Shakespeare in European Cinema

This book examines Shakespeare’s afterlives in European cinema. It offers a series of comparative studies analysing Shakespeare films in light of common myths perceived to constitute European identity. With the Second World War as a starting point, the book focuses on how Shakespeare is mobilized in films that address the moments in recent European history when those myths came under most intense scrutiny: the Holocaust, the sexual revolution, the post-Fordist transition to a consumerist society, the fragmentation of the Yugoslav Federation, the European debt crisis, and the contemporary increase in xenophobic attitudes giving rise to the resurgence of the far right. From forgotten adaptations such as Jirí Weiss’s Romeo, Juliet and Darkness , to canonical films like Ingmar Bergman’s Persona , the book examines European filmic Shakespeare as a transnational and intermedial category by considering not just adaptations but also films that allude to, reference or evoke the playwright. As such, it constitutes the first sustained critical account of Shakespeare’s place in European cinema.