All the World's a Screen - Shakespeare on Film

David Thompson's documentary states its claim from the outset: Shakespeare films only established themselves on screen following Olivier's version of HENRY V (1944). Granted, there had been several versions before then, both on silent as well as sound film, but they all failed to capture the Bard's universality and render it interesting for all types of audience.

The claim might be contentious, but it provides a justification for a documentary whose principal interest lies in the archive footage of directors and actors talking about their work. The roll-call of performers is a distinguished one: Olivier, Kenneth Branagh, Peter Brook, Akira Kurosawa, Grigori Kozintsev, George Cukor, Roman Polanski, Baz Luhrmann, Franco Zeffirelli and Orson Welles.

In truth the narrative is a little pedestrian, with Penelope Wilton trying to sound magisterial. But nonetheless it's refreshing to see clips from so many different Shakespeare movies, ranging from the early silent films of the twentieth century to the global Shakespeare adaptations of recent years, from India, China, Finland as well as the United States and Great Britain.