William Shakespeare | Preface to the Film Reviews

Preface to the Film Reviews:
Just because a film is named after one of Shakespeare's plays and credits him as a writer, it does not follow that the film will be Shakespeare's play. In fact, it is almost a movie-industry-wide practice to cut more than two-thirds of the text. This cutting is done for several reasons, but primarily because (1) cutting allows the director more freedom in presenting his interpretation of the text of the play, and (2) most modern audiences are uncomfortable sitting through a film that lasts longer than 120 to 150 minutes. Therefore, for the following films, textual analysis is kept to a minimum. A critical analysis of the text may be found at any of our click-guides to the plays.

It should be noted that the only complete series of all of Shakespeare's plays is the BBC Shakespeare Series, which were done in period costume and formatted for television. They are done using full texts, but are also subject to directorial choices. It is important to remember that these films are interpretations of Shakespeare's plays.