Eric Stevenson The individuals works of William Shakespeare are probably the most studied works of fiction in history. Then again, a lot of his stories were based on real life. Here we get a great movie based on one of his lesser known plays, "Henry V". I feel bad for not being more familiar with the time period this takes place in. I know that it's in the Hundred Year's War. Most people remember this as the war Joan of Arc fought in, but this takes place long before that. Well, it is a hundred year's war after all. I remember reading about Edward, the Black Prince.The set up of this film is great. It's actually put up exactly like a play. As the story goes on however, this aspect disappears and it does get more serious. It was hard to make a truly great movie while World War II was being fought in real life. You can see the dedication these people put into portraying their roles. We get a lot of epic scenery and battles. My only complaint is that there a few times where the backgrounds look fake. Still, it's great that we've always had practical effects. ***1/2

aar4-951-420232 This is an awful movie, really just awful. No one who has seen Kenneth Branagh's masterful Henry V (1988) can watch this turkey without cringing. For starters, the characters of Canterbury and Ely are such bumbling fools that they completely eviscerate Henry's reliance on churchly assurances that the war is just. At Harfleur, the film omits Henry's frightening "shrill-shrieking maidens, naked infants spitted upon pikes" speech. It also omits Henry's confrontation with Masham, Scroop and Gray (which Branagh does brilliantly), and turns Henry's court into a parade of fops. The French king is a weak-minded fool, and the soldiers appear to have been taken directly from a Laurel and Hardy movie. Really, it's awful. Yes, it was a propaganda film for the Brits in 1944, but still -- if you want the real Henry, bypass this and go for Branagh's masterpiece.

Petri Pelkonen In the beginning of the film we are in the Globe Theatre in 1600 where the Chorus (Leslie Banks) enters and implores the audience to use their imagination to visualize the setting of the play.The play tells about King Henry V of England and it focuses on events immediately before and after The Battle of Agincourt (1415) during the Hundred Year's War.William Shakespeare is believed to have written the original play in 1599.I read it the same week, which was last week, as they showed the movie.Laurence Olivier, who's known for many Shakespeare adaptations has done an excellent job making the tale of Henry the Fift into a movie.The Chronicle History of King Henry the Fift with His Battell Fought at Agincourt in France (1944) is one of the most famous Shakespeare films Olivier came up with.I don't find it quite as good as Hamlet, but pretty close.Olivier makes also a very good leading man.All the actors are very well picked.Felix Aylmer is Archbishop of Canterbury while Robert Helpmann plays the part of Archbishop of Ely.Griffith Jones plays Earl of Salisbury.George Cole is the Boy.Harcourt Williams plays King Charles VI of France.Max Audrian plays the Dauphin.Renee Asherson is beautiful and also brilliant in her part as Princess Katherine.Henry V is a very showy movie.The war part looks good, not to forget the romance.A worthy Shakespeare adaptation.

Steffi_P It's perhaps surprising that when people from a theatrical background turn to film directing, they tend to produce pictures that are purely cinematic and freed from staginess. This is the case with Laurence Olivier, as it was with Rouben Mamoulian and Orson Welles. Here, with his debut feature as director, Olivier not only created a landmark propaganda film, but also redefined the screen Shakespeare adaptation and established a new precedent of renowned actor turning competent director.Shakespeare's play of Henry V was of course ideal for a wartime morale booster, featuring as it does heroic action, rousing speeches, historical parallels with the landings at France, a protagonist who is valiant yet warm and humane, as well as plenty of little extra touches such as exploring the psychology of the troops on the eve of battle and stressing the need for unity between English, Irish, Scotch and Welsh. It was also the perfect play for Olivier to test his ideas on how a Shakespeare play should be turned into a film. The chorus of Shakespeare's original text tells the audience that the great battles and courts can scarcely be contained on a stage and that you must "on your imaginative forces work". Using this idea as his starting point, Olivier begins the film with a recreation of a contemporary production of the original play at the Globe theatre, complete with backstage glimpses, bumbling actors and a rowdy Elizabethan audience. Then, as Leslie Banks' chorus commands the audience to "work your thoughts", the theatre disappears, and the action subtly opens out into larger sets. Eventually, we are transported to location with thousands of extras for the climactic battle scene.This was not only a complete reworking of screen Shakespeare, it was part of a whole approach to cinema. Olivier's Henry V, although totally different in content, is stylistically in the same tradition as Michael Powell's The Red Shoes or the elaborate ballet sequences of MGM musicals, which also expand would-be stage performances into pure cinematic fantasy. The originator of this approach was probably Busby Berkeley, who also made the switch from stage to screen, albeit from the music hall to the role of choreographer for screen musicals. The musical sequences that Berkeley constructed for Warner Brothers musicals in the mid-1930s always begin with a stage production, but then turn into tour-de-forces of choreography, camera positioning and massive sets, all of which could never be contained or properly appreciated on a stage. Olivier is effectively doing the same thing with a Shakespeare play as Berkeley did with a dancing chorus line.Of course, all this alone isn't what makes Henry V a great work. For a first-time director Olivier's eye is remarkably sharp. He keeps the action smooth in dialogue scenes by making use of long takes, and preferring to move the camera to change the framing rather than breaking the shot with a cut, often dollying in on a single actor to achieve a close-up. He's not quite experienced enough yet though to give these shots a really natural flow, and he doesn't really get the chance to show off his talents as a dramatic director as he would later in Hamlet and Richard III. Having said that, he does manage to give remarkable tenderness to Henry's soliloquy on the eve of battle and his courtship of Kate towards the end of the film.The highpoint however is the impressive Agincourt battle sequence, which was influenced by the battle in Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky, but is actually an improvement on the Russian master's equivalent work. He similarly builds up tension as the opposing army begins its charge, using a rhythmic editing pattern and dynamic close-ups. However, whereas Alexander Nevsky's battle occasionally looked obviously staged and unrealistic, in Henry V you could as well be witnessing a genuine medieval battle.Olivier selected a top notch cast composed of actors with theatre experience like himself, with exuberant performances from Robert Newton as the cowardly Pistol and Esmond Knight as Welsh captain Fluellen, and too many other great names to mention. Olivier himself, after a decade of learning how to act for screen, perhaps relished the chance to give huge, concert-hall-filling Shakespearean delivery again, although he does manage to rein his performance in again for the quieter scenes.Henry V is remarkable for a director's debut feature. Olivier would direct two more prestigious Shakespeare adaptations, as well as a few dramas, but Henry V is his freshest and most engaging work as a director, and still remains the best.