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Article: Richard III.
- Article from:
- Cineaste
- Article date:
- June 22, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1995 Cineaste Publishers, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Laurence Olivier's Richard III has been available on videotape for some years now, but The Voyager Company's new Criterion Collection laserdisc qualifies as a "restoration," albeit a nontheatrical one, since it reincorporates some twenty minutes of previously trimmed footage and preserves the original VistaVision widescreen image in a slightly letterboxed (1.85:1) format. The 1955 film - the last of Olivier's three Shakespearean theatrical features, following Henry V (1945) and Hamlet (1948), in each of which he served as both director and lead actor - is a showcase for his virtuoso performance as Shakespeare's notorious Crook-back, the misshapen, murderous Duke of ...