Bereamic Awesome Movie

Salubfoto It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Robert Joyner The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

James Hitchcock "Richard III" was the third, and last, of the three Shakespearean films directed by Sir Laurence Olivier, after "Henry V" and "Hamlet". The story is too well known to be set out here; indeed, Shakespeare's version of history is probably more familiar than the story of the real King Richard. The prologue states that the film is based as much upon legend as upon historical fact, thereby acknowledging that Shakespeare used a good deal of artistic licence. In some ways, in fact, the film goes even further than Shakespeare in its rewriting of history, although normally for a good artistic reason. The film opens with a scene not found in the play, the coronation of King Edward IV who is accompanied by his wife, two sons and adult brother Richard. In fact, Edward's coronation took place in 1461, when he was unmarried, his sons as yet unborn and Richard still a child. This scene, however, enables Olivier to assemble all the main characters and introduce us to them.The real Edward IV was a strong, vigorous man, standing around 6' 4" tall, who died suddenly at the age of forty. Here he is played by the diminutive, sixty-something Cedric Hardwicke, as a feeble old man. The purpose behind this piece of casting was to emphasise Richard's Machiavellian nature, secretly laying long-term plans to seize the throne in the inevitable event of his brother's demise. (In reality, Richard was probably as taken by surprise as anyone else by his brother's death, and his rise to power was a quick reaction to fast-moving events). Similarly, Edward's death and Richard's seizure of power took place in the spring and early summer of 1483, but here these events are shown as occurring during a bleak, snowy winter, to emphasise that the brief "glorious summer of this sun of York" is now over and that England faces a return to the "winter of our discontent".Olivier does correct one of Shakespeare's inaccuracies by removing the character of Queen Margaret who, at the time of the events depicted, would either have been in exile, or dead. This, however, was probably an inadvertent by-product of Olivier's cutting the original text to produce something more suited to the cinema. On the stage "Richard III" can be a rather unwieldy play, with a full production lasting up to four hours; at just under three hours the film is already considerably longer than the average fifties feature film.Unlike some more recent productions of the play, most notably Richard Loncraine's film from 1995 which updates the story to the 1930s and quite deliberately portrays Richard as a fascist-style dictator, Olivier does not attempt to draw parallels- at least not explicit ones- between Shakespeare's story and modern politics. (Of course, one could argue that those parallels are still there because Shakespeare understood the essential psychology underlying fascism and communism long before either ideology formally existed). Like Olivier's Henry V, the film is shot in vivid colour and attempts to reproduce the visual splendour of the Middle Ages with authentic period costumes. Most of it was shot on stylised Gothic sets in the studio, although the final scenes depicting the Battle of Bosworth Field were for some reason filmed on location in a region of Spain that looks nothing like Leicestershire.Olivier's Richard is not just a pantomime villain; he is also a consummate hypocrite, able to be all things to all men as the occasion demands, so Olivier has to call upon the full range of his acting skills to play the parts of loyal brother, ardent lover and man of the people as well as ranting tyrant. Although Olivier plays him with a limp, Richard's disabilities are not as evident as in some productions, so his speeches lamenting his "misshapen body" seem more like self-pity than genuine complaints. Olivier dominates the play, but there are other good contributions, especially from John Gielgud as Clarence (a far more sympathetic figure than the treacherous drunkard of legend) and Claire Bloom in the thankless role of Lady Anne, Richard's wife, who should have every cause to hate him but who inexplicably marries him.The film was not a great box-office success when first released in 1955, particularly in America where its prospects were harmed by the curious decision to broadcast it on American television on the day that it opened at the cinema. That relative failure ended Olivier's series of Shakespearean dramas; a film of "Macbeth" scheduled for 1957 had to be cancelled when Olivier was unable to secure the necessary funding. (That must be one of the great unmade films of cinema history!) Today, however, its reputation seems secure as a classic, at least as good as the Oscar-winning "Henry V" which was much-praised upon its release. Olivier's performance as Richard, portraying him as (in the words of the historian Professor Richard Harrison) that "slit-eyed, snaky, deformed embodiment of evil" has passed into legend; for many people it has become (to the disgust of the king's modern apologists, and he has many) the definitive image of King Richard III. 8/10 Some goofs. As stated above, a number of key scenes are switched from spring/summer to winter. I have no quarrel with this change, which was done for good artistic reasons, but Olivier should have cut that line about "strawberries" which in the fifteenth century would not have been available out of season. Some of the heraldic banners are incorrect; Lord Stanley, as King of Man, would indeed have been entitled to quarter the Manx arms with his own, but the Manx "three legs" symbol should appear on a red background, not a blue one as here. And Richard III never used the arms attributed to him of a white boar between four white roses on a red shield.

arieliondotcom Shakespeare himself must rejoice whenever this version of his play/movie is shown. It boasts his own witty dialogue placed in the mouths of some of the greatest actors of our times to make it understood these several centuries later. It's in technicolor so you see the pomp & circumstance in glorious Technicolor (literally). You even get the humor dripping with bitter irony most of the time. The one flaw of the film was the decision of Olivier's make-up (or lack of it). It's clear from Shakespeare's description in Olivier's/Richard's first soliliquoy that Shakespeare wants him to be shown deformed & heavily so. He should look like Charles Laughton in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. But, perhaps because Olivier didn't want himself disfigured, the only hint we get is a limp. I think this does discredit to the author even though it plays to the prejudice that Hunchback fought against, that the deg formed are evil. Having said that, it's a wonderful movie & a classic that can be forgiven its one flaw of perfection.

Neil Doyle Just before he meets his gruesome death, RICHARD III utters those immortal Shakespearean lines--and, as delivered by LAURENCE OLIVIER, they are spoken in a highly melodramatic manner--as is most of the other prose whenever someone has a "big" scene to play.But Olivier gives most of the big moments to himself--and he does them with great finesse and dramatic flair. Still, I think his Richard could have been even more threatening than he managed to be (I'm thinking of Basil Rathbone in THE TOWER OF London). Likewise, RALPH RICHARDSON gives a sly look or two while they're plotting to eliminate candidates for the throne, but never seems to be evil enough to make his part seem believable. He almost seems like an innocent victim of Richard's machinations at times.CLAIRE BLOOM is lovely as Anne, but her sudden switch from mourning widow who spits at Richard to a woman who listens calmly to his loving talk and accepts an engagement ring is slightly ridiculous.The British cast is uniformly excellent, as always in these Shakespearean things, and JOHN GIELGUD is especially convincing as the ill-fate Clarence who gets drowned in a vat of wine.The killing of the two boys in the Tower could have been handled with more high drama than it is, but all the highly dramatic moments seem to go to Olivier only.Best acting job in the cast is done by ALEC CLUNES as Lord of Hastings, the only actor in the whole show who knows how to underplay effectively rather deliver bombastic shouts. CEDRIC HARDWICKE chews quite a bit of scenery in his death scene.William Alton's music is quite impressive, as is the color photography, vivid and affording many striking visuals of interiors and exteriors.The device of Richard speaking asides to the camera is a bit overused at times and is a bit distracting until the viewer gets used to it.Summing up: A good film, but not a great one--could have been so much better.

Robert J. Maxwell I suppose there are different ways of presenting this play and different ways of interpreting the characters but I doubt that any will be an improvement over Olivier's attempt. He does a splendid job as lead and as director.And it's not an easy story to follow either. Oh, we know Richard the man pretty well. To call him Machiavellian is to do Machiavelli an injustice. Richard is more of a psychopath and would be easy to find under a longer and more elaborate name in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. My God, he's so unashamedly evil, cackling at the audience as he pulls off his stunts, that he's laughable. We kind of lose him towards the end -- those murders of the two kids in the Tower are unforgivable. It's one thing to bash a rival, however innocent, over the head and stick him in a barrel of wine to drown, but it's another to harm a child, kick a dog, or smoke in public.But although we can grasp Richard, it's a little hard to follow the story unless you know your English history. I was forced in high school to memorize the English kings and queens -- beginning with Ethelred the Black, or was it Ethelblack the Red -- and it didn't help a bit in following the plot in this play. Come to think of it, why were we forced into that in the first place. What good could such knowledge possibly be in Newark, New Jersey? Would it help you get a job in the Pabst Brewery? No. No, it wouldn't. It was the teacher's brilliant idea. I never liked her anyway. Even her name -- Miss Viola Wormwood.Anyway, it's kind of humiliating to think that the groundlings in Shakespeare's audience knew more about the rules of succession than most of us do today. We just have to take it on faith that Clarence and the rest had to be knocked off in order for Richard to pluck down that crown.There are a lot of other aspects of intrigue that got by me, and I imagine get by a lot of others. I suspect that in some way, at some level of consciousness, Olivier, who constructed this play with the precision of a horologist, must have realized this because there are times when he rattles off some lines of confusing dialog with such speed that they can hardly be grasped. It's as if he'd shrugged and decided to just let it go. We still get the sense of what's going on, if not the details. Actually, Olivier always pronounces his words evenly and with rapier-like staccato precision. It's interesting to compare his delivery with that of the more old-fashioned John Gielgud, who tends to use rrrringing tones and adds a dramatic vibrato to some of his more important pronouncements, as if aiming for the balcony. There are a couple of problems with the plot that originate with Shakespeare. For one thing, here is Richard -- not only a treacherous liar and murderer but a rude lump of foul deformity, yet he's able to seduce Lady Anne who, in this event, is the radiant Claire Bloom. Every man should be so ugly. And before the climactic battle on Bosworth Field, Richard lies sweating in his bed and is visited by the ghosts of his victims. The next day, sleepless and ruffled and uncertain, he reveals his troubles to some subordinate. I don't know where that came from. He's been a textbook-perfect psychopath and suddenly he suffers pangs of conscience? ("Conscience is for cowards.") It doesn't last long, though. He perks himself up without so much as a cup of morning coffee, swings up on his horse, wheels around, leans down and chuckles at the camera, "Richard is himself again." Doesn't matter. It's a great performance of a great play in a great movie.