What to expect
Made for the tercentenary of Shakespeare’s death, the film preserves Frederick Warde’s stage authority in a feature adaptation directed by his son Ernest.
How to ease in
Names and political turns accumulate quickly. Hold to Lear’s first test of his daughters, then watch each later loss expose what that test failed to recognise.
Heads-up
A quick, non-exhaustive note Includes family abuse, betrayal, war, blinding, madness, death, and severe compression of the play.
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Lear asks for love to become a public performance and then mistakes fluency for truth. I watch the tragedy begin before anyone leaves the first room.
— Momo
Credits & versions
Sources for the facts
Where to go next
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