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Bookmark this pageKing Lear (1970)
Director: Peter Brook
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
Made on location in what looks like a perilously cold Denmark, Brook's only Shakespeare on celluloid found a similarly frosty reception, especially as it came out just after Kozintsev's grandly conceived Russian version. Brook's filming is graceless - looming close-ups, perverse camera moves - but there are some remarkable performances (developed from his much praised stage production a few years before with Scofield). The conception is consistent with the influential views of Jan Kott, who saw Lear as a precursor to Beckett's plays about human blindness and nothingness (a line reinforced by the casting of MacGowran as the Fool, and Magee as the Duke of Cornwall). A bleak interpretation, in every sense.Author: DT
Cast & crew
Director: Peter Brook
Producer: Michael Birkett
Cast: Paul Scofield, Irene Worth, Alan Webb, Tom Fleming, Susan Engel, Annelise Gabold, Jack MacGowran, Cyril Cusack, Patrick Magee, Jack MacGowran, Robert Langdon Lloyd, Ian Hogg full cast
Genre(s): Period/Swashbucklers
Duration: 137 mins
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