Word: gielgud
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Richard III. Shakespeare's sinister parable of power is made into a darkly magnificent film by Sir Laurence Olivier, who plays the title role with fiendish skill and satanic majesty. The supporting cast: Sir John Gielgud, Sir Ralph Richardson, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Claire Bloom, Pamela Brown (TIME, March...
...only directed the picture with taste and skill of a high order, but also "monkeyed around" with the Shakespeare script -cutting, transposing, and sometimes just plain changing-in a wickedly ingenious way. The cast Olivier has assembled is a Who's Who of the British theater-Sir John Gielgud, Sir Ralph Richardson, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Claire Bloom, Pamela Brown-and they play, for the most part, with a remarkably even and deep-breathing power. Olivier himself interprets the title role with a mastery so complete that Richard III, in this generation can surely never be himself again...
Next instant he is wooing the widow of a prince he recently killed "in my angry mood at Tewkesbury," and wooing her with cold precision and success even as she kneels by her husband's corpse. He plots his brother (Gielgud) into the king's disgrace, and has him murdered in the Tower-drowned, as a matter of gruesome legend, in a butt of malmsey wine. And while he waits for the aging king (Hardwicke) to die "and leave the world for me to bustle in," the "bottled spider" can teasingly tongue-tie the opposing faction ("Cannot...
...have more to do, and do it sometimes with less skill. As King Edward, Sir Cedric Hardwicke is properly cardiac and feckless, but Sir John Gielgud dilutes his Clarence with so much milk of human kindness that the observer cannot really credit him with the murder he bemoans, and so the point of his big scene is lost. Sir Ralph Richardson, too, is scarcely the strong figure that the "deep-revolving, witty Buckingham" should...
...Hunter) was a success in London, where the cast-including Sir John Gielgud, Sir Ralph Richardson, Dame Sybil Thorndike and Irene Worth-was dazzling. On Broadway, where the cast is merely good, the play's chances seem slighter. A prettily draped Dorsetshire study of has-beens and never-weres, a Chekhov-flavored and slightly watery custard, A Day by the Sea is often nicely written, sometimes neatly observed. But it shows no very personal talent or original insight...