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THE
TOP 5
PROJECT

WEEK NO. 38
Main Page (including links to all past Top 5 weeks)

THE TOP 5 SHAKESPEARE ADAPTATIONS:

view full results       see how points are awarded
Rank Film Points L #1
#1 Chimes at Midnight (Welles, 1965) 52 13 7
#2 Throne of Blood (Kurosawa, 1957) 50 14 6
#3 Ran (Kurosawa, 1985) 43 12 2
#4 The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice (Welles, 1952) 41 11 2
#5 Hamlet (Kozintsev, 1964) 15 5 -
L=How many lists each film appears on             #1=How many number one votes each film recieves

What a battle! In one of the tightest races in Top 5 history (perhaps the tightest), four films did battle up until the bitter end. Ending up on top was Orson Welles' Chimes at Midnight, winning by just two points over Kurosawa's Throne of Blood. 52 to 50. Then, just below them, nearly in a tie as well (though neck and neck with the top two until a late surge for those films), were Kurosawa and Welles once again, this time with Ran with 43 points and Othello with 41. Then in a distant distant distant fifth place was Grigori Kozintsev's adaptation of Hamlet, with 15 points. Runners-up included Roman Polanski's Macbeth, Kozintsev's King Lear, Olivier's Henry V, Welles' Macbeth and Robbins' & Wise's West Side Story.

Individual lists:

Albert H. Muth
Auteurophile

  1. The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice (Welles, 1952)

  2. Ran (Kurosawa, 1985)

  3. Chimes at Midnight (Welles, 1965)

  4. (tie) Macbeth (Welles, 1948)
    Throne of Blood (Kurosawa, 1957)

  5. Hamlet (Branagh, 1996)



Jonathan Rosenbaum
Film Critic, Chicago Reader
Author, Essential Cinema, Movie Mutations and many others

  1. The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice (Welles, 1952)

  2. Chimes at Midnight (Welles, 1965)

  3. A Midsummer Night's Dream (Reinhardt/Dieterle, 1935)

  4. Throne of Blood (Kurosawa, 1957)

  5. Richard III (Olivier, 1955)



David Sterritt
Chairman, National Society of Film Critics

(chronological order)

  • The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice (Welles, 1952)

  • Throne of Blood (Kurosawa, 1957)

  • King Lear (Peter Brook, 1971)

  • Prospero's Books (Greenaway, 1991)

  • Titus (Taymor, 1999)



Jeffrey M. Anderson
Freelance Film Critic, Combustable Celluloid, cinematical.com
Las Vegas Weekly, Metro (Silicon Valley), etc.

  1. Chimes at Midnight (Orson Welles, 1965) - Easy. This is by far the best Shakespeare adaptation, mainly because of its innovative screenplay (combining elements of five plays) and its pure cinematic glory, including one of the greatest battle scenes ever filmed. The rest are subject to whim.

  2. (tie) Macbeth (Welles, 1948) & Othello (Welles, 1952)

  3. Throne of Blood (Kurosawa, 1957)

  4. (tie) Hamlet (Olivier, 1948), Hamlet (Branagh, 1996) & Hamlet (Almereyda, 2000) - the latter mainly for Bill Murray's Polonius.

  5. Richard III (Loncraine, 1995)



Christopher Null
Founder, Publisher & Editor-in-Chief, Filmcritic.com

  1. Ran (Kurosawa, 1985)

  2. Much Ado About Nothing (Branagh, 1993)

  3. Hamlet (Branagh, 1996)

  4. Romeo + Juliet (Luhrmann, 1996)

  5. The Tragedy of Macbeth (Polanski, 1971)



Dennis Schwartz
Film Critic Ozu's World Movie Reviews

  1. Chimes at Midnight (Welles, 1965)

  2. Hamlet (Kozintsev, 1964)

  3. Hamlet (Olivier, 1948)

  4. Macbeth (Welles, 1948)

  5. Throne of Blood (Kurosawa, 1957)



Film Prophet
Film Critic, FilmProphet.com

  1. Throne of Blood (Kurosawa, 1957)

  2. Ran (Kurosawa, 1985)

  3. West Side Story (Robbins & Wise, 1961)

  4. Shakespeare in Love (John Madden, 1998)

  5. 10 Things I Hate About You (Junger, 1999)



Michael Parent
Film Student

  1. Throne of Blood (Kurosawa, 1957)

  2. The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice (Welles, 1952)

  3. Ran (Kurosawa, 1985)

  4. Henry V (Branagh, 1989)

  5. Chimes at Midnight (Welles, 1965)



Matt Severson
Film Enthusiast & Blogger, Notes in the Dark

  1. Throne of Blood (Kurosawa, 1957)

  2. Ran (Kurosawa, 1985)

  3. Henry V (Olivier, 1944)

  4. Hamlet (Kozintsev, 1964)

  5. Prospero's Books (Greenaway, 1991) - I think that this is possibly the single most underrated Shakepeare adaptation, and perhaps the most overlooked of Greenaway's films. A spectacular imagining of "The Tempest." Magical in every way.

  6. Chimes at Midnight (Welles, 1965) - Sorry, I couldn't cut Welles' film off the list.



Kevin Cassidy
Film Enthusiast

  1. King Lear (Kozintsev, 1971)

  2. Hamlet (Kozintsev, 1964)

  3. Chimes at Midnight (Welles, 1965)

  4. Ran (Kurosowa, 1985)

  5. Hamlet (Sven Gade, 1921) - A silent version! Starring Asta Nielsen who plays Hamlet as a women!!



Dan Jardine
Film Critic, Cinemania

  1. Throne of Blood (Kurosawa, 1957)

  2. Ran (Kurosawa, 1985)

  3. The Tragedy of Macbeth (Polanski, 1971)

  4. Chimes at Midnight (Welles, 1965)

  5. Twelfth Night, or What You Will (Nunn, 1996)



Mathew Viola
Film Fanatic

  1. Macbeth (Polanski, 1971)

  2. The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice (Welles, 1952)

  3. Ran (Kurosawa, 1985)

  4. Julius Caesar (Mankiewicz, 1953)

  5. Forbidden Planet (Wilcox, 1956)



Doug Pratt
DVD Critic, DVDLaser.com

  1. Chimes at Midnight (Welles, 1965)

  2. West Side Story (Robbins & Wise, 1961)

  3. Romeo and Juliet (Zefirelli, 1968)

  4. A Midsummer Night's Dream (Hall, 1968)

  5. The Taming of the Shrew (Zefirelli, 1967)



Joel Webb
Film Enthusiast

  1. Throne of Blood (Kurosawa, 1957)

  2. Chimes at Midnight (Welles, 1965)

  3. Ran (Kurosawa, 1985)

  4. My Own Private Idaho (Van Sant, 1991)

  5. The Tragedy of Macbeth (Polanski, 1971)



Steven Tomlinson
Film Librarian, Montreal

  1. Chimes at Midnight (Welles, 1965)

  2. The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice (Welles, 1952)

  3. King Lear (Kozintsev, 1971)

  4. Hamlet (Kozintsev, 1964)

  5. Forbidden Planet (Wilcox, 1956)

Runners-Up: King Lear (Brook, 1971), Throne of Blood (Kurosawa, 1957) and Henry V (Olivier, 1944)


Jason Mlinarsik
Film Enthusiast

  1. Chimes at Midnight (Welles, 1965)

  2. Throne of Blood (Kurosawa, 1957)

  3. Ran (Kurosawa, 1985)

  4. Henry V (Olivier, 1944)

  5. Hamlet (Olivier, 1948)



Hans Lucas
Film Student

  1. Chimes at Midnight (Welles, 1965)

  2. The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice (Welles, 1952)

  3. Hamlet (Kozintsev, 1964)

  4. Henry V (Olivier, 1944)

  5. Throne of Blood (Kurosawa, 1957)



Jesse Walker
Film Enthusiast and Managing Editor, Reason Magazine

  1. Throne of Blood (Kurosawa, 1957) - This isn't Shakespeare's version of the Macbeth story, and since Shakespeare didn't invent the tale in the first place you could argue that the movie shouldn't even be in the running. But it's too good to exclude it -- and besides, it was Shakespeare's play, not some Holinshed chronicle, that inspired Kurosawa to make the film.

  2. The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice (Welles, 1952) - A five-act play is reduced to 90 minutes of film. That's OK. Welles takes all he needs to make a masterpiece, nothing more.

  3. Ran (Kurosawa, 1985) - Another loose adaptation, mixing King Lear with stories native to Japan.

  4. The Chronicle History of King Henry the Fift with His Battell Fought at Agincourt in France (Olivier, 1944) - It's a propaganda movie, but don't get hung up on that: It's also the most visually inventive Shakespeare picture, a film that feels like an illuminated manuscript moving on the screen.

  5. The Man from Laramie (Mann, 1955) - If it's a stretch to include the Kurosawa movies, it's a full-fledged abuse to include this dark, strange, and vaguely Lear-inspired western. Someone should vote for it, though, and I'm willing to be that someone. If it helps, thinks of this as a placeholder until I finally get around to watching Polanski's Macbeth. (Or maybe Reinhardt's Midsummer Night's Dream, or Taymor's Titus, or Kurosawa's The Bad Sleep Well...)

Honorable mentions (listed alphabetically): Chimes at Midnight (Orson Welles, 1965) Hamlet (Laurence Olivier, 1948) King Lear (Michael Elliot, 1984) Macbeth (Orson Welles, 1948) Richard III (Richard Loncraine, 1995) - despite the miscast and outclassed Annette Bening.

If the words "Welles" and "Kurosawa" recur frequently above, that's partly because I've been much more systematic about watching their films than watching Shakespearean movies in general. Shakespeare adaptations tend to be bland and middlebrow; most of them are watchable, thanks to the source material, but few are wonderful movies, as opposed to reasonably adequate performances of wonderful plays. I'll take the cult video Green Eggs and Hamlet over anything Kenneth Branagh has ever made.

Bonus pick: worst Shakespeare adaptation: King Lear (Jean-Luc Godard, 1987). I had high hopes for this when I heard he'd cast Woody Allen as the Fool, but even that short scene falls flat.


Rich Cline
Film Critic and Creator of Shadows on the Wall.

  1. Ran (Kurosawa, 1985)

  2. Romeo + Juliet (Luhrmann, 1996)

  3. The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice (Welles, 1952)

  4. My Own Private Idaho (Van Sant, 1991)

  5. Henry V (Branagh, 1989)

    and

  6. West Side Story (Robbins & Wise, 1961)

  7. Richard III (Loncraine, 1995)

  8. The Tragedy of Macbeth (Polanski, 1971)

  9. Hamlet (Branagh, 1996)

  10. Forbidden Planet (Wilcox, 1956)



Kevyn Knox
Film Critic, Essayist + Historian

As usual, I tried to come up with a list wherein I name just one film per director, but there was just no way to keep Welles off the list a second time - after all, he is Orson Welles.

  1. Chimes at Midnight (Welles, 1966)

  2. Throne of Blood (Kurosawa, 1957)

  3. Macbeth (Tarr, 1982)

  4. KIng Lear (Kozintsev, 1971)

  5. The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice (Welles, 1952)


*points are given as follows: for numbered lists, first place recieves 5 points, second place recieves 4, third place 3, fourth place 2 and fifth place gets 1 point; for unumbered lists, each film will recieve 3 points; total points are then tallied up and a comprehensive Top 5 list is created


The Next Topic is:
Name The Top 5 Religious Films

e-mail me at kevynknox@thecinematheque.com with your picks for week #39,
no later than 6pm on Sunday, September 9, 2007.

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