Word: kozintsev
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...GRIGORY KOZINTSEV'S 1971 screen version of King Lear is living, breathing evidence of the schoolroom adage that Shakespeare's plays were meant to be seen and not read. With the familiar sounds of Cordelia's solemn "nothing, my lord," and Lear's famous tirade "Blow, winds, blow," translated into Russian, much of the play's impact depends on the actors' ability to reinforce their foreign words with physical gestures, tones of voice, facial expressions and other universally understood signs. And it is greatly to director Kotzintsev's credit that the play's primordial, elemental power is strengthened--not diluted...
...Kozintsev's bold direction and swift timing are perfectly suited to the play's central image of the "unaccomodated man" who ultimately, all alone, must confront the basic elements of nature and his soul. The play has been cut down, leaving only those scenes which further the plot's course of destruction. For example, the fool's part is shorn of its lighter scenes, leaving only the bitter social commentary. Thus the movie presents a Lear of pure and seemingly inevitable tragedy...
...finally there is Lear, a white, tousle-haired man whose crinkled face and impish carriage remind one more of an elf than a king. But this is not unintentional, for Kozintsev's Lear emphasizes correctly the humanness of its central character. Lear's fall is not of the same grandeur as Oedipus in Sophocles's tragedy, Oedipus-Tyrannus. Rather it is the fall of a vain, petty man whose self-centered need for flattery destroys his only loving daughter and ruins his sacred kingdom...
...Kozintsev's version finds a credible and effective medium between the two choices. Against the hellish background of a black and smoldering castle, the camera shows Lear's death and then curiously turns towards the open gateway of the castle, giving a view of the white-capped water over which a few seagulls lazily fly. It is as if the camera were following the heavenly acensions of Lear's and Cordelia's souls, the only characters to whom redemption is finally offered...
Because the conservative sponsors of the New York festival offer no prizes, horse trading and razzmatazz are minimal. Opening night was a sober, even stately occasion, geared to the Slavic measures of Hamlet, Soviet Director Kozintsev's 21-hour epic in collaboration with Pasternak, Shostakovich and Shakespeare. Some viewers were enthralled, some appalled by the brooding, glacial, quasi-operatic doings at Elsinore, which at times seemed haunted by the ghost of Boris Godunov...
| 1 |