Shakespearean Star: Laurence Olivier and National Cinema by Jennifer Barnes (review)

Reflecting the broad range of new scholarship in the history of cinema, the books included in this section have been selected by the editorial staff of Film History. The summaries have been provided by the authors.

This book explores the evolution of Laurence Olivier as a specifically Shakespearean star in relation to the industrial and cultural contexts of the wartime and postwar British film industry. Organized around an examination of the three cinematic Shakespeares that made it to the screen and the fourth—Macbeth—which famously did not, the book offers, for the first time, a full study of Olivier's Shakespeare adaptations, restoring Macbeth to the actor-director's cinematic oeuvre. Underpinned by rigorous archival research, the book draws on a vast array of primary resources including pressbooks, cinema programs, souvenir brochures, exhibitor directives, and life writing in order to understand how Laurence Olivier's construction as a Shakespearean star articulated an identity for the nation—and its film industry—at key points in history.

Shakespearean Star explores Laurence Olivier's appropriations of various forms of visual culture in his cinematic adaptations, including this circa seventeenth-century portrait of King Henry V.