Customer Reviews

King Lear: Omnibus - The Historic TV Broadcast

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3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

E1 Entertainment (formerly Koch Home Video) partnered last year with the Archive of American Television to release some extremely rare television shows from their archives on home video. Nearly all of these shows have not been seen by the public since they were broadcast over 50 years ago! Thanks to both early videotape and Kinescopes (live TV broadcasts preserved on film) we are able to re-live what were originally one-time performances. This DVD is one such event.

Actor/Write/Director (and more!) Orson Welles love Shakespeare and mounted many of Shakespeare's classics. In the early days of TV, in the 1950s, Shakespeare was not something the average viewer was expecting to see. And certainly not with the great Welles, who was living in England at that time.

TV was still in its infancy then and experimenting with its programming. This was a time when there were fewer distractions and other entertainment options for the American public. So CBS (under William Paley) created a 90-minute "arts magazine" to be broadcast on Sunday afternoons - remember there were no regular sports broadcasts then - hosted by Britisher Alistair Cooke. It was called "Omnibus". For its third season they came up with a real gem. Welles would make his American TV debut in a 90-minute production of "King Lear", directed by the then 29 year old British Director Peter Brook. Brook's wife, Natasha Parry, would play Cordelia. The sponsors would become "subscribers" so there would be no commercial breaks. And, the script would be revised - leaving out all the subplots - so the actual production ran only 78 minutes! On October 11, 1953 the show aired. And it has not been since - until this release.

E1 has gone the extra step in putting together this package. Preceding the October 11th show we are giving the "preview" which aired the week before. To add to the understanding of Shakespeare we are presented with a 10-minute portion of a later Omnibus show where Dr. Frank Baxter (who helped Walt Disney explain science to kids, like me, in the 1950s in "Our Friend the Atom") gives the history of the Globe Theater. Another 42-minute bonus is a live remote from 1954 at the Yale Shakespeare Festival and a 43-minute episode from 1955 with drama critic Walter Kerr discussing the staging of Shakespeare's plays.

All the prints are in more than acceptable viewing condition and the sound is very good. And all were captured "live".

This is a must for any Shakespeare fan and should be in every school library's DVD collection. There are more "Omnibus" shows coming from the AAT and E1. I can hardly wait for the next one!

Steve Ramm
"Anything Phonographic"

This is an effective, minimalist, abridged staging of Shakespeare's tragedy, with a thirty-something Orson Welles in the lead. Peter Brook's direction is fine and the cast is solid. Unlike the old VHS release, this DVD contains the entire broadcast, including Alistair Cooke's introductory remarks (but minus the commercials). The extras were a pleasant surprise.

The quality of the video transfer is slightly disappointing. I suspect this is an old transfer, perhaps even the one used twenty years ago in the VHS release.

The image is soft and flickery, and the movement of the characters on screen is more juddery and riddled with momentary double-exposures than you usually see in modern transfers from 1950s kinescopes. Compare the main feature on this disc against the much cleaner and more watchable images in the extras (also taken from "Omnibus" kinescopes) and you'll see what I mean. And I can't believe they didn't touch out those great big cue spots at the end of the reel. That would have been so easy to fix!

Despite this, I enjoy the program. I just wish a more watchable print were available on disc.

Very dramatic King.Daughters hard to distinguish.Omits subplot of Edmund.Fool very effective.See madness of a king losing his power, but not the sadness of a father losing his daughters.

I'm a huge Orson Welles fan. His MacBeth is still my favorite of all the versions available. But this is a disaster: horrible sound and video quality (like watching through your aquarium), a script butchered to nothing,the ending changed and Welles in an outfit that looks like it was borrowed from Lost in Space (the photo on the cover is from MacBeth). Useful as a curiousity peice for Shakespeare or Welles fanatics only.

This television version has many flaws--from actors stepping on each other's lines, to bad microphone placement, to an obviously robust Welles' proclaiming his weakness and frailty in the face of chaotic nature and bad fortune. Still, there are scenes that convey the play's meanings more straightforwardly and clearly than any you will fine in later filmizations. The crucial opening scene, for example, effectively and efficiently sets up the play in a manner that students immediately grasp. The film is still a useful teaching tool (and obviously of interest to Welles' devotees), providing one is selective in its use.

Extras as interesting as the film, teaching a history lesson on shakespeare's reception in the context of 1950s US TV audience. For example, Shakepeare's clowns are considered "dull" and "unfunny" and there is a short debate on the subject.

This Lear is of historical interest - old TV trying to be cultured, but it is a very poor enactment of the play. It seems to belong to the Shakespeare presentations of a century ago.