Today we feature three movies that owe their storylines to the plot of William Shakespeare’s play ‘The Tempest. It is one of his later plays and is usally described as a tragi-comedy, in that it appears to be a full blown tragedy but actually concludes with a happy ending.
Yellow Sky is a 1948 American Western film directed by William A. Wellman and starring Gregory Peck, Richard Widmark and Anne Baxter. The story is believed to be loosely adapted from The Tempest. In 1867, a gang led by James “Stretch” Dawson robs a bank and, chased by soldiers, choose to cross the salt flats of Death Valley. After an arduous journey, collapsing from heat and dehydration, the outlaws come upon a ghost town called Yellow Sky and its only residents, a tough young woman called Mike and her prospector grandfather. Stretch is attracted to Mike. While the men recover from their ordeal at a spring, gambler Dude snoops around. Dude tells the others that the old man is mining gold, but Stretch is unimpressed. The next day, Mike and Grandpa take to the hills. A confrontation between Stretch and Dude over the leadership of the gang is interrupted by Mike shooting at them. However, when Grandpa is hit in the leg by a riccochet, Mike surrenders.
Back in the house, Grandpa is persuaded into a deal to split his gold, worth roughly $50,000 by his estimate. At the spring, Lengthy grabs Mike, forcing himself on her. the young Bull Run intervenes to protect her and Lengthy holds him underwater. Stretch rescues him and holds Lengthy’s head underwater until he nearly drowns. That night, Stretch approaches Mike again, this time cleaned up to make a better impression on her. He assures her and Grandpa that he will keep to the bargain, swearing on a bible, with Dude eavesdropping. The next day, a large band of Apaches appear while the gang is at the mine digging up the gold. Grandpa tells Stretch that he convinced his Apache friends to return to the reservation and that he told them nothing about the gang. In gratitude for the old man not sending the Indians to wipe out his gang, Stretch tells his men that they will share the gold, but Dude has convinced them to join him against Stretch and take all of the gold. Dude draws his gun and fires on Stretch. A shootout amongst the rocks ensues with the gang against Stretch. Mike shows up and helps a wounded Stretch back to her home. Not wanting to spend the rest of their lives looking over their shoulders for Stretch, the gang surrounds the house.
In the ensuing gunfight they think that Stretch has been killed. Dude wants all the gold for himself and shoots at Lengthy, but misses. Bull Run is also shot and fatally wounded by Dude and so Walrus and Half Pint decide to help Stretch. Stretch goes after Dude and Lengthy, who have gone into the town to escape. A deadly three-sided shootout in the saloon follows. A frantic Mike finds Dude and Lengthy dead inside and Stretch unconscious but still breathing. After Stretch recovers, he, Walrus and Half Pint, who is now wearing Dude’s clothes, return to the bank they robbed and give back the stolen money. Then, they ride off with Mike and Grandpa.
Forbidden Planet is a 1956 American science fiction film produced by Nicholas Nayfack, and directed by Fred M. Wilcox from a script by Cyril Hume that was based on an original film story by Allen Adler and Irving Block. It is considered one of the great science fiction films of the 1950s, a precursor of contemporary science fiction cinema. The characters and isolated setting have been compared to those in The Tempest, and the plot contains certain analogues to the play, leading many to consider it a loose adaption.
Forbidden Planet pioneered several aspects of science fiction cinema. It was the first science fiction film to depict humans traveling in a faster-than-light starship of their own creation. It was also the first to be set entirely on another planet in interstellar space, far away from Earth. The Robby the Robot character is one of the first film robots that was more than just a mechanical “tin can” on legs; Robby displays a distinct personality and is an integral supporting character in the film. Outside science fiction, the film was groundbreaking as the first of any genre to use an entirely electronic musical score, courtesy of Bebe and Louis Barron.
Prospero’s Books is a 1991 British avant-garde adaptation of The Tempest, written and directed by Peter Greenaway. Sir John Gielgud plays Prospero, the protagonist who provides the off-screen narration and the voices to the other story characters. As noted by Peter Conrad in The New York Times on 17 November 1991, Greenaway intended the film “as an homage to the actor and to his “mastery of illusion.” In the film, Prospero is Shakespeare, and having rehearsed the action inside his head, speaking the lines of all the other characters, he concludes the film by sitting down to write The Tempest.”
Stylistically, Prospero’s Books is narratively and cinematically innovative in its techniques, combining mime, dance, opera, and animation. Edited in Japan, the film makes extensive use of digital image manipulation, often overlaying multiple moving and still pictures with animations. Michael Nyman composed the musical score and Karine Saporta choreographed the dance. The film is also notable for its extensive use of nudity, reminiscent of Renaissance paintings of mythological characters. The nude actors and extras represent a cross-section of male and female humanity.
Prospero’s Books is a complex tale. Miranda, the daughter of Prospero, an exiled magician, falls in love with Ferdinand, the son of his enemy; while the sorcerer’s sprite, Ariel, convinces him to abandon revenge against the traitors from his earlier life. In the film, Prospero is Shakespeare himself, conceiving, designing, rehearsing, directing and performing the story’s action as it unfolds and in the end, sitting down to write the completed work. Ariel is played by four actors: three acrobats—a boy, an adolescent, and a youth—and a boy singer. Each represents a classical elemental. The books of Prospero number 24, according to the production design, which outlines each volume’s content. The list is reminiscent of the lost books of Epicurus.
