I spent most of yesterday watching this movie on YouTube (part one is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EGBKuapkX4) and so I couldn't resist writing a review.
If you’ve read the play enough to be familiar with the story, this version is very well worth watching. It cuts a few scenes, but nicely enough, the scenes it leaves in are hardly interfered with at all. I was pleasantly surprised, upon starting the movie, to find the opening scene completely intact; Salarino and Solanio are allowed to lapse into their “slips of prolixity”, and no one has to hurry it along. One feels that the director, John Sichel, would have liked to stage the whole movie like this.
As it is, most of Bassanio's, Portia's, Antonio's, Gratiano's, Nerissa's, and--of course--Shylock’s lines are there in their entirety, with only a few small cuts. In order to focus on the main plot, Sichel threw away most of the subplot, such as it was. We don’t get to see Launcelot Gobbo argue with his conscience or trick his father, nor is Lorenzo and Jessica’s elopement depicted; we merely overhear the plans for the said elopement and then find out she’s gone when Shylock leaves his house the next day and grimly accuses Salarino and Solonio of being in on the plan.
The setting of the play is updated to “the late 19th century”, a setting well-suited to Jeremy Brett as Bassanio. (Brett would later play Sherlock Holmes.) The characters wear waistcoats, bowlers and top hats (when Shylock tips his, you can catch a glimpse of his yarmulke), and most of them have mustaches; they carry canes and ride in horse-drawn carriages. When Salarino and Solanio make appearances, they read the latest “news on the Rialto” from newspapers. Portia’s three caskets appear on a revolving table, looking oddly casual in her little drawing-room, as if they were meant to hold tea leaves or calling cards.
The only problem with this setting--and you can decide for yourself whether it’s even a problem--is that every time Venice is mentioned, you blink a little. They’re clearly not in Venice, or even Venice, California. They’re in England, and when Portia tells Nerissa that she has “a poor pennyworth in the English”, the joke doesn’t seem like a joke; it seems like something they forgot to cut as part of their conception.
Perhaps as a reflection of the setting, emotions are--for the most part--reigned in. In the scene where the bond is made, Shylock and Antonio smile and joke around, but subtleties of expression and delivery--especially as they attempt to outargue one another on the theological implications of usury--make it clear that they hate each other. Antonio pulls Bassanio aside to inform him that “The devil can cite scripture to his purpose”. All pretence of friendliness is cast away when Shylock--still very calm, still smiling--brings up past wrongs. The “pound of flesh” bargain is made “in a merry sport”, getting a big laugh out of Antonio, who seems to appreciate the sharp humor of his business rival. Bassanio is left to hang in the background and look disturbed, cluing us in that all is not well, and even he recovers himself as soon as they step outside.
Anthony Nicholis’ Antonio, by the way, is an elderly man--as old as Laurence Olivier’s Shylock, from the looks of it--and this affects his characterization. There’s no melancholy whiff of regret that Bassanio is leaving him to go court a woman. His “sadness”--which he speaks of rather jokingly, with an upbeat British humor--reads as the result of old age and general dissatisfaction with his current state of affairs. We get the impression that Bassanio is a surrogate son, someone he’s taken in as a kind of godchild, and that lending him money is legitimately a pleasure, something to distract him from the tediousness of the day and to let him feel that he’s doing good for a young man he truly cares about.
Joan Plowright’s Portia is true-to-character, although she’s rather old for the part. Anna Carteret’s Nerissa looks younger and prettier; one feels that Morocco and Arragon, at least, are wooing Portia for her money only. As in the original play, Portia is calm and composed at all times--”a maiden hath no tongue but thought,” as she tells Bassanio. The difference is that everyone else lends the same impression. Morocco (played by a well-accented and jovial Stephen Greif) doesn’t look upset to have chosen the wrong casket, merely bemused. Sure, he promised “never to speak to lady afterwards/In way of marriage”, but it’s easy to miss that line; we don’t feel that he’s risked it all and lost it all, but rather that he’s played a quick carnival game and shrugged his shoulders at failing to knock down the teddy bear. He’s mostly just annoyed that the rhyme seemed to imply that he wasn’t smart enough to chose the right casket, and he says “Thus losers part” with a kind of airy superiority.
The old and senile Prince of Arragon (Charles Kay) doesn’t even have that problem; he does nothing but laugh slowly at everything that befalls him, including his discovery of “a fool’s head” (a mirror) in the silver casket, and Portia helps him back across the room to the door because he can barely walk on his own. His final line is, “I’ll keep my oath/Patiently to bear my wroth.” Wroth is an Elizabethan word meaning either wrath or grief, but Kay’s delivery conveys neither; he just seems happy to be going home.
While companionable and funny--in a way that’s amusing to his friends onscreen, not to us--Michael Jayston’s Gratiano doesn’t talk too loudly or slip out of any social boundaries, not even during the court scene, when he tells Shylock off. Bassanio’s choice of the right casket doesn’t lead to any cheering and partying from the others, nor does the reception of the letter make him shudder--he’s upset, but he reigns it in. We don’t get to see him take off his mask until Antonio’s about to die, at which point he finally professes, with a shaking voice, that he’d be willing to give his life and everything he has to save him. And, frightened as Antonio is, he’s a true English (Italian?) gentleman, polite and smiling to the bitter end.
In fact, the whole production might well have been based around Shylock’s line: “[N]o ill-luck stirring but what lights on my shoulders; no sighs but of my breathing, no tears but of my shedding.” It seems no one’s allowed to breathe sighs or shed tears except him, and this makes his wild, ever-shifting emotion even more effective. He’s as good at smiling detachment as anyone else at the beginning, but Jessica’s flight reduces him to a screaming, sobbing mess. Laurence Olivier hits all the right notes (although flinging her portrait onto the floor so that it shattered and broke was, perhaps, a wee bit much). In a capital twist, we get to see the exact moment when he decides to go through with his bargain. He’s eerily, threateningly calm when speaking of Jessica, but he dissolves into fury at Salarino’s ill-timed mention of Antonio and begins shouting, “There I have another bad match; a bankrupt, a prodigal, who dares scarce show his head on the Rialto: a beggar, that was used to come so smug upon the mart...”
His voice trails off, a churchbell chimes in the distance, and as an idea dawns upon him, he slowly adds, “Let him look to his bond.”
Salarino’s reaction to Shylock’s new resolution is also fantastic. He laughs, still not taking Shylock seriously, “Why, I am sure, if he forfeit, thou wilt not take his flesh...” And then, sounding more disturbed as Shylock fixes him with a significant look: “What’s that good for?”
Olivier gets further opportunity to be upset when a somber, funereal Tubal (Kenneth MacKintosh) comes to deliver him the news that Jessica traded his dead wife’s ring for a monkey: he sobs uncontrollably and kisses his wife's picture, and we feel stricken, uncomfortable, exactly the way we should feel. He dances madly and laughs out loud at the news of Antonio’s losses, at one point giving Tubal a huge hug; Tubal doesn't react, just puts a comforting hand on Shylock's shoulder.
Shylock’s back to his casual self at the start of the court scene, but he becomes upset again at the loss of his money, and on the stipulation that he must convert to Christianity he leans against one of the pillars in the courtroom, moaning, and must be helped up by a few of the others. After he leaves, the sound of him screaming in the hallway is heard; everyone looks at each other. There’s an awkward feeling to the way they pack up and leave after that; Antonio’s life has been saved, but no one feels like celebrating. Portia, in particular, is deeply sorry for what she had to do; she seems to have understand Shylock better than anyone in the room.
Jessica--accompanied by Lorenzo--is a ghostly presence. We see her bid farewell to Launcelot--in fact, as a result of the cuts, that’s the first time we see Launcelot--and we see her shakily swear to run away, but we don’t actually see her flight, nor does she joke with Lorenzo and Launcelot out in Portia’s garden. At the end, she seems to really believe herself when she accuses Lorenzo of “many vows of faith/And ne’er a true one.” Lorenzo is confused, not understanding why his new wife isn’t happy.
Launcelot is cut from this scene as well; the place where he doesn’t come in is used to the director’s advantage. After Lorenzo gets the message from Stephano, he asks Jessica to come inside with him to prepare for the coming of Portia; there’s a pause (typically the place where Launcelot would bound in, yelling), Jessica avoids his gaze, and Lorenzo repeats his request: “Sweet soul, let’s in, and there expect their coming.” His “And yet, no matter; why should we go in?” becomes an acknowledgement of the fact that Jessica doesn’t want to follow him; he stays outside with her and tries to engage her in his conversation about music, but fails to cheer her up.
After the play’s final line--Gratiano’s joke about “Nerissa’s ring”--the men head into the house, laughing; Jessica stands with Lorenzo peering over her shoulder and reads the deed signing Shylock’s money away to her and her husband in horrified disbelief. A kaddish plays in the background; according to IMBD, this is meant as a hint that Shylock went home after the court scene and died quietly, all alone.
As much as I think it’s inadvisable to kill Shylock off at the end of Merchant (one production I read about had him clubbed to death by a lynch mob in the streets), this wasn’t an explicit death--it was subtle enough that you could decide for yourself what happened. Either way, something is being mourned--it might simply be Shylock and Jessica’s loss of one another, not Shylock’s life--and, either way, it’s heartbreaking.
The movie isn’t perfect. Shylock’s repeated cries of “I will have my bond” lack something of the dramatic ring they’re meant to have, and cockney-voiced Launcelot is so underutilized that he comes off more as cameo than comedy relief. After he gives Jessica news of Lorenzo and leaves Shylock’s house for the last time, he’s missing for the rest of the play, and we wonder why Shylock even bothers to explain to Jessica that he’s a useless servant who he’s glad to be rid of. (The production did manage to slip in one of his lines from the lost Act II, Scene II: when Jessica puts a ducat into his pocket, he squeaks, “Oh, rare fortune!”) The whole casket-choosing bit is surprisingly low on drama, that being reserved for Shylock and the court scene, and Antonio’s friends, overall, are a bit of a faceless mob--not just the so-called “Salads”.
But it’s a well-thought-out production, and one that’s ultimately difficult to forget.