Shakespeare, film, fin-de-siècle

About this book

Over the course of the 1990s, Shakespeare films established themselves as big business. The essays in this volume examine the major films of the decade, including Hamlet, Love's Labour's Lost, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Othello, Richard III, Shakespeare in Love and William Shakespeare's 'Romeo + Juliet', and argue that cinematic interpretations of Shakespeare are key instruments with which western culture confronts the anxieties attendant upon the transition from one century to another. These and other screen productions, the contributors maintain, engage with some of the most pressing concerns of the present, apocalyptic condition - familial crisis, social estrangements, urban blight, cultural hybridity, literary authority, the role of reading and writing, the impact of technology and the end of history. Attention to less well-known Shakespeare films, and an exclusive retrospective interview with Kenneth Branagh, make this the most current and comprehensive assessment of Shakespeare in the cinema to date. "The essays in this volume argue that cinematic interpretations of Shakespeare are key instruments with which western culture confronts the anxieties attendant upon the transition from one century to another. These and other screen productions, the contributors maintain, engage with some of the most pressing concerns of the present, apocalyptic condition - familial crisis, social estrangements, urban blight, cultural hybridity, literary authority, the role of reading and writing, the impact of technology and the end of history. Attention to less well-known Shakespeare films, and an exclusive retrospective interview with Kenneth Branagh, make this a current and comprehensive assessment of Shakespeare in the cinema"--BOOK JACKET.