viewing

Notes on Olivier AS YOU LIKE IT (1936)

Triangulating Shakespeare
Screenplay or suggested by J.M. Barrie of Peter Pan fame

Orlando--caged in barnyard--with peasants--Breughel painting

Adam helps Oliver, who then calls him old dog

Intrigue with Charles inside dark castle; Charles like "Little John" in Robin Hood

Storybook disney castle --fairytale atmosphere--music--prince and princesses--really childish and ditzy; giggles and smiles too wide; love as play, not passion or sex--heroes and villains. Melodrama--at banishment two girls weeping on floor

LeBeau--the beautiful; a dandy and fop; court spectacle at entrance of Frederick=Canterbury in HV

Duke Senior is fat like Henry VIII; dead character and scene

Getting the point of Orlando's departure--old age and youth and girls--marginal people go to woods; more and more people marginalized--low content vs. high splendor; parallel migrations; gentility vs savagery--"this place is a butchery"

Universal compassion in Jaques' speech; hand on shoulder by Duke at end; reviving the old man as in Lear--poverty and deprivation makes compassion

Touchstone: better world is at home vs. better world in banishment; tie in with Tim O'Brian--the man in the boat; the Canadian border--moving to King Lear

Trees as books--Duke and Orlando; poems on trees film sequence

Touchstone in sheepskin; looking like animal; sheep; Toucstone as fey--all the characters as fey

Ros and Celia all over each other in woods.

Pastoral of love and of melancholy--Silvius and Jaques...and Roz. The melancholy lover.Preoccupation with oaths-being on time; on time to marriage; staying true afterward

 

Use of three Rosalind voices in IV.i: Ganymede low, real Ros mdium and false Ros. high. [e.g. I'll die] She's carrying whip--mistress dominatrix--varieties of love; Adieu, at two; kissing tree. Still all over Celia

Roz and Celia in bed as messenger comes in.

I can no longer live in imagination...

I for no woman emphasized strongly, although this production shows the women very close.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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