Sir Ian McKellen is leading the way in a star-studded Shakespeare on Film season at the British Film Institute to mark 400 years since the playwright’s death.
The Shakespearean actor, 76, who adapted and starred in an acclaimed 1995 version of Richard III which shot across London at locations including Eltham Palace, helped launch the BFI’s season which includes 40 feature films and 25 events at BFI Southbank and more at cinemas around the country.
Speaking at a launch event at BFI Southbank today, Sir Ian said there were difficulties taking Shakespeare from the theatre to the screen but they can be overcome with skilled filmmaking.
He said: “If you see a film, you want it to be great cinema over great Shakespeare. And of course, the plays still remain. I think everyone should do whatever they like with Shakespeare.”
Describing the Bard’s legacy as a ‘hydra-headed brand’, Sir Ian said: “Shakespeare is more than just plays in the theatre.”
He added: “Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of Romeo and Juliet is immensely theatrical but totally cinematic and slashed text but the essence of Shakespeare is in there.”
Head curator of the BFI’s national archive Robin Baker introduced the wide-ranging programme, which also features the largest project to bring British cinema to overseas audience with Shakespeare on Film reaching 110 countries.
He said: “Although Shakespeare died 400 years ago, there is no other writer who has had a greater impact on cinema. In a way, the numbers speak for themselves. If you look up Shakespeare on IMDB it comes up with at the moment an extraordinary 1,120 credits.”
He added: “Live theatre offers something that is clearly very immediate and very intimate between the audience and the people on stage yet film can offer something very, very different and a very different kind of intimacy and complicity with the audience by the advantage of having the close-up.”
Sir Ian McKellen in discussion with the BFI's Robin Baker.
Shakespeare on Film runs from March 31 to May 31 and features a who’s who of cinema, with features directed by and starring the likes of Laurence Olivier, Roman Polanski, Orson Welles, Kenneth Branagh, Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Gus Van Sant and Heath Ledger.
Remarkably, 74 years of Sir John Gielgud’s career are spanned: from 1922’s Romeo and Juliet to 1996’s Hamlet.
Among the events is an exhibition remembering Olivier’s 1948 version of Hamlet, a series of restored silent shorts played alongside specially-composed music and television previews including BBC2’s The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses, Henry VI parts 1 and 2, which stars Hugh Bonneville, Sally Hawkins, Benedict Cumberbatch and Michael Gambon.
Sir Ian’s 1995 version of Richard III has been restored and will get a premiere at the BFI Southbank on April 28 -including live chat with the actor and the film’s director Richard Longacre - that will be simulcast at cinemas around the country.
Sir Ian told an audience at the launch that he wrote the adaptation in ‘lonely hotel rooms’ while his colleagues went out drinking during the US tour of the same stage show.
He said: “It was such a popular production with audiences across the world that I thought ‘what a pity we can’t reach more audiences’. That’s the great thing about cinema – it can go worldwide.
“Shakespeare invented so many things and he invented, I believe, the cinematic cut – one scene ending and another immediately starting. The story speeds along.
“So half the work is done for you. I also relished that we had close up where we could do things rather subtlely but immediately that you can’t do in the cinema.”
His Richard III was shot around the capital, including at the old Bankside Power Station (now the Tate Modern), Battersea Power Station, Strawberry Hill House and Eltham Palace.
Sir Ian said: “I have always thought it might be fun to take a bus tour around the sites of Richard III in London and you would watch snippets of the film sitting in the coach and then you would arrive at the location and see it in person.”
It seems the actor will get his wish, with such tours planned as part of the season.
Of the other Shakespeare adaptations for the big screen, Sir Ian has plenty of favourites.
He said: “Without question Ralph Fiennes as Coriolanus, which he directed. I hope he does more Shakespeare. It’s a wonderful film.
“That, too, is a modernised version set in a readily understandable context, and it gets right to the heart of the play.
“Tony Hopkins as Titus Andronicus was absolutely wonderful. And everybody in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet.”
Find out more about the BFI’s Shakespeare on Film season at bfi.org.uk/Shakespeare
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