The entire cast of this production breathe quality into it, without exception. I accept the reading of Lear as a petulant, raging spoilt old man of former power, wanting to bestow his favours upon a grateful audience, expecting to live in grandeur from the ample residue of gratitude he expected to garnish from his generosity for some time forward. I accept the grabbing sisters and dumbfounded sibling, and I am spellbound by the parallel tale of Gloucester's progeny as it binds itself into the main theme. The idiocy of the king, as his retirement is filled with a carebound yet carefree madness, and the final realisation of Lear's love for Cordeila at her death took me through a full journey through the landscape, filling me with (sniffed in) tears when I first saw it in 1983 at 17 years old, and it is still powerful now. My only complaint is about the quality of the VHS version I have. If only I knew which was the best DVD version to replace it with...

Having been forced to watch this god awful film in English class I can now relate to torture victims. First of all, it's Shakespeare, how can you mess it up, it not like it's objective. All you have to do is take all of the dialogue that Shakespeare wrote, move around the actors like it says in the screenplay and there you have it, King fricken Lear. Having grown up in the early 90's I have seen plenty of low budget Jim Henson videos like the Frog Prince which were clearly shot on VHS cameras with terrible lighting which have never seemed to offend me. However King Lear displays a level of amateur everything that is unparrelled. On numerous occasions stage lights are in shots, no one put any filters over the lights so there is a harsh white cast down on the actors heads. For some reason there is a perpetual fog over the whole film which I realized was added to conceal the horribly fake background painting in the outdoor scenes. I'm not sure King Lear actually had a Director since everything seems spure of the moment.The biggest mystery is how they got John Hurt to be in this. He plays the fool and does okay I guess. He really should have waited another five years and been in Jean Luc Godard's adaptation. If you really have to see King Lear DON'T SEE THIS MOVIE. The production level is offensively bad. The special Effects are terrible and whatever primitive format this movie was shot on messes up fire anytime it's on the screen.Rent Jean Luc Godard's 1987 version it is much much much much much better. And while you're at it check out Band a Parte and Breathless (or A Bout de Soufflé) they rock the house and are Jean Luc Godard classics.

Actually, this is a tough review to write, because the main problem is that Laurence Olivier is just too old to play this part. King Lear the character is old, but the actor playing him has to have the energy and power of a younger man. Otherwise, how can he stand a chance against the evil characters, especially when the two evil daughters join forces? Some of the best parts of this production actually are the evil daughters, Goneril and Regan. Diana Rigg is great!Overall, this one is definitely worth seeing because it's such a great play and there are some really wonderful performances like Rigg, Dorothy Tutin and John Hurt. Just don't expect it to be the best possible King Lear.

I am becoming increasingly aware that some of my favorite actors are just dumb, that they don't have a vision as grand as the work they are a part of. I don't know that this should be so surprising, given what it takes to be an actor.Olivier both acts and directs here, and what we have is a shame because he just doesn't understand this play, the important half anyway. Half of the play is about the relationships among people, specifically about the parent-child relationship and its regal surrogate of fealty (the fool, Kent and Gloucester to the King). When Olivier is relating to one of these, he is marvelous.But half of the play is about Lear's relationship to unseen demons, sprites, devils. He sees and relates to these as intensely and with as much duration as with the daughters. (This is mirrored by Gloucester who cannot see them.) In this part of the play, roughly the middle, the language comes alive as it takes us into the Elizabethan equivalent of science fiction. This is some of the best language in Shakespeare, which is to say the best stuff anywhere.And what does Olivier give us? Mumbling, sometimes under the wind noise. The fulcrum of this magic is the sequence with the Fool and Poor Tom. It is the heart of the magic, which Shakespeare later amplified with the `trial.' Olivier cuts most of that, and gives us a muddle. (Literally, Tom wallowing in the mud.)The music is horrid, as it is with his much earlier Hamlet. The swordplay is bombastic. The sets are cheesy, especially the faux Stonehenge. If he understood the importance of Stonehenge, why drop the notion of magic in the core of the play? I just don't get it: I don't understand how he couldn't get it.At the very last page, Lear kneels over the dead Cordelia and says `my poor fool is hanged.' Then looking for life in a magical revival asks to have HER button undone, which likely undoes a garment like that we have seen on the long-lost Fool. Rich stuff that, as big a twist as `Sixth Sense.' But Olivier slurs over on his way to rambling about dogs and rats and then asks for HIS button to be undone. My my.Advice: Lear is one of the very best of the plays. I'll grant that Olivier is a fine actor, but this is a very poor offering indeed. Ignore.