Sherry Chandler

Watching Henry V on St. Crispin’s Day

It took us two weeks to watch Olivier’s Henry V (otherwise known as The Chronicle History of King Henry the Fift with His Battell Fought at Agincourt in France), not because it was dull — it’s a very interesting production linguistically (of course) and visually — but because we’ve been so busy running here and there and it is over two hours of very stylized Shakespeare.

I am also counting time to watch the commentary track.

We finished last night, on St. Crispin’s Day, which seems appropriate. [Added: St. Crispin's Day, October 25, was the date of the Battle of Agincourt.]

Released in 1944 with the intent to be a propaganda film, to raise the British hopes before the inevitable invasion of France, the film expurgates much of that which is negative about Shakespeare’s Henry (most of which Branaugh retained in his 1989 version, called the post-Viet Nam Henry V). Nevertheless, it retained enough of Shakespeare’s ambivalence about kings who go adventuring, ambivalence on the part of the infantryman and the archer, to suit me.

Though James Agee didn’t see it that way in 1946:

The film was given its U. S. premiere this week (in Boston’s Esquire Theater). … At last there had been brought to the screen, with such sweetness, vigor, insight and beauty that it seemed to have been written yesterday, a play by the greatest dramatic poet who ever lived. It had never been done before. For Laurence Olivier, 38 (who plays Henry and directed and produced the picture), the event meant new stature. For Shakespeare, it meant a new splendor in a new, viral medium. Exciting as was the artistic development of Laurence Olivier, last seen by U. S. cinemaddicts in films like Rebecca and Wuthering Heights, for his production of Henry V was even more exciting.

As Shakespeare wrote it, The Chronicle History of Henry the Fifth is an intensely masculine, simple, sanguine drama of kinghood and war. It’s more eloquent theme is a young king’s coming of age. Once an endearingly wild Prince of Wales, Henry V (at 28) had to prove his worthiness for the scepter by leading his army in war.

Olivier gave this production a very definite fairy tale feeling, first by setting it as a “play within a film” at the Globe Theater and then by dissolving into sets that were deliberately designed to have the look of Medieval paintings, with obviously painted backdrops and a flat perspective. Even the fabrics and dyes used to make the costumes were from the right period and, the film being in technicolor, it is gorgeous to behold. The actual battle scenes are totally realistic, however.

If you have any interest at all in the history of cinema (this production was very innovative) or in Shakespeare, this film is well worth 2 hours of your time. Or even two week.

Related posts:

Henry K. Leadingham Prose & Poetry Reading & Reception

Shakespeare Behind Bars

Kevin Kline’s Hamlet

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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