King Lear. Silent Shakespeare. Dir. Gerolamo Lo Savio. Perf. Ermete Novelli and Francesca Bertini. 1911. DVD. Image Entertainment, 2000.Here's a small segment from a fourteen-minute silent version of King Lear from 1911. Even with fourteen minutes at his disposal, Lo Savio needs to depend on extensive, lengthy title cards to get the plot across. Though you have to admit that the opening title card does a good job of summarizing the opening scene.
I tried forgetting everything I knew about the play before watching the film, just to see if it still made sense. But I just wasn't able to separate what I know of the plot of the play from the experience of watching the film. For example, I was expecting a storm—but that's not to be seen here.
All the same, the film is quite enjoyable! I love the colorization, especially considering that they had to paint each frame of the entire film by hand to get that effect. A stunning amount of work is therefore embodied in the short clip below.
If you like, you can treat this as the Cliffs Notes to the plot of the play.
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