Adapting Shakespeare is hard. Adapting a comic work of literature is hard. Adapting a comic Shakespeare work is a challenge of a tremendous magnitude, especially when you were limited to the technology of the 1930s and the staginess of the film technique of that period. It is like brushing your teeth with one bristle.
And yet...this may be my favorite of all the Shakespeare films I've seen. Which is no small feat because "As You Like It" is my favorite of Shakespeare's plays, so I'm downright picky about how it is adapted.
Yes, the play has been shortened. But the essence of it is there, and most of what people like about the play is intact. I did not feel like anything worthwhile was missing, even though it had been a while since I'd read the intact play.
The elements that make a good comedy are here as well, which is so hard to do when you're in the twentieth century doing a Shakespearian play. Most of all, it is that the performers (especially Bergner) look like they are enjoying themselves. Even if we don't get all the jokes and references that were understood in Shakespeare's day (or we can't understand the words because the 1930s soundtrack is muffled at times), we don't mind because the performers are having a good time and, by osmosis, so are we. It would have been so easy for less-talented performers to be so reverent to the material that they fail to understand that it is meant to be a comedy, and therefore spend their screentime memorizing lines rather than inhabiting their characters.
Making Shakespeare come alive in a movie is not easy, and I'll admit I did not have high hopes for this film. But I was won over by its unique charm, and it makes every farce ever made that came after look derivative.
And yet...this may be my favorite of all the Shakespeare films I've seen. Which is no small feat because "As You Like It" is my favorite of Shakespeare's plays, so I'm downright picky about how it is adapted.
Yes, the play has been shortened. But the essence of it is there, and most of what people like about the play is intact. I did not feel like anything worthwhile was missing, even though it had been a while since I'd read the intact play.
The elements that make a good comedy are here as well, which is so hard to do when you're in the twentieth century doing a Shakespearian play. Most of all, it is that the performers (especially Bergner) look like they are enjoying themselves. Even if we don't get all the jokes and references that were understood in Shakespeare's day (or we can't understand the words because the 1930s soundtrack is muffled at times), we don't mind because the performers are having a good time and, by osmosis, so are we. It would have been so easy for less-talented performers to be so reverent to the material that they fail to understand that it is meant to be a comedy, and therefore spend their screentime memorizing lines rather than inhabiting their characters.
Making Shakespeare come alive in a movie is not easy, and I'll admit I did not have high hopes for this film. But I was won over by its unique charm, and it makes every farce ever made that came after look derivative.