As You Like It | |
---|---|
Directed by | Christine Edzard |
Based on | As You Like It by William Shakespeare |
Produced by | Olivier Stockman George Reinhart |
Starring | James Fox Cyril Cusack Andrew Tiernan Celia Bannerman Emma Croft Griff Rhys Jones Roger Hammond Don Henderson Miriam Margolyes |
Cinematography | Robin Vidgeon |
Music by | Michel Sanvoisin |
Production company | Sands Films Ltd. |
Distributed by | Squirrel Films Distribution Ltd |
Release date |
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Running time | 112 minutes |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
As You Like It is a 1991 British film based on the play As You Like It by William Shakespeare. It was devised, written and directed by Christine Edzard and produced by Olivier Stockman and George Reinhart.
The music is by Michel Sanvoisin and the film stars James Fox as Jacques, plus Cyril Cusack, Andrew Tiernan, Celia Bannerman, Emma Croft as Rosalind, Griff Rhys Jones as Touchstone, Roger Hammond, Don Henderson and Miriam Margolyes. [1]
Sands Films, the production company that made the film, is owned and run by Christine Edzard, the screenwriter and director, and her husband Richard B. Goodwin. [2]
As You Like It was a very low budget production filmed on an empty plot of land near Sands Films studios in Rotherhithe in the docklands of east London, which at that time was only partially reconstructed. Some of the cast members were known in British and Irish TV and theatre, but none had a high international profile except for James Fox.
It was the seventh collaboration between Goodwin and Edzard, who is known for her meticulous filmmaking, often based on Victorian English sources. [3] Their earlier productions include Stories from a Flying Trunk (1979), The Nightingale (1981), Biddy (1983), Little Dorrit (1987) and The Fool (1990). Later productions include Amahl and the Night Visitors (1996), The IMAX Nutcracker (1997), The Children's Midsummer Night's Dream (2001) and The Good Soldier Schwejk (2018).
The film follows director Christine Edzard's tradition of "working outside the artistic constraints...(of)...major commercial financing". In her version of As You Like It, set in an urban wasteland, "the weather is never kind", and the exiled live in tents and cardboard boxes reminiscent of the scenes of homelessness which characterised Britain when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister. [4]
Relocating Shakespeare's original comedy to the corporate world of London, whose "blighted docklands" are a "trenchant condemnation of Thatcher's Britain", continues the engagement with "social malfeance and urban ills" that characterised the director's earlier films Little Dorrit (1987) and The Fool (1990). [5] This pattern of innovation also reappears in Edzard's The Children's Midsummer Night's Dream (2001). [6]
The film had a low budget of £800,000, a short shooting period of five weeks, and was made at independent Sands Films studio, with art-house distribution. In addition to its small and collaborative production team and non-commercial aims, As You Like It is an experimental, unconventional and challenging work which deliberately uses relocations in time and place to create a unique reproduction of Shakespeare's original play.
Like Edzard's version of Charles Dickens' Little Dorrit , this project uses the city as a metaphor, explores the complexities of double perspectives and focuses on societies at work. As the director explained though, the two films were also completely different. With Dickens "the truth of the character is in the nineteenth century, and the truth does not materialize until you start putting in all the detail", whereas, with Shakespeare, Edzard says "I don't believe that you can reach the sixteenth century in that sort of way. It's too remote: it would become an archaeological dig. The nineteenth century has a closeness to us in reproduction terms. The intention of the play is that it is a play and that it is meant to be rethought every time you do it. A film has to be as tightly rooted to its origins as is feasible, and it has to carry the message that the past has changed to us."
Edzard's philosophy explains the relocation of the film to the contemporary, urban setting of the 1990s, of the court to a corporate emporium and of the Forest of Arden to a wasteland. The relocation brings the two worlds of the 1590s and 1990s together through a shared vision of "national blight", corruption, and a shabby shallowness, in both of which the existence of and reaction to "buskers, beggars and...squatters" were familiar. [7]
Edzard's As You Like It also self-consciously dramatises the threat to nature - a protective attitude that was not present in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The forest is replaced with cellophane and the landscape is one of wasted, broken-down, urban surfaces which powerfully show a lack of respect for biodiversity. [6]
AllMovie.com described the film as a "modern-dress rendition of Shakespeare's famous "comedy"" which features more of the original dialogue than the 1936 film version. The reviewer suggested that while the "anachronistic modern settings" could be confusing for some viewers, others could enjoy "the interpretations...by some of the better performers" of British theatre in the 1990s. [8]
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a comedy play written by William Shakespeare in about 1595 or 1596. The play is set in Athens, and consists of several subplots that revolve around the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta. One subplot involves a conflict among four Athenian lovers. Another follows a group of six amateur actors rehearsing the play which they are to perform before the wedding. Both groups find themselves in a forest inhabited by fairies who manipulate the humans and are engaged in their own domestic intrigue. A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of Shakespeare's most popular and widely performed plays.
The Tales of Beatrix Potter is a 1971 ballet film based on the children's stories of English author and illustrator Beatrix Potter. The film was directed by Reginald Mills, choreographed by Sir Frederick Ashton, and featured dancers from The Royal Ballet. The musical score was arranged by John Lanchbery from various sources, such as the operas of Michael Balfe and of Sir Arthur Sullivan, and performed by the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House conducted by Lanchbery. It was produced by Richard Goodwin with John Brabourne as executive producer. The stories were adapted by Goodwin and his wife designer Christine Edzard.
Little Dorrit is a 1987 film adaptation of the 1857 novel Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens. It was written and directed by Christine Edzard, and produced by John Brabourne and Richard B. Goodwin. The music by Giuseppe Verdi was arranged by Michael Sanvoisin.
James Edward Fleet is an English actor of theatre, radio and screen. He is most famous for his roles as the bumbling and well-meaning Tom in the 1994 British romantic comedy film Four Weddings and a Funeral and the dim-witted but kind-hearted Hugo Horton in the BBC sitcom television series The Vicar of Dibley. Since 2020, he has played King George III in the Netflix Bridgerton.
Ken Ludwig is an American playwright, author, screenwriter, and director whose work has been performed in more than 30 countries in over 20 languages. He has had six productions on Broadway and eight in London's West End. His 34 plays and musicals are staged throughout the United States and around the world every night of the year.
A Midsummer Night's Rave is a 2002 American film adapted from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream released on November 1, 2002. The film stars Corey Pearson, Lauren German, Andrew Keegan, Chad Lindberg, and Sunny Mabrey; and was directed by Gil Cates Jr. It is set at a rave, rather than the forest where most of the original is set. The film received little attention from professional movie critics, but is considered a success with teen audiences, and has been used as an exemplar for a category of movies in more academic publications.
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a 1999 fantasy romantic comedy film written, produced, and directed by Michael Hoffman, based on the 1600 play of the same name by William Shakespeare. The ensemble cast features Kevin Kline as Bottom, Michelle Pfeiffer and Rupert Everett as Titania and Oberon, Stanley Tucci as Puck, and Calista Flockhart, Anna Friel, Christian Bale, and Dominic West as the four lovers.
Christine Edzard is a film director, writer, and costume designer, nominated for BAFTA and Oscar awards for her screenwriting. She has been based in London for most of her career.
The Baltimore Shakespeare Festival was a small nonprofit theatre that produced plays by or about Shakespeare in Baltimore, Maryland. It also had an educational program that introduced school children to Shakespeare. The company existed, in different forms, from 1994 to 2010.
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The Fool is a 1990 British film set in Victorian England's world of finance directed by Christine Edzard and produced by John Brabourne and Richard Goodwin, from a script by Edzard and Olivier Stockman. It stars Derek Jacobi, Cyril Cusack, Ruth Mitchell, Maria Aitken, Irina Brook, Paul Brook and Miranda Richardson. The camerawork was by British cinematographer Robin Vidgeon.
Sands Films is a small, independent, British film production company, founded by producer Richard Goodwin and director Christine Edzard in the early 1970s, and based in Rotherhithe, London. The company is known for its production of costumes for period dramas and is run by Olivier Stockman and Christine Edzard. Since 2005 the building has been open to the public regularly via the Sands Films Cinema Club and Music Room, adding to the "remarkable and very valuable operation, which not only creates in-house, but also opens a window on another world."
Celia Bannerman is an English actress and director.
Richard B. Goodwin is a British film producer. As a producer, he received an Academy Award nomination for A Passage to India (1984). His other films include The Tales of Beatrix Potter (1971), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), Death on the Nile (1978), The Mirror Crack'd (1980), Evil Under the Sun (1982), Little Dorrit (1987), and Seven Years in Tibet (1997).
Stories from a Flying Trunk is a 1979 film based on three stories by Hans Christian Andersen. It was devised, written and directed by Christine Edzard and produced by John Brabourne and Richard Goodwin.
The Children's Midsummer Night's Dream is a 2001 film based on the play A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare. It was written and directed by Christine Edzard and produced by Olivier Stockman. The music by Michel Sanvoisin was performed by the Goldsmiths Youth Orchestra, conducted by Eli Corp. The film features Jamie Peachey, John Heyfron, Danny Bishop, Jessica Fowler and Leane Lyson. It uses Shakespeare's complete text, as well as elaborate costumes and “intricately and properly scaled sets” created in the studio.
Biddy is a 1983 film written and directed by Christine Edzard, and produced by Richard B. Goodwin at Sands Films Studios in London. The film stars acclaimed actress and theatre director Celia Bannerman, Sam Ghazoros, Kate Elphic, Patricia Napier, Sally Ashby, and John Dalby. The music was arranged by Michael Sanvoisin and cinematography was by Alec Mills.
The Nightingale is a 1981 film directed by Christine Edzard and produced by Richard B. Goodwin at Sands Films Studios in London. The film features Richard Goolden, Mandy Carlin and John Dalby. The music by Beethoven was arranged by Michael Sanvoisin and cinematography was by Christopher Challis. The film uses puppets to tell Hans Christian Andersen's tale about the song of a nightingale heard by the little kitchen girl at the Emperor of China's palace.
The IMAX Nutcracker is a 1997 short Christmas film directed by Christine Edzard based on The Nutcracker and the Mouse King by E. T. A. Hoffmann. It was produced by Celia Bannerman, Andrew Gellis, Lorne Orleans and Olivier Stockman at Sands Films Studios in London. The film stars Miriam Margolyes, Heathcote Williams, Lotte Johnson, Benjamin Hall, Harriet Thorpe, and Patrick Pearson.
The Good Soldier Schwejk is a 2018 anti-war satirical film directed by Christine Edzard. It is based on the dark comedy novel The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek, published between 1921 and 1923. The film was produced by Olivier Stockman at Sands Films Studios in London and stars Alfie Stewart, Joe Armstrong, Kevin Brewer, Sean Gilder, Shona McWilliams and Michael Mears. Music was arranged by Michael Sanvoisin and cinematography was by Joachim Bergamin.