MovieChat Forums > Richard III (1956) Discussion > The twin crimes of being boring and fals...

The twin crimes of being boring and false


Shakespeare wrote a false history.
Olivier made it boring.

That's about all I have to say on this film.
The 1995 version is only slightly better.
5/10

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[deleted]

Without elaboration, your comment is useless.

"It ain't dying I'm talking about, it's LIVING!"
Captain Augustus McCrae

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I'm not convinced elaboration would've helped.

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Boring - matter of opinion, tho watching a ruthless character claw his way to the top is not that for me. False - there is a disclaimer at the start about old legends, scorned by proof, still worth telling.

For me it is Olivier who makes this. What a protean actor, you would not know it is the same man who played Hamlet, or Othello (or Heathcliff). Josephine Tey thought the same. She must have seen him act this part before the movie was made, because she described his performance in her crime novel 'The Daughter of Time' (which should be read by every Richard III fan). A character describes it as 'the most dazzling performance of sheer evil, it was. Always on the edge of toppling over into the grotesque, and never doing it.' Luckily, it is now captured on film for all time, so we can see what she saw. I sure did.

One of the few films I have seen more than once. Looking forward to getting the blu-Ray version, with the deleted battle scenes.

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You won't be disappointed; the picture is absolutely beautiful.

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"Boring - matter of opinion, tho watching a ruthless character claw his way to the top is not that for me."

Absolutely! I'm always riveted by this movie. It never feels its length. I love Olivier's performance (so chilling, yet funny and charismatic, and yes even weirdly tragic) and the Book of Hours aesthetic.

As for false, well, that's baked into the original play, but the movie makes it plain that is the case with the preface about printing the legend.

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Never seen a convincing version of this play. I think it's overrated. A terrible, unlikable guy kills a bunch of stupid, unlikable people and gets killed himself at the end. Not much of a drama here.

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"Not much of a drama" in Shakespeare's Richard III? ROTFLMAO!!!

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Don't blame Shakespear! He had to write Richard as a villain, because he had to answer to the royal descendant of Henry Tudor, who'd killed Richard and literllaly taken his crown.


Not that there's a lot of good to be said about Richard, other than that he probably didn't kill his nephews (the Tudors had a better motive). He did steal his nephew's crown, he had zero legal right to be king.


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