Find below the presentations on The Merchant of Venice:
The Merchant of Venice,
by Julie Lesouef
I chose the film The Merchant of Venice that was released in 2004. The movie was directed by Michael Radford. Some of the main actors are : Al Pacino playing as Shylock, Jeremy Irons as Antonio, Joseph Fiennes as Bassanio and Lynn Collins as Portia.
This adaptation follows the text very closely even though there are some missing lines, some scenes were made shorter and the director chose to change the order of some scenes. Some words used are different from the original text, certainly to make the movie easier to understand. In this adaptation, Shylock appears as a tragic hero. The film does not show Shylock only as a villain but also as a victim. This is clear from the beginning because it starts with a presentation on how the Jewish community is discriminated against in Venice.
I decided to focus on act III scene 1. In this scene, Shylock states that Christians and Jews are the same and thus they should be equal. The power of the scene is increasing because, at the beginning, when he talks about his daughter who fled he looks destroyed and lost. But then his tone of voice goes higher and higher, he becomes really mad. He reinforces the pronunciation of some words to put them forward. In short, he wants to draw attention to the similarities between Christians and Jews. By doing this he puts forward the fact that justice should be the same for everyone, Jews or Christians.
At the beginning of the scene when Shylock enters, Salarino and Salanio are sitting in a brothel with. This is interesting because it is not written in Shakespeare’s stage directions. Michael Radford insists on the irony of the situation: two Christians in a brothel who talk about mercy and who want to advise Shylock so that he can act properly.
Later on, in act IV, scene 1, during the trial, Shylock is in the middle of a crowd, everyone is against him, they shout at him. Antonio is standing in front of him, and the Duke is sitting in front of everyone. They are all against Shylock.
Michael Radford’s movie shows how desperate Shylock is. Shylock lost everything just in a few minutes. His voice is trembling; he is lying on his knees and crying as if he was praying. Shylock’s cultural identity is destroyed at the end of the trial; he has to leave the ghetto where he used to live because he is not a Jew anymore.
Film: 1980 BBC production
-Minimalist approach: period costumes, bright/uniform lighting (no use of shadows)
-Sets are pastel-coloured and vague, more of a suggestion of a place than a literal, detailed depiction of one
-All of original Shakespeare text survives; occasionally an actor will make a very small, usually one-word mistake where only one word in the line will be different than the original; seems to add to the argument that the director wanted to create a close adaption of the play
-No plot changes at all
-Doesn't attempt to emphasize one theme over another-focus is always on the actors, camera often zooms in on an actor's face to highlight something of particular importance
-I read in an article about adapting Shakespeare to film that Shakespeare's language is "so rich in imagery that the photographic image is often merely redundant"--this seems to be the philosophy of the director as well, because he seems to want to focus the audience's attention on the facial expressions of the actors as they speak their lines rather than distract them with any overwhelming artistic features that could interfere with the power of the dialogue's language.
-I wasn't quite sure whether I liked the film or not--all in all, I don't think the director took advantage of the film genre to create his own interpretation of the play--no special effects, lighting, sound, etc. It was basically watching a play that had been filmed. While this certainly isn't bad, and the acting wasn't anything to lament, it would have been nice to watch a more artistic version that would have inspired a more complex analysis of a film adaptation.
The Merchant of Venice,
by Allison Bader
Film: 1980 BBC production
-Minimalist approach: period costumes, bright/uniform lighting (no use of shadows)
-Sets are pastel-coloured and vague, more of a suggestion of a place than a literal, detailed depiction of one
-All of original Shakespeare text survives; occasionally an actor will make a very small, usually one-word mistake where only one word in the line will be different than the original; seems to add to the argument that the director wanted to create a close adaption of the play
-No plot changes at all
-Doesn't attempt to emphasize one theme over another-focus is always on the actors, camera often zooms in on an actor's face to highlight something of particular importance
-I read in an article about adapting Shakespeare to film that Shakespeare's language is "so rich in imagery that the photographic image is often merely redundant"--this seems to be the philosophy of the director as well, because he seems to want to focus the audience's attention on the facial expressions of the actors as they speak their lines rather than distract them with any overwhelming artistic features that could interfere with the power of the dialogue's language.
-I wasn't quite sure whether I liked the film or not--all in all, I don't think the director took advantage of the film genre to create his own interpretation of the play--no special effects, lighting, sound, etc. It was basically watching a play that had been filmed. While this certainly isn't bad, and the acting wasn't anything to lament, it would have been nice to watch a more artistic version that would have inspired a more complex analysis of a film adaptation.
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