Cymbeline [TV] (1982)
Directed by Elijah Moshinsky

Film Review

One of the great virtues of the BBC Television Shakespeare series is that it increased awareness of some of the Bard's more obscure and challenging plays, and in doing so deepened our understanding and appreciation of his work.  Plays that are seldom performed were treated on an equal footing with the Bard's most familiar works, often with surprising results.  Cymbeline deserves its reputation as one of Shakespeare's more difficult plays.  Its convoluted plot and morass of themes has made it unattractive for both directors and audiences and even a decent production of the play cannot disguise the fact that it feels like an overworked potpourri of some of the Bard's greater plays.  Elijah Moshinsky had his work cut out for him when he took on the job of directing Cymbeline within the unforgiving confines of a BBC television studio in the early 1980s, but he rose to the challenge and, aided by an exemplary cast, he crafted what is widely regarded as one of the very best in this most revered series of television plays.

Moshinsky's masterstroke was to give his production an incredibly strong visual design, one which superficially conflicts with the play's surface impressions but which actually serves to expose the deeper meanings that lie beneath.   Although the story is set in the first century AD, a mystical age of intrigue and chivalry, Moshinsky's Cymbeline takes its design inspiration from Dutch and Flemish paintings of the 17th century, with Rembrandt and Vermeer being the most obvious influences.  The stark puritanical texture of the design suggests a confidently ordered world where individuals are masters of their own destiny.  But this is a mere illusion, a painted screen to conceal the raging sea of chaos that lies very close to the surface. 

From the outset it is apparent that the peace that exists between Britain and Rome is a forced delusion that is likely to evaporate at any moment.  The King, Cymbeline, is threatened with usurpation not only by the Roman Emperor but also by his constantly scheming wife, who is ready to kill anyone so that her idiot son (the aptly named Cloten) may inherit the throne.  What begins as a near-retread of Othello, with a slimy malefactor determined to drive a murderous wedge between a jealous husband and the purest of wives, rapidly runs way with itself and ends in bloody turmoil in which puny Britain is pitied against the might of the Roman Empire.  It could have been the grimmest of Shakespeare's tragedies but we are spared the blood bath of the final act and instead have to digest the most improbable of the Bard's comedies, with everyone prepared to kiss and make up instead of partaking of a jolly good slaughter.  In its cold elegance, the Rembrandt-esque design hints at how desperately phoney and delusional is the manufactured harmony that asserts itself at the end of the play, the thinnest of veils draped across the most volcanic of passions.

Of course it isn't just the design that makes this one of the standout productions in the BBC Television Shakespeare.  The performances are every bit as important and with a truly stunning cast headed by the great Helen Mirren it is hard to see how it could ever have gone wrong.  Mirren's Imogen is a far cry from conventional portrayals of that most chaste of Shakespearean heroines - a mature woman fully aware of her sexual potency and not remotely ashamed of it.  There is a subtly erotic feel to almost every one of Mirren's scenes, none more so than the almost pornographic rendering of the sequence in which a slavering Satyr-like Robert Lindsay (superbly seductive as the villainous Iachimo) steals Imogen's honour without her knowledge.

Michael Pennington has more of a thankless task, but he succeeds in bringing a measure of sense to Posthumus, a character that on paper can hardly help resembling an awkward amalgam of Othello and Coriolanus.  With her customary aura of cool charm and aloofness, Claire Bloom makes an exquisitely malignant wicked stepmother, the perfect complement to Richard Johnson's blunt but essentially honourable Cymbeline.  Michael Gough brings a genteel likeability to the outcast Belarius which makes his character a convincing catalyst for the unexpected break out of goodwill that occurs in the final act.  As Jupiter, Michael Hordern emanates a frighteningly god-like presence in the play's eeriest scene, the dream-sequence in Act V Scene IV.   And with such old pros as Marius Goring and Graham Crowden casually scattered among the minor roles you can't help feeling ever so slightly spoiled with the quality of acting talent the BBC was able to amass for this production.  We might question to the wisdom of Paul Jesson's decision to play Cloten with a speech impediment (a distwacting gimmick that makes a widiculous chawacter twuly iwitating), but apart from this one small lapse the performances are as near to flawless as you can get.

Elijah Moshinsky's direction, unceasingly slick and resourceful, makes of this demanding and at times ungainly piece of drama a compelling and visually enticing character study that holds up well alongside Shakespeare's greater works.  Nowhere is Moshinsky's skill more apparent than in the final scene (Act V, Scene V) in which, amid a diarrhoeic deluge of exposition, the characters take turns to drop narrative bombshells, thus engineering the most implausibly contrived of happy endings.  If there is one reason for hating Cymbeline it is this overlong and hideously overwrought scene, but Moshinsky and his camera crew work a strange alchemy upon it and, by getting the best out of the performers via some meticulous staging and editing, it becomes the most poignant and satisfying conclusion to the play.  There are more than a few entries in the BBC Television Shakespeare that fail to live up to expectations but here is one, stylish and absorbing, that is vastly in excess of anything we may have hoped for.

Film Synopsis

In Ancient Britain, King Cymbeline reigns at a time of fragile peace with the Roman Empire.  Since his two sons were stolen from him in childhood, Cymbeline has but one surviving heir, his daughter Imogen.  When Posthumus Leonatus, a member of his court, marries Imogen without his consent, Cymbeline banishes him as a traitor.  The Queen intends that her imbecilic son Cloten will marry her step-daughter Imogen, ensuring that he will be the next king of the Britons.  If that scheme fails, she is ready to murder both Cymbeline and his daughter to achieve her aims.  Exiled to Rome, Postumus wagers his entire fortune with a man named Iachimo that Imogen will resist all attempts to be seduced by him.  By exercising ruthless cunning, Iachimo returns with irrefutable proof that he has deflowered the supposedly faithful wife.  Heart-broken by this supposed treachery, Postumus instructs his faithful servant Pisanio to murder Imogen at Milford Haven...