King Lear (1983) (TV)

User Rating:

7.8/10   

Director:

Michael Elliott

Writer:

William Shakespeare (play)

Release Date:

26 January 1984 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

An aging King invites disaster when he abdicates to his corrupt, toadying daughters and rejects his one loving, but honest one.

Plot Keywords:

Daughter Murdered | Shakespeare's King Lear | Resentment Toward Sister | Resentment Toward Father | William Shakespeare

Awards:

Won Primetime Emmy. Another 3 nominations

Cast

Laurence Olivier	...	King Lear
Colin Blakely	...	Kent
Anna Calder-Marshall	...	Cordelia
Jeremy Kemp	...	Cornwall
Robert Lang	...	Albany
Robert Lindsay	...	Edmund
Leo McKern	...	Gloucester
David Threlfall	...	Edgar
Dorothy Tutin	...	Goneril
John Hurt	...	The Fool
Diana Rigg	...	Regan
Brian Cox	...	Burgundy
Edward Petherbridge	...	France
Geoffrey Bateman	...	Oswald
John Cording	...	Lear's Knight

Runtime:

158 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Australia:G

Company:

Granada Television

Trivia:

The last specifically made-for-television production of a Shakespeare play (to date) to have its American TV premiere on commercial network television, an occurrence that was much more common in the 1950's, '60's, and '70s.

Quotes:

Kent: Fellow, I know thee.
Oswald: What dost thou know me for?
Kent: A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking, whoreson, glass-gazing, super-serviceable, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd in way of good service...

Movie Connections:

Version of King Lear (2008) (TV)

Thou art a soul in bliss

The whole production was beclouded with grayness, as suits the theme of seeing/sight, yet the acting was elegiac. Diana Rigg and Dorothy Tutin were as seeming kindly as they were brutal. Robert Lindsay's Edmund was as poisonous as he was seemingly loving and loyal. But what I take away most specially was Olivier, as Lear, lifting a lock of his dead Cordelia's hair in his bowed hands to his face, taking a breath, a last scent. I cried. It was a most elegant summary of a parent's loss.