"Henry V" is Laurence Olivier's epic attempt to bring Shakespeare's famous play to the big screen, in which he takes on the triple role of screenwriter, director, and lead actor. How successful he was in this is debatable.
As for the characterization of the king himself, Lawrence's performance is impeccable. The directing failed in some segments, but he made up for all the mistakes in several key moments.
The first of them is the very beginning, a panoramic view of a huge model of London, which was really imposing for that time. The film then takes us to the Globe Theater, in the year 1600. "Henry V" begins as a theatrical performance in the famous Shakespeare theater, where we witness scenes that introduce us to the story and, through several long monologues, accustom us to the English language of the time. But when the English start their campaign against France, the story skilfully slips out of the studio and into the open fields of Ireland, a location chosen for its neutrality in the then-current World War II.
The third and by far the most impressive of these moments is the depiction of the actual battle between the English and French armies. Colorful uniforms and banners, dozens of galloping horses and hundreds of soldiers in combat, rain of arrows, and the forest ambush are scenes that, even in the age of CGI technology, still take your breath away.
And, finally, Henry's courtship of the French princess Catherine and the marriage that ends the war. Catherine was to be played by Lawrence's wife at the time, Vivien Leigh, but was prevented by Selznick, with whom she was under contract. It's a shame, I think the ending would have been more effective with her.
However, the overall impression that the film left on me was rather weak.
The first and probably the only objective complaint I have against it is that the script is more superficial than the source material. Darker and more difficult scenes were removed from this adaptation, I suppose in order to make the film more palatable to a wider audience and cheer up the English soldiers, who have been burdened by the horrors of war for years.
But if Olivier wanted a film more accessible than Shakespeare's play, why the hell did he make it with Shakespeare's original text in archaic English, difficult to understand even for modern Englishmen, let alone non-English speaking audiences? This is my second and biggest complaint about the film.
Even though I've watched hundreds of English-language movies and never needed translation, this one was completely impossible to follow without subtitles. With literal English subtitles, I could get the meaning from the context and follow the movie, but I still didn't understand about a third of the text or more. It was so hard for me to follow that, until the big battle, I was on the verge of quitting, and only from the battle on did it buy me.
All in all, a mediocre story, as colorful as a parrot, overloaded with hard-to-understand and therefore boring monologues, which gained strength only in the last third and improved the overall impression to
7/10.
As for the characterization of the king himself, Lawrence's performance is impeccable. The directing failed in some segments, but he made up for all the mistakes in several key moments.
The first of them is the very beginning, a panoramic view of a huge model of London, which was really imposing for that time. The film then takes us to the Globe Theater, in the year 1600. "Henry V" begins as a theatrical performance in the famous Shakespeare theater, where we witness scenes that introduce us to the story and, through several long monologues, accustom us to the English language of the time. But when the English start their campaign against France, the story skilfully slips out of the studio and into the open fields of Ireland, a location chosen for its neutrality in the then-current World War II.
The third and by far the most impressive of these moments is the depiction of the actual battle between the English and French armies. Colorful uniforms and banners, dozens of galloping horses and hundreds of soldiers in combat, rain of arrows, and the forest ambush are scenes that, even in the age of CGI technology, still take your breath away.
And, finally, Henry's courtship of the French princess Catherine and the marriage that ends the war. Catherine was to be played by Lawrence's wife at the time, Vivien Leigh, but was prevented by Selznick, with whom she was under contract. It's a shame, I think the ending would have been more effective with her.
However, the overall impression that the film left on me was rather weak.
The first and probably the only objective complaint I have against it is that the script is more superficial than the source material. Darker and more difficult scenes were removed from this adaptation, I suppose in order to make the film more palatable to a wider audience and cheer up the English soldiers, who have been burdened by the horrors of war for years.
But if Olivier wanted a film more accessible than Shakespeare's play, why the hell did he make it with Shakespeare's original text in archaic English, difficult to understand even for modern Englishmen, let alone non-English speaking audiences? This is my second and biggest complaint about the film.
Even though I've watched hundreds of English-language movies and never needed translation, this one was completely impossible to follow without subtitles. With literal English subtitles, I could get the meaning from the context and follow the movie, but I still didn't understand about a third of the text or more. It was so hard for me to follow that, until the big battle, I was on the verge of quitting, and only from the battle on did it buy me.
All in all, a mediocre story, as colorful as a parrot, overloaded with hard-to-understand and therefore boring monologues, which gained strength only in the last third and improved the overall impression to
7/10.