Shakespeare at the Cineplex

The Last Decade Of The Twentieth Century proved to be the most fertile in the hundred-year history of Shakespeare on film. Samuel Crowl's study, Shakespeare at the Cineplex, is the first comprehensive critical exploration of the fifteen major Shakespeare films released since the surprising success of Kenneth Branagh's Henry V (1989). The period between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, constitutes what Crowl terms "the long decade" in which British and American film directors turned increasingly to the works of classic authors as material for films. The success of Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing and Baz Luhrmann's William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet made Shakespeare a hot property in Hollywood. Shakespeare at the Cineplex provides a full account of the rich variety of the Shakespeare films released in the long decade, from Hollywood-saturated productions like Franco Zeffirelli's Hamlet and Michael Hoffman's A Midsummer Night's Dream to more modest, low-budget, experimental offerings like Christine Edzard's As You Like It and Adrian Noble's A Midsummer Night's Dream. While Crowl credits Branagh for the remarkable renaissance of Shakespeare on screen and places his four films at the heart of the decade's achievement in the genre, he also has high praise for films as diverse as Trevor Nunn's Twelfth Night, Julie Taymor's Titus, and Michael Almereyda's Hamlet. Shakespeare at the Cineplex will be welcome reading for the many audiences attracted to Shakespeare by the work of Branagh and his contemporaries as well as for students and scholars of Shakespeare in performance.