Word: hotspurs
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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There is no space here to describe more than a few of the iconic images which crowd the film: the old King's breath freezing in the chill sunlight of his vast hall, Hotspur's (Norman Rodway) peripatetic motion caught by a camera tracking in tight close-up, the gross Falstaff beside the cruelly emaciated Justice Shallow (Alan Webb), Doll Tearsheet (Jeanne Moreau) demonstrating how a tender and accomplished whore might satisfy an impossibly fat old patron. The Battle of Shrewsbury is simply the finest, truest, ugliest war footage ever shot and edited for a dramatic movie. Welles fills Falstaff...
...Hotspur," reads one note, "said we should have had the battle, but for those cursed stars. Hotspur said he was indignant to be killed by such a person as Prince Henry, who was so much his inferior." Still more cryptic is what Blake called in his sketchbook a "Spiritual Communication." Possibly Blake intended it to be a recording of a conversation he had with the ghost of a flea (he sketched several of these: they look rather like Jiminy Cricket). The "communication" reads: "Can you think I can endure to be considered as a vapour arising from your food...
With the brilliant Hotspur dead, the scenes of military rebellion can't begin to match those of 1 Henry IV, but they need not be such a trial as they are in this production. Northumberland (Stephen Pearlman) comes on looking like Basil Rathbone, but our hopes are dashed when that hoarse, ugly voice begins to speak, And so it goes with the rest, whom I shall not bother to name. The sole exception is David Little's Lancaster, which has youth, vigor and vocal clarity; he brings much-needed life to the scenes...
...Hotspur...
...Caedmon). There are those who believe that Falstaff is the greatest comic character in English literature, and these recordings will not disappoint them. Anthony Quayle's voice combines the tavern-soaked grossness of "fat Jack" with the agile wit and arrogant flair of Sir John. Michael Redgrave as Hotspur seems at times to get only false teeth into the part...