Shakespeare in Performance: Film

Henry V (1943, Reginald Beck)

Description

Dedicated to the British Paratroops who were preparing then for the WWII D-day landings in Normandy, this film was designed to bolster the morale of an embattled nation. It bears close comparison therefore with the differently oriented Kenneth Branagh 1989 film of Henry V (182.2). The exploits of England's fifteenth-century Henry V in France were to be emulated by the soldiers of the mid-twentieth century. The colorful battle scenes, which required the construction of a half-mile-long track for the camera to record the famous French cavalry charge, were shot at Enniskerry, Ireland, with extras recruited from among the Home Guard. The rest of the film was made at the Denham and Pinewood studios, England. The replica of medieval London, modeled after Visscher's famous view, was especially constructed for the establishing shot that tracks a fluttering handbill down to the site of the Globe. In a crane shot, the camera glances over the city, momentarily pauses at the adjacent Bear Garden and then closes in on the Globe playhouse. The lively realism of the Elizabethan playhouse is contrasted with the subsequent artifice of the sequences in France, modeled after an illuminated manuscript, Les très riches heures du Duc de Berry. Olivier thus offers the audience "a Muse of fire" (KSR)

Description from Shakespeare on Screen : an International Filmography and Videography by Kenneth S. Rothwell and Annabelle Henkin Melzer. ©1990 Kenneth S. Rothwell. Cited by permission. — Added 2008-11-14

Cast Overview

Production Team and Crew Overview

Production information courtesy of: Kenneth Rothwell