HENRY V (1944) A Film Review Copyright Dragan Antulov 1999
One of the examples of Shakespeare's universal appeal is the fact that even his earliest plays, historical dramas, happen to be popular and that their audience includes people who actually don't care that much about English medieval history. Compared with Bard's later masterpieces like HAMLET, MACBETH or TEMPEST those plays might look crude and simplistic, but they still have that Shakespearean appeal and represent the challenge for future generations of stage and movie artists. In 1944 Britain, one of such plays proved to be rather useful for wartime propaganda purposes, and Laurence Olivier, famous stage and movie actor, producer and director, was asked by British government to adapt HENRY V. The result was a film that later earned Olivier a honorary "Oscar".
The play HENRY V deals with the King Henry V of England and his military campaign in France during the Hundred Year War between those two countries. In 1415, fresh on the throne and with the reputation of careless, hedonistic and irresponsible youth, Henry waged the campaign in order to strengthen both his own domestic authority and English hold on vast territories in France. His campaign was partially successful, mostly because of the illness. Forced to retreat towards friendly port of Calais, Henry and his tired and dwindling army encountered superior French force near the castle of Agincourt on October 25th. Using the good defensive position and superior longbow tactics against arrogant French knights, Henry carried the day and turned himself into one of the greatest national heroes of England. Ironically, that triumph proved to be the last major victory for the English in Hundred Year War. Only a generation later, Joan of Arc would turn the tide and begin to finally drive English out of France.
Battle of Agincourt perhaps didn't have major historical or military significance for the outcome of Hundred Years War, but it provided future English historians and artists with a great inspiration for uplifting, patriotic works of art. Same thing that had inspired Shakespeare, inspired Olivier too, and he dedicated his film to British commando and airborne troops. However, despite being created mostly for morale boosting purposes, HENRY V was more than a piece of simplistic propaganda.
First of all, Olivier was rather ingenious in his adaptation. Equipped with relatively high budget and first Technicolor cameras, he decided to use talents of Dalas Bower, Alan Dent and his own to adapt Shakespeare's language and make it closer to the common man. Another decision was to make this play realistic by shooting it as a stage play being performed in Globe Theatre 1600 AD. That provided few amusing, almost humorous behind-the-scenes segments about stage actors' life in Shakespearean times. Production sets by Carmen Dillon and Paul Sheriff, transcended their artificiality by being modelled after illustration in medieval chronicles, giving this film somewhat fairytale, surreal atmosphere. That effect is somewhat diminished when Olivier uses locations of Ireland (neutral in WW2) and thousands of Irish regular army as extras in order to reconstruct the battle. The battle scene is most spectacular, but it lacks the emotional impact and excitement usually associated with similar scenes in historical spectacles. Apart from that, this film suffers a lot from Olivier trying to be faithful towards Shakespeare on the wrong places, especially when dealing with rather boring segments about common soldiers in Henry's army. Olivier's scene of royal seduction, on the other hand, still possesses certain surreal and charming quality.
Despite its flaws, HENRY V held a good reputation through decades, but, unfortunately, newer generations would almost certainly compare it to more modern and artistically ambitious 1989 version by Kenneth Branagh. Those comparisons are very bad for Olivier's work, since they reveal the fact that 1944 version had text drastically changed and trimmed for propaganda purposes, making Henry in Olivier's version much nicer person from Henrys in Branagh's version and real history. Anyway, even with the later work that diminished its reputation, HENRY V is a film to be seen and appreciated by both lovers of classic cinema and those who like Shakespeare.
RATING: 7/10 (+++)
Review written on October 22nd 1999
Dragan Antulov a.k.a. Drax Fido: 2:381/100 E-mail: dragan.antulov@st.tel.hr E-mail: drax@purger.com E-mail: dragan.antulov@altbbs.fido.hr
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