The Merchant of Venice
I have been occupied and amidst all the outcries of elitism in the last two months of Dec about a certain Humanities scholar, unwilling to blog, as I did not want to blog on the topic and worse still add more unkind words to what ever has been said.
Let me get started on a play I love to teach in Secondary school (junior college's a whole different thing) Have you ever watched the Godfather series? I have made a whole batch of RI boys watch Godfather 3 when it opened in the theatres. Of course, that meant that they would have an excuse to tell their worried mothers that they have to watch the entire trilogy.
If you watch Godfather 3, you will realise why Michael Radford, upon writing his screen play for his cinematic adaptation of The Merchant of Venice, HAD to sign Al Pacino up to play SHYLOCK. The last scene of Michael Corleone, tragically bereft of the daughter he loved, is a fallen, desolate soul. It is a wordless scene, with Al Pacino offering us a very visceral depiction of the pain his character is going through.
This same desolate image is seen in the final scene of Radford's The Merchant of Venice. With Radford's version, he does things with camera shifts and takes that a stage production cannot.
Let me get started on a play I love to teach in Secondary school (junior college's a whole different thing) Have you ever watched the Godfather series? I have made a whole batch of RI boys watch Godfather 3 when it opened in the theatres. Of course, that meant that they would have an excuse to tell their worried mothers that they have to watch the entire trilogy.
If you watch Godfather 3, you will realise why Michael Radford, upon writing his screen play for his cinematic adaptation of The Merchant of Venice, HAD to sign Al Pacino up to play SHYLOCK. The last scene of Michael Corleone, tragically bereft of the daughter he loved, is a fallen, desolate soul. It is a wordless scene, with Al Pacino offering us a very visceral depiction of the pain his character is going through.
This same desolate image is seen in the final scene of Radford's The Merchant of Venice. With Radford's version, he does things with camera shifts and takes that a stage production cannot.
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