ABSTRACT
As Michael Almereyda acknowledges, his film is, in the Welles tradition, a "rough charcoal sketch" of the play made with the understanding that you don't need lavish production values to make a William Shakespeare movie that is accessible and alive. In the era of silent film Shakespeare was plundered for material by filmmakers in continental Europe, England, Russia, and America. The first talking Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew, appeared in 1929 and was a collaboration between two of Hollywood's most famous stars, the husband-and-wife team of Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and Mary Pickford. In its twelve decades of growth the American Shakespeare film can be seen as going through some major stages of development: the post-World War II period dominated by the films of Orson Welles, and the silent Shakespeares. Although Orson Welles, metaphorically speaking, took the American Shakespeare film from the Hollywood studio to the European street, his move was not the end of Hollywood studio Shakespeare.
