Film Review: The Merchant of Venice

An advantage enjoyed by a filmmaker when adapting a play is that the sets can be much more elaborate and “realistic” as scenes can be shot on location or on a large studio stage and crowds can be real crowds, churches can be real churches, canals can be actual canals, and so on. The movie director also has the option of filming in close-up so that what is unspoken can take on greater significance that it might in a play where the audience cannot necessarily see the subtle changes in expression on actors’ faces. Moreover, the actors do not need to unnaturally raise their voices so as to be heard by those in the back rows; therefore they are able to speak less softly or more softly as the dramatic moment requires. Many more effects can be created in film with lighting and camera angles thereby increasing dramatic impact.

And given the much larger audience numbers – and thus greater revenues – enjoyed by most films, directors can often cast the finest actors in the world to play characters in their film adaptations. Think of Amadeus, Doubt (Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman), Glengarry Glen Ross (Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon), or Angels in America (Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson).

Naturally, not all plays make great movies and not all screen adaptations of works originally written for the stage are successful. Nor am I in any way implying that one art form has more value than the other. But it is a truth that in the hands of a skilled, imaginative, and creative director, a fine play can be transformed into an equally fine film – even an outstanding film.

The plays of William Shakespeare have been adapted for the screen on many occasions throughout the movie decades. Here is what New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther had to say in 1948 about such adaptations, and in particular about that year’s Academy Award winner for Best Picture, Hamlet:

“It may come as something of a rude shock to the theatre’s traditionalists to discover that the tragedies of Shakespeare can be eloquently presented on the screen. So bound have these poetic dramas long been to the culture of our stage that the very thought of their transference may have staggered a few profound diehards. But now the matter is settled; the filmed ‘Hamlet’ of Laurence Olivier gives absolute proof that these classics are magnificently suited to the screen…. The subtle reactions of the characters, the movements of their faces and forms, which can be so dramatically expressive and which are more or less remote on the stage, are here made emotionally incisive by their normal proximity.”

The Merchant of Venice is a rich tale, at once a love story, a story of racism and a bitter craving for revenge, a courtroom drama, a comedy, and a tragedy.

Young Bassanio, a profligate Venetian noble, is in love with the wealthy heiress Portia and wishes to compete with numerous other suitors for her hand. Requiring funds for his suit, he approaches his beloved friend and long-time benefactor, the successful merchant (and title character of the play) Antonio, asking for a loan of 3,000 ducats. Antonio, who has perhaps been in love with Bassanio, is strapped for cash as he has several of his merchant ships out to sea. He recommends that Bassanio approach the Jewish moneylender Shylock and borrow the sum on Antonio’s credit.

Shylock, who hates Antonio because the merchant has reviled and spit upon him in public, agrees to the loan and offers to forego any interest for the three-month period of the loan. Instead he proposes a macabre bond: “Go with me to a notary and seal me there your single bond, and, in a merry sport, if you repay me not on such a day in such a place such a sum or sums as are expressed in the condition, let the forfeit be nominated for an equal pound of your fair flesh, to be cut off, and taken, in what part of your body pleaseth me.”

Needless to say, Antonio is unable to repay the ducats in time and Shylock takes him to Venetian court and demands his pound of flesh, which the law is required to allow him. What follows is one of the cleverest and most compelling courtroom sequences in the history of drama.

On the lighter side, meanwhile, Portia’s suitors, by her dead father’s will, must win her hand by correctly choosing among three boxes; one of these “caskets” contains her portrait and the suitor who chooses this box will win her hand in marriage. In two hilarious scenes, the first suitor, a handsome and gregarious African prince, chooses the wrong box, as does the second suitor, an effete Spanish nobleman. Naturally, it is Bassanio who selects the right box and weds the fair Portia.

The two stories merge in the courtroom and the play ends happily for one side and miserably for the other.

Director Michael Radford (Il Postino) has given us a beautiful version of Shakespeare’s Merchant. Employing all the advantages of cinematic art, location filming, and technology he offers up a stunning period piece in which practically every scene resembles a painting, in which we understand through wordless visuals the inhuman treatment of Jews by Christians in sixteenth-century Europe, in which we are transported into a crowded and chaotic Venetian courtroom.

This film delights the viewer with the language of Shakespeare, beautiful and powerful, spoken with passion and without affectation as if the Bard himself were sitting in the director’s chair getting exactly what he wanted from his players. Radford has cast his film well. Al Pacino’s Shylock is both an archetype of the reviled European Jew and a fully realized human being – a loving and protective father, a devoutly religious person, and a man whose hatred and bitterness, however understandable, cause him to go too far and thus bring about his own ultimate humiliation. Pacino’s delivery of the famous “Hath not a Jew eyes?” speech is spellbinding.

Jeremy Irons’ portrayal of the complex Antonio reveals all of the character’s facets – his contempt for Jews, his love of Bassanio, his fear of and then resignation to death, his loneliness – in perfect pitch. Lynn Collins is flawless as Portia and Joseph Fiennes’ Bassanio, in all his sophomoric machinations, is beautiful.