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Samuel Crowl. Shakespeare at the Cineplex: The Kenneth Branagh Era. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2003. Pp. xiv + 254. $34.95.
So many good films of Shakespeare's plays were released in the 1990s that it became easy to take them for granted. Now that the flood has become a trickle, though, we are in a better position to appreciate-in every sense of that word-the bounty of those times. Samuel Growl's engaging new book helps us do just that. Its subtitle and substance pay proper tribute to Kenneth Branagh, the artist more responsible than anyone else for what may increasingly be seen as a brief golden age of Shakespeare on-screen. Branagh has often been the object of condescending academic criticism; thanks in part to Growl's book, he may now begin to receive more of the credit he deserves for helping to inspire and sustain a remarkable period of intelligent filmmaking.
Although Crowl obviously admires and respects Branagh's own achievements, his book provides thoughtful, insightful discussions of all the major films that followed in the aftermath of Branagh's groundbreaking Henry V (1989). That work, Crowl notes, introduced "the most prolific and dynamic decade in the hundred-year history of Shakespeare on film" (25), and Growl's book offers discussion of the distinctive styles, directors, and acting that followed in Branagh's wake. Crowl writes with clarity and grace; his is the kind of academic book that "regular readers" might actually want...