Kozintsev on Lear and Hamlet

Joseph F. McCrindle Foundation

Grigori Kozintsev: Talking about his "Lear" and "Hamlet" films with RONALD HAYMANAuthor(s): Grigori Kozintsev and RONALD HAYMANSource: The Transatlantic Review, No. 46/47 (Summer 1973), pp. 10-15Published by: Joseph F. McCrindle FoundationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41513324 .

Accessed: 12/02/2014 10:10

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Joseph F. McCrindle Foundation is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to TheTransatlantic Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 101.56.200.124 on Wed, 12 Feb 2014 10:10:49 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=mccrindle

http://www.jstor.org/stable/41513324?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


Grigori Kozintsev

Talking about his " Lear " and "Hamlet" films with RONALD HAYMAN

Grigori Kozintsev' s death is an enormous loss. Most of the raids that the cinema makes on literature are piratically insensitive. The size of the booty matters more than the damage inflicted in grabbing it. Kozintsev was one of the few directors with a deep feeling for literature and his Hamlet must rank as the best Shakespeare film ever made .

R.M.

Grigori Kozintsev's first book, Shakespeare , Time and Conscience contained a diary of his work on the Hamlet film and threw a great deal of light on his use of elemental imagery in the film - stone, fire, sea and earth. His second Shakespeare book, which he was just finishing, is called The Space of Tragedy. He was working on parts of it while preparing his film of King Lear and the title is, among other things, a pointer to the influence Gordon Craig had on his thinking and on his cinema. He was talking to me about this when he was in London for the opening of Lear. 'His great book Towards a New Theatre is, I think, Towards a New Cinema, and I was greatly impressed by his ideas, his understanding of the tragic meaning of space, his understanding of big visual imagery in Shakespeare. He has written about Macbeth , which is a very simple play, with only two big images, a rock, a mountain of stone on which warlike people were living. That's one. The other is fog, a mist, where ghosts were living. Mist is made of water, and water destroys the mountain. And as Gordon Craig puts it, the director in the theatre would unfortunately like to explain the play in terms of archaeological research into the materials of the castles of Cawdor and Glamis. But the two images of stone and mist are enough. I was greatly influenced by the ideas of Gordon Craig. I think his production of Hamlet in 1912 at the Moscow Art Theatre was of great interest because it was a meeting of the two geniuses of modern theatre, Gordon Craig and Stanislavski. Gordon Craig (together with Meyerhold) was the first to understand the tragic meaning of the whole visual imagination, the whole use of space. And Stanislavski was the first to understand that all figures are realistic figures and that it was necessary to fight against declamation, the high style of speaking verse. This Hamlet of 1912 was an important experiment for the whole deveopment of modern theatre.'



GRIGORI KOZINTSEV 1 1

The achievement of both Kozintsev's films, which are not mere cinematic transcriptions of stage plays, but which coax a new imagery out of the Shakespearian bedrock, can be understood against the background of these ideas. 'In my view Shakespeare on the screen must become more a tragic poem than a play, more of a relationship between characters and landscape, a historical and geographical representation. But simple historical naturalism has no connection with Shakespeare. Historical materialism can destroy the poetic unity of Shakespearian plays. It's not merely a question of speaking verse in front of the camera and moving from long-shot to close-up. It's necessary to create a pictorial imagery, a visual poetry with the same quality as that of the Shakespearian verse.'

Lear , in any case, cannot be placed in history as Hamlet can. 'The time of Hamlet can be understood to be that of Elizabethan England. I don't especially like specifically historical sets and costumes, but Hamlet needs a kind of Elizabethan ethos, absolutely different from that of King Lear , which is more timeless and universal. Very often Lear was presented as a Titan, as a great mythical figure or like a hero in a Michelangelo fresco. I don't think he should be. It's an interesting and paradoxical situation: Lear was a great king, the dominant personality in his kingdom, with his will, his thoughts, his feelings. But he's also quite ordinary - the eccentric behaviour of Titans is not part of any national history. And no tyrant has ever been in a position to understand his own defects. But when Lear becomes like everybody else, like a beggar in the midst of a crowd of poor people - this moment is the real beginning of his greatness as a tragic figure. This is the way I understand it. His wisdom and his capacity for pity start from that moment. The paradox is that when he was a towering figure with everybody else very small in relation to him he was at his most ordinary. But his soliloquies and his dialogues with blind Gloucester make his own earlier behaviour and the whole structure of relationships within the kingdom look very foolish.

'He has a chance to see everything from a totally different angle of vision. When he becomes a simple human being, like the "poor naked wretches" he begins to be a philosopher. It's an ironical philosophy at first but this is only the beginning. When he meets Cordelia and he asks for mercy - not like a great king now - this is the beginning of his understanding of what the real values are in human life and what the false values are. I think the key to the imagery in King Lear is the great contrast between golden appearance with its emptiness and the real values in the history of humanity and civilisation, the difference between the clothes and the real man.



12 TRANSATLANTIC REVIEW 46/47

'But the differences between a stage production and film production do not primarily involve questions of technique. It's a question of understanding the deep philosophy of the tragedy. I'm not interested in the opportunities that cinema provides for huge sets and big crowds of extras. For me what's most important is the chance to explain the deeply complicated philosophy of the tragedy in real terms.' Here the influence of Jan Kott, who was a friend of Kozintsev's, is discernible. In his chapter on 'King Lear or Endgame' in Shakespeare our Contemporary , Kott says, 'The feudal order is absurd and can be described only in terms of the absurd.' He also writes of the relationship between the old-style tragic hero and the central character in a modern grotesque comedy. The downfall of the tragic hero is a confirmation and recognition of the absolute; whereas the downfall of the grotesque actor means mockery of the absolute and its desecration.'

Kozintsev was more prone than most English Shakespearians would be to talk as if there were a coherent philosophy underlying Shakespeare's tragedies, but he was protected by his respect for the philosophy he diagnosed from any temptation to recreate the play as a desecration of the absolute. Nevertheless his casting of the Estonian actor Yuri Jarvet as Lear pitches the film decisively away from 19th century conceptions of heroic grandeur. Lear becomes a frail and petulant old man, subject both to accesses of Dostoevskian passion and phases of grotesque unreason- ableness reminiscent of Ionesco's Bérenger I.

But if Lear the individual is slightly shrunk, his kingdom is enlarged by the film to universal dimensions. 4In King Lear the whole history of human civilisation is summed up, from the pre-historic hearth to the modern irony and the modern understanding of the possibility of catastrophe and of what is necessary to stop this catastrophe. In the 19th century Victor Hugo said "The world is sick from hatred, hatred against hatred." I think that's a very good slogan for King Lear.'

The pre-historic hearth is represented in our first glimpse of the play's royal family near the fireplace. It was an ancient fireplace, which intro- duces a touch of pre-historical fire. A father and his three daughters - the family, the clan, near the fire. It is only a touch. It would be very bad to explain this in a heavy way.'

Other milestones in the development of Western civilisation are also indicated. Tor me it was also important to show the marriage of Cordelia on the screen, not in a church, but on the road. It is the first year of Christianity - in Cordelia there is a suggestion of Christian ideas. And it was important to show that the Fool was living among the dogs and like



GRIGORI KOZINTSEV 13

a dog. For these people he's not like a person but a pet. It also fits with Lear's imagery of hunting with dogs and falcons, the ten knights and squires and so on.'

As in the Hamlet film, Kozintsev showed himself to be unusually alert to the presence in the text of values and attitudes which were charac- teristic of the Renaissance. 'Albany is one of my favourite characters because he's a typical Renaissance figure. He's a humanist who's fitted for the library but he's obliged to go outside the library. For me it's very important to present Albany in a library. He has no desire for power in the state: he's not fighting for the throne but in defence of human dignity. Goneril understands nothing about her husband.'

In Hamlet , which Kozintsev also saw in Craig-like terms as being centred on two main images, Wittenberg represents the main focus of Renaissance values. 'Wittenberg represents the high point of Renaissance humanistic ideas and it represents the pre-history of Hamlet's days as a student - before the tragedy began. The second image or metaphor which contradicts the first is Elsinore, a state which is absolutely humanistic in its relationships between people but unhumanistic in its methods of education, as we see in Polonius's treatment of his children. There's the careerism of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern; there's the killing of love in the relationship between Polonius, Laertes and Ophelia. And so on. The destruction of all normal relationships both in the family and in the state. This is Hamlet . Two worlds: Wittenberg and Elsinore."

In King Lear the structure of image-clusters is more complex. Tn Hamlet there's the one great figure of Hamlet with the whole world against him. But King Lear is much more complicated because there are many important figures. From productions on the stage I've never really found out who the Duke of Albany is, who the King of France is. And in my opinion these figures are very important. It is necessary to explain all the figures in the play not only as characters but as materialisations of cruelty or goodness, the worst parts of human nature or the best. There are many characters - like Cordelia, the Fool and Albany - who explain the good side. The figure of the Fool is expressive not only as a court comedian, a jester. In my opinion he also represents the voice of the poor people. He has a good technique as a harlequin, he can dance and sing but he tells the truth. He is the only man in the play who knows reality for what it is, but everybody takes what he says as a joke. Nothing is more laughable than the truth. And his understanding is not that of an old man but of the young generation. He is a figure not unlike the orchestra in Auschwitz that was made up of men condemned to death. They were beaten to make them play



14 TRANSATLANTIC REVIEW 46/47

better. He is the voice of the truth in a world of cruelty. But it is a very strong voice, and the figures like the Fool, Cordelia, the King of France and Albany are very important as elements in what, after all, is not just a tragedy of cruelty but a tragedy of mercy. The greatness of Shakespeare's genius shows in the way he makes these merciful figures live the life of a new generation.'

If the historical perspective is basic to the film's conception, the poetic geography grows directly out of it. Each of the main characters has his own climate, and 'when Lear goes mad at the beginning of the storm scene, this is the beginning of an absolutely new relationship with nature. I try to illustrate with this landscape a country which is not bare, not cruel. I try to show Lear himself as a part of nature, in a field of flowers. His hair spreads like moss, the grey hair of nature. Once man is seen as a part of nature, the movement towards regeneration can begin. Cordelia too had her own landscape - sea and a very wide landscape - with waves and seagulls. All the important characters have their own atmosphere and there are relationships not just on the level of character but between different aspects of nature.

'The naked bare forked creatures are like the Kingdom of Lear which is also naked, bare and forked. But this isn't my idea, this is Shakespeare's idea - the suffering of the whole universe is the most important part. The whole population of the country is seen in terms of naked wretches. As Poor Tom, Edgar is like a chorus leader in the tragedy. What is the reason for all those sayings, all those proverbs he has? There are so many peasant songs, so much beggars' slang he comes out with. It is the voice of the Kingdom.' Here Kozintsev's approach gives him a means of strengthening one of the weakest links in Shakespeare's play: Edgar gets the idea for the Poor Tom impersonation from a demented beggar he meets. The hovel scene is also transformed by populating it with homeless down-and-outs sheltering from the storm.

Perhaps this is a sociological view of Lear ; perhaps it is a Russian view. 'Every nation has its own Shakespeare and I think mine is a Russian Shakespeare, a Russian understanding of Shakespeare. He's the beginning of the great figures of 19th century Russian literature such as Pushkin and Dostoevsky. Some while ago I read an American review of my Hamlet titled The Brother Karamazov from Elsinore. Perhaps. But I'm also very influenced by English culture.'

There is also, of course, an important sense in which it is a personal view, and Sergei Yutkevich has suggested that something in the film derives from the experience Kozintsev had when he was fifteen of directing Alexei



GRIGORI KOZINTSEV 15

Remizov's adaptation of the folk drama Tsar Maximilian , first in the sitting room of his father's flat and then in the streets. 'Here began Kozintsev's road to Eccentrism, to the first agit films, to Gogol on stage and screen, and ultimately to the revolutionary romantic, Maxim, to Cervantes, and finally to Shakespeare.'

As Kozintsev put it himself, 'Interpretation is the biography of the director. The beginning of my life, the performances of folk plays in the streets, the squares during the first year of the Revolution - all this contributes because childhood impressions are very important to my understanding of King Lear .' Even the experience of directing the play in the theatre contributed to the stockpile of memories that was to influence the film. 'Some performances were during the blockade of Leningrad. There was bombardment going on outside the theatre and it was a very difficult time for the people.'

The contributions that Pasternak and Shostakovich have made to both Kozintsev's Shakespeare films must not be overlooked. "Pasternak produced a very Russian version of Shakespearian tragedy. Only a truly great poet could be so courageous. He translated Shakespeare into contemporary Russian. We have many schools of translation. We also have a very scientific translation with an equivalent line in Russian for each single line of Shakespeare. Just as Shakespeare uses ancient sentence-construc- tions and ancient grammar, our translator Lazinski uses pre-Pushkin language. But I prefer Pasternak's modern Russian.'

"I've been working with Shostakovich all my life, and I think his understanding of the whole tragic and grotesque imagery in Shakespeare is perfect. And in King Lear I didn't use just dignifying fanfares and drum- rolls. There is also the voice of suffering. I love the pipe music he composed for the Fool. I think this is a real voice of Shakespeare and I'm very grateful to Shostakovich. When I hear Shostakovich's music I think I've heard Shakespeare's verse. It is possible to cut some of the verse if you have his score to substitute, and I did actually make cuts specially because of music he wrote and in many places in my script, before I begin to shoot, I know that I will be using not human voices but the voice of Shostokovich's music. In the storm scene, for instance, the main voice is the music. It's a victory of evil, of the whole power of the evil of cruelty.'



Kozintsev on Lear and Hamlet

Documents

Transcript of Kozintsev on Lear and Hamlet