A Film Canon

Whereas most early cinematic adaptations of Shakespeare are little more than a series of enunciatory spectacles, Richard III - the earliest surviving American feature-length film - aims for a more fleshed-out narrative, and a richer, more sophisticated series of tableaux. Although the latter benefit from Calmettes and Keane's preoccupation with shooting on location, their most ingenious characteristic is their translation of Richard's intermediary position between action and audience into an extension of theatrical into cinematic space, such that his function as a kind of lurking transition between scenes - whether by functioning as their prologue or epilogue - ultimately gestures towards the liberating potential of the cut. Similarly, Richard III's relatively early position in Shakespeare's canon lends itself both to the melodramatic, even Marlovian, excesses of early silent cinema, as well as its reliance on sensory spectacle, as if the play's hyperbolic register were translated directly into visual hyperactivity, encapsulated in Frederick Warde's frenzied performance.