Kenneth Branagh has
made the Bard more accessible,
with a helping hand
from the masters of the Hollywood
musical
In 1929, United
Artists released a film version of The Taming of
the Shrew, starring
Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, which
has long been regarded
as boasting one of the worst credit lines
in movie history.
After mentioning the involvement of some
obscure chap called
William Shakespeare, it announced: 'With
additional dialogue by
Sam Taylor.'
In his latest film,
Love's Labour's Lost, Kenneth Branagh does
not go so far as to
give a screenwriting credit to the movie's
co-writers, but it's
fair to say that they are rather more deserving
of recognition than Mr
Taylor. 'With additional dialogue by Irving
Berlin, Cole Porter
and Gershwin' does have a certain ring to it.
Resetting the romantic
geometry of Love's Labour's Lost in the
Oxbridge of the
Thirties, and replacing sections of the ornate
text with musical
numbers like 'Cheek to Cheek' and 'I Get a
Kick Out of You' is a
classic Branagh gambit. Not only does it
lay down an obvious
challenge to those who regard
Shakespeare's words as
inviolable, but it also raises more
complex questions
about whether it is possible, in this more
cynical age, to make a
film musical that does not just give the
nod to Hollywood's
great all-singing all-dancing productions, but
lovingly embraces
them.
For his part, Branagh
makes no excuses; the approach arose
solely from the text.
'When I played Love's Labour's Lost in the
theatre, it always
reminded me of the silly, charming mood that
you get with those old
Hollywood musicals,' he says. 'And the
text constantly refers
to song and dance.' But, he says, the
language of the play -
one of the least performed Shakespeares
- can be so dense that
it excludes as many as it draws in. He
concluded that
lyricists like Porter and Ira Gershwin could give
Will a helping hand.
'It was a strangely organic process of
cutting the play first
and then scanning the text for references,'
Branagh says. 'I was
always looking for songs that moved the
plot on. You try to
find the dramatic impulse.'
And so, when one
amorous courtier describes how: 'When love
speaks, the voice of
all the gods make heaven drowsy with the
harmony', his next
words are the first lines from Irving Berlin's
'Cheek to Cheek':
'Heaven, I'm in heaven...' It could be
desperately cheesy and
many may still find it so, but those who
hold an affection for
Hollywood musicals will surely get the idea.
You do not so much
have to suspend your disbelief as chuck it
away altogether.
If the film succeeds,
it is because it makes not a single
compromise. True, some
of the actors, including Alicia
Silverstone, Richard
Briers and Branagh himself, are clearly
rather less than
accomplished musical performers, but their
contributions are
carefully tailored to their talents. In any case,
there are more
seasoned song and dance men like Nathan Lane
and Adrian Lester on
hand to deliver the goods.
There are top hats.
There are tails. There are kick lines. There is
even a rendition of
'No Business Like Showbusiness'. OK, it isn't
exactly Metro Goldwyn
Meyer and Arthur Freed, but it is more
than just a casual
stab at hommage.
The job of arranging
the songs fell to Oscar-nominated
composer Pat Doyle,
who has worked with Branagh on all his
other Shakespeare
films.
'As a music student, I
played piano in bars and I was required to
play these songs,' he
says. 'So I knew them very well. I also
adore the work of
Irving Berlin. What I was intrigued to see was
how they would sit
with Shakespeare. Eventually, I came to see
them almost as arias,
there to heighten the action.'
Initially, Branagh
toyed with the idea of commissioning brand
new songs in the style
of Porter and Berlin. 'I'm glad that didn't
happen,' Doyle says.
'That would have been a bit risky, a bit
cheeky. It would have
needed serious courage.'
Eventually, not only
did they plump for a set of 10 cast-iron
standards, but the
lush arrangements were, if not exactly
conventional, then at
least true to the age in which they were
first written and
performed. 'Our first instinct was to be slightly
restrained and use a
smaller ensemble rather than a symphonic
orchestra and that, by
its nature, would have given a more
contemporary feel to
the music,' Doyle says. 'But then we
realised it needed
bigness to match the scale of the image. I
think my job was to
make the narrative accessible through the
musical numbers and to
put these songs on the plinth they
deserve.'
Only one arrangement,
'Let's Face the Music and Dance', which
is used in a mass
courtship scene, veers away from the
traditional into a
more modern bump and grind of jungle drums
and brass. 'It was
always the drama that dictated what would go
on in the music,'
Doyle says. 'The moment we saw the
choreography for
"Let's Face the Music", we could see that was
the way it had to go.'
As to the question
over the continuing viability of the film
musical, that, to all
intents and purposes, remains unanswered.
It is such an
idiosyncratic work, such an original piece, that it
tells us little or
nothing about the genre. All that can be said is
that, of all the
Shakespeare movie adaptations set in Thirties
Britain and using the
songs of Gershwin and Porter, this is
undoubtedly one of the
best.
• Love's Labour's Lost
opens on Friday