Gloucester feels Edgar’s face, recognizes him by touch, then dies (Edgar usually just reports this in the last scene)Īt just over two hours, it’s obvious that they’ve been cuts made to the script.

Regan backs away from Cornwall as he collapses from his wound, then immediately goes to Edmund and begins to undress him.

Edmund and Goneril are still at Gloucester’s estate after the eye-gouging, and their separate dressings gives the implication that they’ve just consummated their affair.

We see the marriage of Cordelia and France (unnecessary, but still nice).

Kozintsev does some great things with the script and the storytelling, things I haven’t seen before in our previous versions (like Blessed, Brook, and Miller): Prone to physical outbursts, his breakdown in the storm (as well as the storm itself) is superbly done.

In particular, a spindly Jüri Järvet makes for a wonderfully (physically) weak and (psychologically) crazed Lear. The cinematography by Jonas Gricius is beautiful–beautiful but eerie. With a pedigree like this, you’d expect this to be a pretty good film, and you’d be right. The film was adapted by Kozinstev from a stage translation done back in 1949 by Boris Pasternak (yep, he of Doctor Zhivago and Nobel Prize fame), and completed with a score by Dmitri Shostakovich. Despite the relatively recent date, it’s a black and white film, which makes it feel older. Next up, we have the 1971 King Lear film by Russian filmmaker Grigori Kozintsev, who had directed an award-winning film version of Hamlet less than a decade earlier. Continuing our video capsule reviews for King Lear…

Kozintsev hamlet full movie