Age of Kings.

Peter Cochran, in his 2013 book Small-Screen Shakespeare, commented on this version of Richard III (88–89), praised the production’s “pace, variety, and sick humour” and called Paul Daneman “the funniest of all the screen Richards” (88).

1965 Wars of the Roses Production

In 1965, as part of an ongoing televised series of Shakespeare’s history plays titled Wars of the Roses, a version of Richard III appeared. Among others, it starred Ian Holm as Richard; Derek Waring as Rivers; William Squire as Buckingham; Charles Thomas as Catesby; and Peggy Ashcroft as Margaret. For more discussion of the entire series, see Wars of the Roses.

In his 2013 book Small-Screen Shakespeare (89–90), Peter Cochran admired this production’s set and lighting; called Ian Holm an attractive Richard and Richard himself “a calm psychopath” (89); praised the way Hastings is arrested here; and considered this version’s Richmond especially well performed (90).

1983 BBC Production

Directed by Jane Howell, this adaptation starred Michael Byrne as Duke of Buckingham; Ron Cook as Richard III; Rowena Cooper as Queen Elizabeth; Brian Deacon as Earl of Richmond; Julia Foster as Queen Margaret; Paul Jesson as George, Duke of Clarence; and Zoë Wanamaker as Lady Anne.

Henry Fenwick, in his essay on “The Production” for the booklet the BBC published to accompany the first broadcast of the play, noted that this production treated the drama—and its famous opening speech—as the fourth work in a tetralogy involving the three Henry VI dramas. This kind of focus, according to director Jane Howell (who also directed the preceding Henry VI trilogy), makes it easier to see why Richard has developed as he has: he is not a mere simple villain but a product of his times (20). This production keeps most of the references to the Henry VI histories—references often cut from standalone productions of Richard III. Margaret’s speeches, often cut, are retained here, and much of Richard’s vicious behavior in this play can now be seen as reflecting issues raised in the first three dramas (20–21). Julia Foster, playing Margaret, noted that one of her speeches helps to emphasize the moral flaws of the other characters besides Richard. Fenwick himself found a “disturbing, slightly shocking quality” in Foster’s performance, while Foster disputed the common view of Margaret as crazy, calling her instead one of the play’s most insightful characters. While Fenwick called Margaret often “an appalling woman, bloody and ruthless,” Foster emphasized her passion and ambition, seeing her mainly as a symbolic rather than strictly realistic character—someone bent on revenge rather than exhibiting complex emotions (21–22). Like many other actors Howell hired, Foster had little previous experience playing Shakespeare but came to appreciate the importance of his verse and the music it creates (22). In fact, David Snodin, the script editor, studied the verse and its sudden new sophistication in this play (22–23). Howell emphasized the hypocrisy and deceitfulness of many of the play’s characters. She stressed the symbolic use of doors in this production, especially after the arrival of Richmond, who is somewhat of a breath of fresh air. Oliver Bayldon, the set designer, also stressed the significance of doors as well as netting and a somewhat more colorful set to help enhance the play’s comedy and to allude to some of the colors in earlier plays from the tetralogy. For example, contrasts in design of banners also help stress the contrasts between Richard and Richmond (21–22). John Peacock, the costume designer, noted that the armor used in this Richard III looks more realistic than the armor used earlier in the tetralogy, while clothing here was often designed to resemble three-piece suits with pockets capable of hiding threats (24–25). Lighting designer Sam Barclay said that he wanted to emphasize contrasts in lighting in this play, with dark used to stress conspiracies; he also decided to eliminate some colors, stress allusions to the sun, and meaningfully employ shadows. He tried to use light and/or darkness or shadows appropriately for each character, as when Richmond is bathed in sunlight near the end (25–26). Fenwick discussed the final pile of bodies—“a reverse Pietà”—and how fake body parts (a hump, an arm, etc.) were created so that Richard could appear almost naked in the piled-up corpses. Makeup artists also had to deal with how to make characters (especially Margaret) seem to age and how to use actors more than once in different roles. Howell compared the play to a nightmare, with many returning faces from the Henry VI productions (26–27). She noted that in this play, seeing people killed is less common than seeing them taken away, creating a different kind of fear. Only Richard is shown dying—an elaborate death but one that, because he is technically the king, creates fear in the men opposing him because they are technically rebels. The final fight is the last stage in an evolution of weapons throughout the tetralogy, with spears suggesting the rebels’ fear of Richard and his ball and chain the only weapon he can use effectively against so many opponents. They fear him as they might fear a supernatural fiend (27–28). Ron Cook, playing Richard, stressed the complexities of playing a character without a conscience, a Faustian figure and antichrist who is also comical and whose appeal to audiences implicates us in his evil. Cook stressed his determination to avoid being too influenced by Sir Laurence Olivier’s filmed performance. He saw the play as the end of a process of national division so that eventually even Richard is spiritually divided. Howell stressed this national focus rather than any exclusive focus on Richard (29–30).

J. C. Bulman and H. R. Coursen, in their helpful 1988 critical anthology Shakespeare on Television, in this case selected reviews covering all three of the Henry VI plays plus Richard III (the so-called First Tetralogy) rather than any reviews focusing simply on Richard III in isolation. After all, the four plays were broadcast as a sequence, and this is how most reviewers seem to have treated them. Passing comments on the final play praised the actors, especially Julia Foster (292); noted the realistic interiors (293); and called Ron Cook’s Richard “an amorally intelligent urchin … who can feign sympathy with complete conviction” (294). But the reviewer who made this last comment also called this Richard “not vividly ironical” and not presented with much psychological depth. He said the play featuring Richard is “anticlimactically sombre” and called Cook’s acting “not a virtuoso performance” but rather “a legitimate interpretation.” This critic called Julia Foster “truly formidable,” especially when we last see her “keening” atop a pile of dead bodies. (294).

Assessing the BBC production in his 1989 overview of performances of the play (89–105), Hugh Richmond discussed the added ending—with the pile of corpses—by remarking that “Howell deliberately wanted to repudiate the play’s final hopefulness as presented by Shakespeare, and decided to do so as memorably as possible.” But Richmond found “a certain wilfulness in [this] laborious invalidation of the virtues of the Tudor succession,” calling the pile of bodies a “new gory epilogue to Shakespeare’s script” (95) and considering “Howell’s version of the tetralogy … thus not fully true to Shakespeare’s sceptical review of the complex balance of social forces working against a stable society. Rather her version of the play is governed by the same kind of didacticism” of the rather unsophisticated and propagandistic medieval plays that preceded Shakespeare’s, saying their “hortatory conviction was something which Shakespeare’s subtler awareness had transcended” (96). Howell, in other words, wanted to make a point, whereas Shakespeare sought real complexity, particularly in the characterization. Richmond thought Howell presented the characters “as simply good or evil,” thus “concealing the richness of Shakespeare’s characterization” (98). On the other hand, Richmond credited Howell with enhancing “the importance of the women’s roles” by giving them “more emotional weight, authority, and authenticity than is usually accorded.” He also admired her for offering a similar “gain in authenticity … in the male roles surrounding Richard,” particularly those of Catesby, Ratcliffe, and Buckingham, whose malignity is enhanced by close-ups and emphasized, through contrast, by the restraint of Cook’s own performance. But he thought that the “histrionic high-notes of Clarence’s execution scene fall surprisingly flat,” and he also considered the BBC Richard III both less rhetorical and less subtle than the play itself (102). He admired, however, “the strength of the unforced and unpretentious scenes of ordinary human life and suffering” and in general ended on a positive note (103). Meanwhile, Susan Willis, in her 1991 book about the BBC series in general, praised in passing “the dream sequence before the Battle of Bosworth” in this production (183–84).

In an essay from 2000 titled “Richard III on Film: The Subversion of the Viewer,” Christopher Andrews suggested that even when “Cook takes the lives of the young Princes we can almost identify with his fear for preserving his rule.” Likewise, “On the battlefield on the eve of his death he is visibly frightened, a fear which invites us back into our [earlier somewhat sympathetic] relationship with him. Even the gratuitous slaughter of Richard,” according to Andrews, “appeals to our emotions. He fights death off valiantly, and when he does eventually yield it is with multiple spears jutting from his body like lifeless tentacles. Is it a coincidence that the initial blow comes from behind? That when he finally dies it is upon his knees in a position of prayer? The combination of these factors … seem[s] to suggest that, despite his treachery and villainy, Cook’s Richard may deserve our sympathies after all” (89).

Kevin De Ornellas, in an end-of-the book abstract of his essay from 2005 (“‘Thou Elvish-marked, Abortive, Rooting Hog’: Images of the Boar in Filmed Richard IIIs”), he described himself in an end-of-the-book abstract, noted that “Richard is compared to swine several times in Richard III. The trope of the boar is a vital association which film directors have seized on engagingly and seriously. … In the 1983, Jane Howell-directed, BBC version of Richard III, Richard is surrounded by boar-decorated paraphernalia. When he is killed, the boar image on his shield is pointedly impaled too.”

Michael Hattaway, in his end-of-the book abstract of his 2005 article “Varieties of Englishness: Richard III on Film,” compared and contrasted “the mise-en-scene of the films by Olivier [and] Loncraine.” He thought that the “Olivier is contextualised with reference to the conventions of Hollywood Shakespeare films of the pre-war era and to the Coronation of Elizabeth II which took place two years before the film’s release.”

Describing her own 2005 essay (“Richard III as a Sequel: The BBC Telefilm Revisited”) in a back-of-the-book abstract, Michèle Willems wrote that because Howell’s film was “[c]onceived as the last play of a quartet, this Richard stands apart from most screen and even stage representations of the play. Howell’s expressionistic style (sometimes described as Brechtian) is also completely at odds with the naturalism which had come to be regarded as the BBC’s house style.” Willems explored “the specificity of Howell’s screen realisation, suggesting that her unusual televisual strategies somehow recreate the original conditions of the play’s production, thus bridging the gap between the Globe spectator and the twentieth-century viewer.” Willems concluded: “By mixing theatrical codes (such as a single emblematic set or doubling) with the advantages which television can offer (filming in close-up or fast editing), Howell reduces the tension between words and visuals and manages to make a difficult text accessible to a large public.”

Paul Prescott, in his 2006 book on the play (145–48), noted the use, in the BBC production, of “a single, permanent set: a consciously crude wooden structure of split levels, ramps, exposed supports and swinging doors” for which the “governing metaphor was that of the children’s playground” (146). He reported that although Howell cut “nearly nothing,” the fact that this Richard III was part of a four-play “diminished” (perhaps appropriately) Richard’s character, adding that “Ron Cook’s Richard is child-like, plausible and understated: the histrionicism of the part is reined in to suit the prevailing gloom of Richard III when played as conclusion to an epic of internecine suffering” (147). He wrote that the “camera work is unobtrusive,” saying Howell “is adept at creating sustained single-camera sequences in which the composition is subtly tweaked and the overall effect is one of fluency” (147).

Commenting on the BBC production in his 2013 book Small-Screen Shakespeare (91–92), Peter Cochran found this Richard uncharismatic, unwitty, unfrightening, unironic, unhumorous, and lacking in charm (91), but Cochran did admire particular scenes, such as Clarence’s murder (91) and the one involving the princes and their uncles (92), although he generally considered the production sluggish and monotonous, with an amateurish set and a stultifying final effect (92).

1990 English Shakespeare Company Production

In the late 1980s and early 1990s the English Shakespeare Company staged and then filmed a series of Shakespeare’s history plays titled The Wars of the Roses (not to be confused with the BBC series from the early 1960s titled, simply, Wars of the Roses). The episode based on Richard III was broadcast in 1991 and starred, among others, Charles Dale as Earl of Richmond; John Darrell as Lord Rivers; John Dougall as Duke of Clarence; Andrew Jarvis as King Richard III; Ann Penfold as Queen Elizabeth; Michael Pennington as Duke of Buckingham; Francesca Ryan as Lady Anne; and June Watson as Queen Margaret.

Peter Cochran, assessing this production in his 2013 book Small-Screen Shakespeare (494-95), disliked Andrew Jarvis’s strange Gloucester (i.e. Richard) and June Watson’s odd Margaret (494). He found the production increasingly boring and also disconcerting because of the costumes used. He called it an “uneven show with an uneven central performance but well up to the standard of its English Shakespeare Company predecessors” (495).

1995 Richard Loncraine Production

This adaptation, directed by Richard Loncraine, starred Ian McKellen as Richard III; Bill Paterson as Ratcliffe; Annette Bening as Queen Elizabeth; Nigel Hawthorne as Duke of Clarence; Maggie Smith as Duchess of York; Robert Downey Jr. as Lord Rivers; Tim McInnerny as Catesby; and Dominic West as Richmond.

James N. Loehlin, in an essay from 1997 titled “Top of the World, Ma: Richard III and Cinematic Convention,” noted this Richard’s resemblance to a gangster; did not see this character primarily “in primarily political terms”; and said he “isn’t motivated by nationalism, racial ideology or a military-industrial complex, but by a lack of maternal affection.” Comparing him to Jimmy Cagney’s Cody Jarrett in White Heat, Loehlin wrote that “McKellen’s Richard is obsessed with his mother, and his criminal career is linked to a childhood rejection” by the character played in the film by Maggie Smith, who “is given a disproportionate number of lines in the screen adaptation; indeed she takes over some of the lines, and some of the qualities, of the vengeful old Queen Margaret” (not depicted in this film). In the movie, this mother’s “final, departing curse is made a pivotal scene,” and “Smith delivers it with ferocity. It gives McKellen his only moment of real vulnerability: as the Duchess departs, Richard stands, frozen” (74).

Herbert Coursen, in his 1999 book Shakespeare: The Two Traditions, called this production “a parody of Hollywood films, at times mildly amusing, most of the time simply grotesque, a shallow, meretricious shadow of the stage production. The film’s explicitness,” he thought, “robbed the play’s metaphor [comparing the Middle Ages to the British 1930s] of its suggestive bridge between unlike things.” Coursen asserted that the “1930s surface erases any medieval levels and convinces us that the surface is all there is. This is a film about the 1930s” —one that “does more than strain credulity” (141–42) and one that “erases the play’s rhythms—Richard’s brilliant step-by-step progress to the throne.” Calling it almost humorless (144), relentlessly grim, and disappointingly monotonous, Coursen rejected its efforts to compare Richard to Hitler (145) and thought McKellen tended to be “overshadowed by the [fascist] trappings,” calling Richard (unlike Hitler) “a poor manipulator of the masses” (147).

Discussing this movie in his 1999 overview of Shakespeare on film, Kenneth Rothwell wrote that Ian McKellen (who had a major hand in the production) “was determined to make Shakespeare entertaining without concessions to either hoi polloi or the elite” and noted that he played Richard “in a reptilian kind of way as certifiabl[y] diabolic.” He concluded that if, “as has been argued, McKellen and Loncraine have done nothing original with the play, they have most certainly made an original movie out of it, one of the best of its kind” (235).

In an essay from 2000 titled “Richard III on Film: The Subversion of the Viewer,” Christopher Andrews argued that of the film Richards he discussed, it is this Richard—the one to whom we are most attracted—who becomes the most despised. Even to the end of the film when he is caught unarmed by a crazed Richmond and shot in cold-blood we cheer for his justice since he has become “an object of our hatred”: “We feel violated, betrayed, and ignorant in his subversive manipulation of our emotions and feelings, and the final image of the play, unlike that of the BBC production, does nothing to resurrect him: he topples off a high scaffolding into the flames of hell below” (91–92).

Marliss C. Desens, also publishing in 2000 (in an essay titled “Cutting Women Down to Size in the Olivier and Loncraine Films of Richard III”), argued that both the Olivier and Loncraine films cut many lines the plays give to women (260–62) and that both entirely cut Queen Margaret’s role (262). Desens compared and contrasted the ways the two productions deal with female characters, maintaining that women’s powers (but also sometimes their flaws) are thereby diminished (268). She asserted that whereas Olivier emphasized the “stylized suffering of women,” Loncraine’s presentation of women was part of “the 1990s post-feminist backlash” (299).

Kathy M. Howlett, in her book from 2000 titled Framing Shakespeare on Film, credited the movie with “some breathtaking visuals” but said it had “so trivialized their meaning that the representation of Richard as fascist seems less historical than cinematic.” Arguing that the “film aligns the myths, sentimentality, horror, and spectacle of fascism with the film industry itself (129),” Howlett thought that it “takes the traumatic material of twentieth-century history, as inscribed within the well-established images of the Third Reich, and makes it into an old movie” influenced by gangster films (137). She asserted that “Richard’s monstrosity is political, not providential”; said that this secular emphasis helped explain “the erasure of the play’s ghosts who appear to judge Richard in his dreams” (139–40); claimed that “Richard is most successful in scapegoating women”; and saw the final episode “as a version of the siege of Berlin,” with “Richard’s fantastic end [as] the film’s most conspicuous homage to the gangster film genre, specifically Jimmy Cagney’s fiery end in White Heat” (146).

Daniel Rosenthal, in his book from 2000 titled Shakespeare on Screen (114–15), called this Richard III “an intelligent and dizzyingly paced adaptation” with an “evocative production design” that makes “brilliant use of some skilfully chosen locations.” He observed that this Richard’s “deformity is more discreet than Olivier’s … and so is his acting technique,” so that he speaks “in softer, less mannered tones, and creates a more human anti-hero than Olivier’s.” Rosenthal quoted a newspaper review suggesting that this Richard III was “‘a powerful contender’ for the title of most entertaining Shakespeare film ever made” (114).

In his 2000 book Shakespeare in the Movies, Douglas Brode wrote that the film “proceeds at a machine-gun pace” and suggested that “perhaps an American 1930s gangster milieu—rather than one emphasizing British fascism—might have proved more appropriate.” He found “absolutely no tragic or epic weight” and saw “Richard himself [as] more a malevolent, merry prankster than truly a dangerous authority figure.” According to Brode, “The film plays like a classy period soap opera that transforms, before our eyes, into something of a different order. Initially, the humor is Shakespearean, slyly puncturing any possibility for pretentiousness. Then it changes to high-camp histrionics, going over the top in the manner of 1960s pop-kitsch culture,” especially in its very final moments (37).

In an essay from 2000 titled “Cinema and the Kingdom of Death: Loncraine’s ‘Richard III,’” Peter S. Donaldson wrote that by “[u]sing the trope of the cinematic kingdom of death as a central feature of his visual design and of his approach to Shakespeare’s Richard III, Loncraine extends the metaphor of cinematic representation as death-in-life to a wide range of media, including telegraphy and photography, all framed by the practices of digital moviemaking.” He added that if “the film’s ‘allegorical’ narrative moves Richard from the late Middle Ages to fascist-leaning England in the 1930s, its media allegory in turn frames that placement in even more contemporary terms, those of the age of media convergence, cross-media repurposing and repackaging, and government by media celebrities.” According to Donaldson, “As the film’s final sequence transfers power from Richard to Richmond and he recognizes us at the moment he becomes an insincere politician/star, the film asks us to recognize him, and his world” (259).

Lisa Hopkins, in an essay from 2002 titled “‘How Very Like the Home Life of Our Dear Queen’: Ian McKellen’s Richard III,” discussed, in detail, the similarities between the royals presented in Shakespeare’s play, the royals presented in McKellen’s film (set in 1936), and the English royal family of the 1990s, while in an updated 2003 version of his 1997 essay titled “‘Top of the World, Ma’: Richard III and Cinematic Convention,” James N. Loehlin explored the film’s debts to Hollywood realism, praised its “energetic, primarily visual method of storytelling,” and noted that the text had been rearranged and “severely cut” (174). He admired Loncraine’s ability to create a “convincing alternative reality” (176), saw it almost as a parody of a typical Ivory-Merchant “heritage film” (177), but also discussed, in detail, its similarities to American gangster movies (178–80). Loehlin thought McKellen was more effective in the film than he had been in the stage original (partly because he could seem more subtle) and ended by relating the film to some ideas by Roland Barthes (181–82).

Discussing the Loncraine film in his 2003 book Shakespeare at the Cineplex, Samuel Crowl noted that this movie had grown out of a successful theatrical staging but asked why he found it so “curiously at odds with its theatrical inspiration” and why, “for all its interesting and sometimes witty detail,” he thought it “fail[ed] to provide either the chilling impact of [the original] stage production or capture the essence of McKellen’s brilliance as an actor as expressed in his unique approach to Richard.” He thought that McKellen “here becomes the victim of Loncraine’s visual details,” which he found “irritating and distracting” despite Loncraine’s skilled filming and editing. Crowl argued that the “period details swallow Shakespeare’s tale and swamp McKellen’s performance to such an extent that we are deprived of the pleasure of watching a great actor create a character by vitally embodying a political landscape: the landscape in effect paralyzes the character”—the opposite of what happened in the theatrical version (109). For Crowl, the “film never finds a way to capture the charisma of the actor or the character, settling always for the send-up and put-down, rather than reaching for terror and menace” (118).

In his 2004 book Cinematic Shakespeare, Michael Anderegg wrote that although “enjoyable on a number of levels, there is ultimately something too easy and glib about the film—all the rough spots have been smoothed out and little is left to challenge an audience. Richard becomes yet another in a long line of postmodern” serial killers “from horror films who have no clear motivation and no real affect, who act entirely on impulse,” so that the “various ‘roles’ he plays in Shakespeare’s complex of relationships—Vice, Scourge of God, buffoon, nemesis—are flattened out into a single, incomprehensible embodiment of sheer malignity” (141).

Jared Scott Johnson, in an essay from 2004 titled “The Propaganda Imperative: Challenging Mass Media Representations in McKellen’s Richard III,” wrote that “McKellen undermines the very reverence for Shakespeare that guides Olivier’s project. He uses the play to comment on mass media’s influence on contemporary culture. At the same time that McKellen issues a warning about the dangers of mass media in the hands of a tyrant, he subtly manipulates the viewer by taking advantage of the very media forms that he admonishes, creating witty yet biting irony.” Quoting from an interview, Johnson reported that “McKellen, like the character he plays, tells us exactly what evil deeds he is up to. ‘It’s very exciting. It’s very funny. It’s very sexy. It’s very violent.’ McKellen, in touch with his own ideology, predicts that because of his manipulation of these media tropes, ‘[t]he audience I know will love it’” (55).

Anthony Davies, describing his own 2005 essay (“Richard III: The Films of Olivier and Loncraine/ McKellen”) in an end-of-the-book abstract, wrote that his article was “essentially a critique of the Loncraine/ McKellen film of Richard III.” Noting that “[b]oth films substantially cut texts,” Davies argued that “the cinematic devices used in the Loncraine/McKellen film—the historical period transposition to the 1930s, the presentation of Richard and the system of which he is a part as military-fascist, the agile inclusion of allusions to other films, and the stripping of the text in the interests of narrative pace and simplification—make for cinema that is clever rather than exploratory.” He thought that “[w]hile McKellen’s Richard is essentially … [concerned with] the material, physical pain of existence, Olivier’s characterisation incorporates an ultimate awareness of the supernatural,” thereby “reach[ing] with more effect for the cinematic integration of the play’s text.”

Kevin De Ornellas, in an essay from 2005 (“‘Thou Elvish-marked, Abortive, Rooting Hog’: Images of the Boar in Filmed Richard IIIs”), that he described himself in an end-of-the-book abstract, noted that “Richard is compared to swine several times in Richard III. The trope of the boar is a vital association which film directors have seized on engagingly and seriously. … Richard Loncraine, in his 1995 film, Richard III, uses pig imagery to stress Richard’s removal from society. In Hastings’s nightmare about Richard’s rise to power, Richard is seen as a transmogrified man-pig, one with a human frame but with a boar-like face. This separates Richard from the film’s other, more ‘normal’ characters, underlining his beastly singularity.”

In an end-of-the-book abstract for her essay from 2005 titled “‘But Did’st Thou See Them Dead?’: Performing Death in Screen Adaptations of Richard III,” Sarah Hatchuel wrote that “in fictional productions, whether theatrical or cinematic, death is always played by a paradoxical, oxymoronic living corpse. After surveying the differences between staged death and cinematic death, I examine the performance of King Richard’s death in screen versions of Richard III. The films by Frank R. Benson (1911), James Keane (1912), Laurence Olivier (1955), Richard Loncraine (1995) and A1 Pacino (1996) insist on an analogy with the theatre. The histrionic character of Richard dies a histrionic death: his death is over-played, or its illusion is being openly disclosed or comically diverted.”

Michael Hattaway, describing his 2005 article “Varieties of Englishness: Richard III on Film” in an end-of-the-book abstract, compared and contrasted “the mise-en-scene of the films by Olivier [and] Loncraine.” He thought that “Loncraine offers a bravura set of readings of the actual London buildings used as settings for the action, and generates a subtle demonstration of how Victorian values were shored up by the brutalities of a native British fascism.”

Lucy Munro, describing in an end-of-the book abstract her 2005 essay titled “‘Little Apes and Tender Babes’: Children in Three Film Versions of Richard III,” examined the ways the princes are presented in films directed by “Frank R. Benson (1911), Laurence Olivier (1955) and Richard Loncraine (1995)” and argued that “[t]hrough their different treatment of issues such as textual adaptation, mise-en-scene and casting, the films engage with theatrical tradition, with film tradition, and with early modern, modern and postmodern concerns about the nature of children and their relationship with adult tragedy and tyranny.”

Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin, in an end-of-the-book abstract describing her article from 2005 titled “Evil Tongues in Richard III on Screen,” compared and contrasted the way Olivier and Loncraine deal with the issue of evil speech, suggesting that they downplay the most notorious uses of such speech in order to focus instead on slander and rumor.

In an essay from 2006 titled “Spectacular Bodies, Acting + Cinema + Shakespeare,” Barbara Hodgdon compared the film to a “political thriller” (102); noted that Richard’s hump is not emphasized but that, instead, attention is called to his handicapped left side (102–3); compared him to a 1930s film villain (103); and discussed, in detail, how his wooing of Anne is both acted and filmed (103–5).

Paul Prescott, in his 2006 book on Richard III, described the Loncraine film’s setting; noted Loncraine’s background as a director of television commercials; commented on the long opening sequence with no Shakespearean phrasing (148); and reported that roughly three quarters of Shakespeare’s text was cut. He discussed the “secular, self-contained nature of the overarching interpretation” and said the film “insistently marks [its] distance from the stage through a variety of filmic allusions” (149).

Assessing the film in his 2007 book Studying Shakespeare on Film, Maurice Hindle called it “in conception and effects nothing short of stunning” and was particularly impressed by McKellen’s “audacious” performance (56). He thought the movie’s realistic look helped make the characters themselves seem more authentic and, like other commentators, he noted the various allusions to gangster films (95). In a later, separate essay on this production, Hindle remarked that although over seventy percent of Shakespeare’s words had been cut, the film was still effective. He thought that the modern costumes helped clarify the plot (159); said the same of the contrasts between the roles for American and British actors (160); found Downey’s performance very effective (162); and noted that this movie is influenced by action films, sci fi movies, westerns, musicals, British heritage dramas, and gangster films (161). He thought that Richard at first sounds like Darth Vader (162); discussed the opening scenes in some detail (161–64); said the pace quickened from the middle to the end (164); and admired the effort made to give the supporting characters and actors more prominence. He noted that the ending draws on endings of gangster movies, westerns, and political thrillers (165) and was intrigued by the possibly ironic implications of Richmond’s final smirk (166). Samuel Crowl, in his 2008 Norton Guide, was another one of many critics to note this movie’s allusions to American gangster films (85).

Agnieszka Rasmus, in her 2008 book Filming Shakespeare, from Metatheatre to Metacinema, noted that McKellen consistently looks at the camera but that he does so differently than Laurence Olivier had done in his film of the play in that he never tries to woo viewers (71). Instead, he seems indifferent to them, as if they are intruders. She said that McKellen may have intended a different effect, more hospitable, but argued that the camera’s closeness often makes this Richard look ugly (73). Remarking that in the film’s final scene Richmond stares into the camera as a kind of vice figure (74), she also suggested that the film depicts the way various media (teletype, film, and still pictures) deal with death, especially the death of Queen Anne (154–55).

Jessica Walker, in her 2011 essay “‘As Crooked in Thy Manners as Thy Shape’: Reshaping Deformity in Loncraine’s Richard III,” suggested that every production of this play must decide “what Richard’s deformity represents in terms of that production’s interpretation.” She thought that in Loncraine’s film “Richard’s physical disfigurement is minimal” and is linked with “the aggressively masculine militarism of Adolf Hitler and his Third Reich. By moving the play to a specific historical moment, a 1930’s England under the thrall of a Hitleresque Richard, the film limits the audience’s understanding of Richard’s evil deeds. It creates new avenues for understanding the play’s moral universe, however, by coding Richard as a masculine monster in opposition to the feminine world of Queen Elizabeth and the Duchess of York” (155–56).

In his 2013 book Small-Screen Shakespeare, Peter Cochran called this film “too good to be true” and praised its “confidence, its inventiveness, and the super fine quality of its judgment” (92). Finding the London settings memorable and saying they create, more than any other Shakespeare film, a sense of the Here and Now and thus the contemporary relevance of the play, he also considered McKellen’s Richard very original (93).

In an article from 2015 titled “‘… Neither Mother, Wife, nor England’s Queen’: Re-Visioning Queen Margaret of Anjou in Richard Loncraine’s Film Richard III (1995),” Elizabeth Zauderer asserted that in Shakespeare’s play, “Margaret’s a-historicity (she appears as a ghostlike figure) is an explicit instance of Shakespeare’s authorial license; in the film it is manifest in McKellen’s decision to cut Margaret out while giving some of her lines to the Duchess of York.” Zauderer reported that “[a]lthough McKellen justifies Margaret’s elimination as one way in which to avoid taxing the film audience with the complexities of Margaret’s historical relevance, I would argue that it accommodates his comprehensive aim to co-opt the play’s political-historical contexts in terms accessible to modern day spectators” (146).

Peter E. S. Babiak, in his 2016 survey of a century of Shakespeare films, commented that Loncraine’s “depiction of media is as ubiquitous as it is inconsistent in the way various media are represented”; mentioned such media as the “teletype, the p. a. system, and the voyeuristic camera”(154); thought the “function of media is never stable in this film”; and said that Loncraine’s “splitting of the first soliloquy into public/objective, private/objective and private/subjective moments” is a technique “repeated at several points during the film.” He thought that whereas “Olivier’s Richard constantly addresses his camera/audience with a detached irony over which he constantly maintains control, McKellen’s Richard addresses his camera/audience with a full range of emotional responses which he apparently cannot contain” and that “[w]here Olivier’s Richard is content to realize his ambitions through scheming and manipulation, McKellen’s Richard engages in direct acts of violence” (155). He thought the two films also differ in the ways the key women are presented; that Richard’s death in Loncraine’s film resembles the death of Ripley in the movie Alien 3 (although Ripley’s death is altruistic); and commented that “as Richard and Richmond climb up the superstructure of the abandoned power-station at the film’s finale, the bare girders of the superstructure suggest that the world they are fighting over is barren and devoid of fertility.” Babiak remarked that Richmond’s final leer at the camera resembles Richard’s leer earlier when he was courting Anne (156).

Grace McCarthy, in her 2021 book on Shakespeare and disability, wrote that in this film “dehumanizing Richard by connecting him to classical monstrosity makes easier the overall dehumanization [of this character] and [his] removal from any connections with martial masculinity.” She felt that unlike Olivier, Loncraine denies his Richard traditional martial and sexual masculinity and [thus isolates him] to a much greater degree (50).

In a book from 2023 titled Shakespeare’s Histories on Screen, Jennie M. Votava discussed the film’s use of American actors, its depictions of the rise of fascism and Nazism, its allusions to the film White Heat, its “film noir” aspects, and the ways various critics have responded to this movie (152ff). She suggested that “Al Jolson in blackface … may be the repressed unconscious signifier of Loncraine’s Richard III” and explored the relevance of Jolson’s film The Jazz Singer (167ff) as well as seeing an “invisible racialized interior [in the movie] White Heat’s fallen antihero as well as [in] that of Richard himself” (171). Finding other allusions to blackness in this movie, she suggested that “the choice leans more towards farce than tragedy” and considered Richard’s demise “an over-the-top moment of parody. At this instance he is simultaneously a wickedly grinning Vice figure falling into the flames of his originary pit; the film noir sociopath Cody Jarrett expunging his dark insanity, criminality and mommy issues in a burst of white heat; and, most ludicrously yet pointedly of all, a Hitler figure donning the temporary white mask of a Jewish singer headed for a fall into blackface” (171).

2016 Dominic Cooke (The Hollow Crown) Production

Directed by Dominic Cooke, the 2016 televised episode of The Hollow Crown featured Benedict Cumberbatch as Richard III; Ben Daniels as Duke of Buckingham; Judi Dench as Cecily, Duchess of York; James Fleet as Lord Hastings; Phoebe Fox as Queen Anne; Keeley Hawes as Queen Elizabeth; and Sophie Okonedo as Queen Margaret.

Grace McCarthy, in her 2021 book Shakespearean Drama, Disability, and the Filmic Stare, compared and contrasted this adaptation with the film by Loncraine, arguing that “where Loncraine includes but visually suppresses Richard’s impairments, Cooke includes and highlights the impairments” (51). She thought that “Cooke alienates his Richard through body horror, highlighting disability as opposed to violence. Cumberbatch’s Richard is introduced to us first as his impairment” (52).

Bibliography