| Lopert Films | Release Date: March 11, 1956 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
10
Mixed:
1
Negative:
0
|
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Critic Reviews
Laurence Olivier gives the textbook course on Shakespearean villainy as crown-stealing schemer Richard. Considered by many to be Olivier's best take on the Bard. [22 Feb 2004]
[Olivier's] greatest Shakespearean movie. [27 Feb 2004]
Olivier has made a superbly dramatic film, in which by variations of tempo, by superb acting on the part of the awe-inspiring cast, and by a wonderful knack of indicating the side-shows while maintaining the main theme of Richard's own drama, he has cheated the clock. His long film never, or hardly ever, seems long.
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Of all Olivier's Shakespearean films, Richard III is, to my way of thinking, the most satisfying, the most surprising and - it has to be said - the funniest. [24 Apr 1981, p.C6]
As director and star, Olivier succeeds with the soliloquies as neither he nor anyone else ever did on film before; they're intimate, yet brazen.
Donning a doozy of a puttied schnoz, a slightly exaggerated limp, and a boyish, midnight-black wig, Sir Laurence Olivier feels more at home in the eponymous role of his own adaptation of Richard III than he does in any of his other storied roles, holding and releasing the succulent prose with unerring confidence and clarity.
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This film lacks the cinematic boldness of Olivier's earlier screen Shakespeare; there's nothing here to match the gloomy mise-en-scene of Hamlet or the cocky theatrical conceits of Henry V. But his riveting performance transcends his conventional directing and utterly dominates the movie.
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