Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of contributors
- Introduction – British art cinema: creativity, experimentation and innovation
- 1 ‘Art cinema’, 1920s British film culture: Alfred Hitchcock and Anthony Asquith
- 2 Humphrey Jennings: of images, poetry and Pandaemonium
- 3 Out of the war, on with the arts: cultural politics and art films in post-war Britain
- 4 Attitudes towards experiment in British cinema: the amateur art films of Enrico Cocozza
- 5 Art cinema, British production and the 1960s
- 6 Happy accident: the symbiosis of Joseph Losey and Harold Pinter
- 7 The parameters of British art cinema: a case study of John Krish
- 8 The reputation of Nicolas Roeg
- 9 ‘As the first Black face on the scene, I had to push the doors open’ – Horace Ové and Pressure (1975)
- 10 Art cinema and the British poetic realist tradition
- 11 The third avant garde: Black Audio Film Collective and Latin America
- 12 The rise of British art cinema in the 1980s
- 13 Derek Jarman, trance films and medieval art cinema
- 14 Twin traditions: the biopic and the composed film in British art cinema
- 15 Don Boyd and the business of art cinema
- 16 Shakespearean film as art cinema: Stage Beauty as a cerebral retort to Hollywood
- 17 Boundary crossings and inter-subjective imaginings: Sarah Turner’s Perestroika
- Index
16 - Shakespearean film as art cinema: Stage Beauty as a cerebral retort to Hollywood
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2025
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of contributors
- Introduction – British art cinema: creativity, experimentation and innovation
- 1 ‘Art cinema’, 1920s British film culture: Alfred Hitchcock and Anthony Asquith
- 2 Humphrey Jennings: of images, poetry and Pandaemonium
- 3 Out of the war, on with the arts: cultural politics and art films in post-war Britain
- 4 Attitudes towards experiment in British cinema: the amateur art films of Enrico Cocozza
- 5 Art cinema, British production and the 1960s
- 6 Happy accident: the symbiosis of Joseph Losey and Harold Pinter
- 7 The parameters of British art cinema: a case study of John Krish
- 8 The reputation of Nicolas Roeg
- 9 ‘As the first Black face on the scene, I had to push the doors open’ – Horace Ové and Pressure (1975)
- 10 Art cinema and the British poetic realist tradition
- 11 The third avant garde: Black Audio Film Collective and Latin America
- 12 The rise of British art cinema in the 1980s
- 13 Derek Jarman, trance films and medieval art cinema
- 14 Twin traditions: the biopic and the composed film in British art cinema
- 15 Don Boyd and the business of art cinema
- 16 Shakespearean film as art cinema: Stage Beauty as a cerebral retort to Hollywood
- 17 Boundary crossings and inter-subjective imaginings: Sarah Turner’s Perestroika
- Index
Summary
Released six years after Shakespeare in Love won Best Picture Oscar, Stage Beauty (Eyre, 2004) portrays Shakespearean performance history at the point in the Restoration when female impersonators were replaced by actresses on the English stage. Given the similarities between the two films, it comes as no surprise to find that the press response to Stage Beauty made frequent comparisons, describing it as: ‘bitchy half-sister to Shakespeare in Love’; ‘Shakespeare in Love II’; and ‘Shakespeare in Love for transvestites’. Those involved in making Stage Beauty were keen to differentiate its cinematic qualities. The film was adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher from his stage play Compleat Female Stage Beauty, and directed by Richard Eyre, a former artistic director of the National Theatre. This chapter examines the textual features that mark this film out as a serious-minded depiction of theatrical heritage and gender play, along with the reception discourses that the film stimulated. It also considers possible barriers to cultural engagement with Shakespeare as manifested in ‘art cinema’ with reference to audience research.
Information
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- British art cinemaCreativity, experimentation and innovation, pp. 243 - 258Publisher: Manchester University PressFirst published in: 2025
Accessibility standard: Unknown
Why this information is here
This section outlines the accessibility features of this content - including support for screen readers, full keyboard navigation and high-contrast display options. This may not be relevant for you.Accessibility Information
Accessibility compliance for the PDF of this chapter is currently unknown
and may be updated in the future.