King Lear

King Lear is a 1971 British film adaptation of the Shakespeare play directed by Peter Brook and starring Paul Scofield. Filmed in stark black-and-white, the film was inspired by the absurdist theatre of playwrights such as Samuel Beckett and upon release was noted for its bleak tone and wintry atmosphere. Cast Cyril Cusack as Albany Susan Engel as Regan Tom Fleming as Kent Anne-Lise Gabold as Cordelia Ian Hogg as Edmund Søren Elung Jensen as Duke of Burgundy Robert Langdon Lloyd as Edgar (as Robert Lloyd) Jack MacGowran as Fool Patrick Magee as Cornwall Paul Scofield as King Lear Barry Stanton as Oswald Alan Webb as Gloucester Irene Worth as Goneril Production Peter Brook’s version of King Lear was prompted by an essay by Polish critic Jan Kott titled “King Lear or Endgame”, where Kott writes that Shakespeare's play is a tragedy of the grotesque, “an ironic, clownish morality play, […] a mockery of all eschatologies: of the heaven promised on earth, and the heaven promised after death.” The film was shot in 16mm black-and-white and mostly made in the mid-winter dune country of the Jutland Peninsula of Denmark. Review Brook's film starkly divided the critics: Pauline Kael said "I didn't just dislike this production, I hated it!" and suggested the alternative title "Night of the Living Dead". Yet Robert Hatch in The Nation thought it as "excellent a filming of the play as one can expect" and Vincent Canby in The New York Times called it "an exalting Lear, full of exquisite terror". The film drew heavily on the ideas of Jan Kott, in particular his observation that King Lear was the precursor of absurdist theatre: in particular, the film has parallels with Beckett's Endgame.