Leading the Gaze: From Showing to Telling in Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V and Hamlet
Hatchuel, Sarah
Early Modern Literary Studies 6.1/ Special Issue 5 (May, 2000)
Abstract
Film studies have reached the conclusion that cinema merges the acts of showing and telling. This essay applies these theories to two of Kenneth Branagh’s screen adaptations Henry V (1989) and Hamlet (1996). Cinematic editing can shape space at will, create different levels of realities, and reorganize the succession of events in time. The moves and effects of the camera, by progressively revealing the people, the set or the action, add a time dimension to space. Cinematic narration defines an itinerary of the gaze, imposing a trajectory inside Shakespeare’s plays, until the plots seem to prevail over discourse.
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Early Modern Literary Studies 6.1/ Special Issue 5 (May,Early Modern Literary Studies 6.1/ Special Issue 5 (May, 2000) 2000)
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