One of Shakespeare's best known comedies, this could have been a great film if not for one absolutely fatal flaw. It is an adaptation of a Shakespearean play that I was only familiar with by its reputation so I don't know how much or how little is left out of the film. In any event, the play is a great tale of love and injustice but I don't think that it is one of the Bard's better works. The film is generally well directed by Paul Czinner and there are several famous names behind the camera: the screenwriter J.M. Barrie, the cameraman Jack Cardiff, the editor David Lean and the composer William Walton.
The aforementioned fatal flaw is the casting of Elisabeth Bergner, who just so happened to be the director's wife, as the protagonist Rosalind. Now, I have nothing against nepotism in films when it works but it certainly doesn't here. She is an absolutely atrocious actress who, rather impressively, manages to go through the entire film without delivering a single line in an even remotely convincing manner. You'd think that even by the law of averages she would manage it once or twice but she doesn't. Her performance, for lack of a better word, is one of the worst that I have ever seen in any film whatsoever and I'm afraid that that is not an exaggeration. Her horrendously over the top screeching and stilted delivery of all of her lines is incredibly painful. I actually yelled, "Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!" at the screen at one point. The annoying thing is that Rosalind is one of the strongest female characters that I have across in Shakespeare and she deserved better.
On the bright side, when Czinner looked beyond his family, he managed to assemble a great cast who make the film watchable. In his first on screen Shakespearean role, the 29-year-old Laurence Olivier is excellent as Rosalind's lover Orlando. He almost always makes acting, Shakespearean or otherwise, look so natural and this film is no exception. The scenes between him and Bergner are both a masterclass in how to act and how not to act, which is worth something I suppose. In terms of acting, they were like the agony and ecstasy. She was the agony. The film has a very strong supporting cast such as Sophie Stewart as Celia (who would have been far better in the role of Rosalind but, then again, who wouldn't?), Felix Aylmer as Duke Frederick, John Laurie as Orlando's brother Oliver, Leon Quartermaine as "Monsieur Melancholy" Jacques who delivers the famous "All the world's a stage" speech wonderfully and Henry Ainley as Duke Senior. Aylmer and Laurie later turned up in Olivier's Shakespearean films as a director. Bergner didn't, incidentally.
Overall, this had the potential to be a great film but the casting of the female lead was an utterly insurmountable problem. I'd probably have given it as much as 9/10 if someone who could act was cast as Rosalind. In 1949, the film was re-released with the tagline "Today's most lauded and applauded star." They didn't mean Elisabeth Bergner, unsurprisingly.
The aforementioned fatal flaw is the casting of Elisabeth Bergner, who just so happened to be the director's wife, as the protagonist Rosalind. Now, I have nothing against nepotism in films when it works but it certainly doesn't here. She is an absolutely atrocious actress who, rather impressively, manages to go through the entire film without delivering a single line in an even remotely convincing manner. You'd think that even by the law of averages she would manage it once or twice but she doesn't. Her performance, for lack of a better word, is one of the worst that I have ever seen in any film whatsoever and I'm afraid that that is not an exaggeration. Her horrendously over the top screeching and stilted delivery of all of her lines is incredibly painful. I actually yelled, "Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!" at the screen at one point. The annoying thing is that Rosalind is one of the strongest female characters that I have across in Shakespeare and she deserved better.
On the bright side, when Czinner looked beyond his family, he managed to assemble a great cast who make the film watchable. In his first on screen Shakespearean role, the 29-year-old Laurence Olivier is excellent as Rosalind's lover Orlando. He almost always makes acting, Shakespearean or otherwise, look so natural and this film is no exception. The scenes between him and Bergner are both a masterclass in how to act and how not to act, which is worth something I suppose. In terms of acting, they were like the agony and ecstasy. She was the agony. The film has a very strong supporting cast such as Sophie Stewart as Celia (who would have been far better in the role of Rosalind but, then again, who wouldn't?), Felix Aylmer as Duke Frederick, John Laurie as Orlando's brother Oliver, Leon Quartermaine as "Monsieur Melancholy" Jacques who delivers the famous "All the world's a stage" speech wonderfully and Henry Ainley as Duke Senior. Aylmer and Laurie later turned up in Olivier's Shakespearean films as a director. Bergner didn't, incidentally.
Overall, this had the potential to be a great film but the casting of the female lead was an utterly insurmountable problem. I'd probably have given it as much as 9/10 if someone who could act was cast as Rosalind. In 1949, the film was re-released with the tagline "Today's most lauded and applauded star." They didn't mean Elisabeth Bergner, unsurprisingly.