SOURCE: Andrews, Christopher. “Richard III on Film: The Subversion of the Viewer.” Literature/Film Quarterly 28, no. 2 (2000): 82-94.

In the following essay, Andrews evaluates the means by which film representations of Richard III, performed by Laurence Olivier, Ron Cooke, and Ian McKellen, have facilitated a relationship with the viewing audience.

Why, I can smile, and murder whiles I smile, And cry ‘Content!’ to that which grieves my heart, And wet my cheeks with artificial tears, And frame my face to all occasions. 

—Richard, Duke of Gloucester, later King

I

For almost four hundred years the Chorus has made his appeal to audiences of Shakespeare's Henry V to imagine scores of horses and fields of men in battle. With the emergence of film we surely find the means to cast off such a device, perhaps with a desire to present a minimally altered script (after all, we can hardly imagine...