Scenic literalism

In his splendid performance history of Shakespeare, David Bevington frequently comments on the “scenic literalism” of film and television. Commenting on a TV production of As You Like It , he laments that the production “tells us where we are in the story by putting entire landscapes or interiors in front of our eyes even before the characters have said a word. We ‘read’ the scene first in terms of its visual setting. In this case, the attempt is misguided because it takes away the magic of an imagined landscape where all sorts of things can and do happen that would be absurd in an actual rural location.” Even Laurence Olivier is “unable to rescue [Paul Czinner’s 1936 film] from its saccharine premise that the play is a good old-fashioned love story set in a picturesque countryside.”