"Here is a highly subjective list of five of my favorite Shakespeare film adaptations. "Much Ado About Nothing" (1993). I grew up in the nineteen-nineties, when the names Shakespeare and Kenneth Branagh seemed inextricably entwined. Branagh's sumptuously sun-dappled Messina remains my picture of heaven. Michael Keaton as the pompous constable Dogberry is ridiculous in the best sense, and Emma Thompson's barbed-tongued Beatrice is a paragon performance of wit, heartbreak, and joy."
""A Midsummer Night's Dream" (1935). After the Nazis confiscated the celebrated Austrian stage director Max Reinhardt's theatres in Germany, Reinhardt came to Hollywood and directed this masterpiece for Warner Brothers. (His fellow-emigré, William Dieterle, co-directed.) Shimmering with German Expressionist style-and reams of decorative cellophane-the film features Olivia de Havilland at the very start of her career, as Hermia, alongside James Cagney, as Bottom, and a fourteen-year-old Mickey Rooney, as Puck."
Chloé Zhao's Hamnet has been released, returning Shakespeare-inspired material to the screen. Kenneth Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing (1993) presents a sun-dappled Messina, with Michael Keaton's Dogberry and Emma Thompson's Beatrice offering wit, heartbreak, and joy. Max Reinhardt's 1935 A Midsummer Night's Dream, made after his exile from Germany, shimmers with German Expressionist style and decorative cellophane, featuring Olivia de Havilland, James Cagney, and a young Mickey Rooney. Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood (1957) transposes Macbeth to feudal Japan with haunting black-and-white imagery, Toshiro Mifune's Washizu, and a memorable arrow-assault climax. Orson Welles's Chimes at Midnight compiles Falstaff material from the Henry plays and is now widely streamable.
Read at The New Yorker
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