Sightlines · a viewing thread

Shakespeare's Kings and Killers

Watch these near each other and the same machinery keeps turning in new tongues — the murdered king, the usurped crown, the prophecy and the ambition that curdles into slaughter — as Olivier, Welles, Kurosawa, Polanski and Branagh each bend Shakespeare to the screen.

This is film-school canon more than a casual night in — often long, bloody and demanding — so start from the broadly-seen Olivier Hamlet and Kurosawa entries before working toward the rarer Welles and Papp cuts.

• Hamlet (1948)
• Hamlet (1996)
• Hamlet (1964)
• Chimes at Midnight (1965)
• Ran (1985)
• Titus (1999)
• Othello (1951)
• Throne of Blood (1957)
• Macbeth (1971)
• Henry V (1989)
• Richard III (1995) — The under-seen Shakespeare screen adaptation to finally pull down if the Olivier and Welles cuts landed — McKellen's Richard usurps and murders his way to the crown in a fascist 1930s England, the thread's ambition-into-slaughter machinery turning in a chilling new tongue.
• The Lion in Winter (1968) — Not Shakespeare but pure Shakespearean lineage — Henry II, the imprisoned Eleanor, and three scheming sons clawing over the succession — the overlooked royal-blood-feud drama that rhymes with the histories in Chimes at Midnight and Henry V.
• Becket (1964) — O'Toole's Henry II again, this time a king who talks his closest friend into martyrdom — the forgotten companion piece where the crown does the killing, sharing the theatrical grandeur and kings-and-murder register of these Shakespeare cuts.