King Lear (1916)

King Lear, pre-madness

Directed by Ernest C. Warde
Starring Frederick Warde, Lorraine Huling, Wayne Arey, J.H. Gilmour
Produced by Thanhouser Film Corporation

My final film of 1916 is an adaptation of the classic William Shakespeare tale.  King Lear (Frederick Warde) is divvying up his kingdom amongst his three daughters, but in his vanity, cannot differentiate the empty flattery of his eldest daughters from the actual, but less flowery professions of love from his youngest daughter, Cordelia.  She is banished and marries the French king, while her sisters, Goneril and Regan, take pleasure in ignoring their now powerless and crazed father. The ensuing struggle for control amongst the sisters threatens their property, title and family.  Will any of them survive?

I had high hopes for King Lear.  Ran, Akira Kurosawa's samurai adaptation of the tale, is one of my favorite movies of all time.  I love how Shakespeare's tragedies place the flaws of his characters and their respective worlds on a collision course with an inevitable result.  King Lear as a written work is amongst my favorites.

This, sadly, is not a very good movie.

It's a mediocre retelling with all of the requisite characters and situations present, but without any passion or even coherence through much of the film.  In its own way, it suffers from the same problems that impacted 1911's L'Inferno.  Because the film is silent, but so much of the power of the story is in Shakespeare's prose, you spend much of the movie watching a character's lips move, followed by ten seconds of reading dialogue. This does not make for captivating film making.

It's a shame too because I like Warde in the title role.  Visually, he does a great job of showing the viewer Lear's arc from pompous king to mad wanderer.  At points, it's over the top, but he is touched by madness, so some scenery chewing seems in order.

The rest of the cast is okay.  Honestly, many characters looked similar to one another, so it became hard to track who was who from one scene to the next.

As far as production values, King Lear provides a mixed bag. The actual camera set ups and editing are well done.  The sets themselves are very good.  You never get the sense of scale that you see in Griffith's Intolerance, but it's not necessary here.  However, for some reason all of the characters are dressed like extras in a Nativity play.  And the sword fights are awful.  When characters start dueling, there's no sense of any danger.  It's more like a couple of kids in a high school production on the first day of rehearsal.

One final note relates to Televista's DVD copy of this movie.  The structure of the film (interchangeable actors' lips moving for ten seconds, title card displaying what was just said for ten seconds, repeat) is boring enough. Can we not have the most monotonous, repetitive soundtrack ever playing in the background?  I mean, would inserting a bridge somewhere in one of these songs kill you?  All the music did was highlight the mundane nature of the entire production.

I guess the lesson here is this: making a silent Shakespearean film is a near impossible task. If you show characters reciting dialogue no can hear except through title cards, it's really boring.  You almost have to focus on the plot and jettison the dialogue, but that's the very thing that makes it Shakespeare. At 64 minutes, I'm not recommending this one to anyone.  Go out and rent Ran instead.

Watched on DVD through NetFlix
Photo from Thanhouser Company