Watching (almost) all (as it turns out now) of Woody Allen's films in order: King Lear (1987)

Then Or rather not then. Not now even, not really. Surprisingly for such a renowned director, Jean-Luc Godard’s King Lear is a rarity on home formats. But in attempting to track down a copy I found some sources …

- Amazon.com has ex-rental VHS copies from secondary sellers, the cheapest of which is $87.99 US.
- A company called LearMedia in Canada offers what look like bootlegs of this VHS on sale for $27.99 US.
- The film was released on proper dvd. In Italy. Someone in the US is selling a copy at £23.99 plus postage. Which looked like the most obvious option until I saw …
- A video website called Veoh with a free to watch but poor quality version provided you have their proprietorial video player, then …
- … this BardFilm blogpost which has a clip from the film and Woody’s entire contribution which lasts for about two minutes and …

… decided to watch that instead. Which I did about fifteen minutes ago. But obviously as a Molly Ringwald completest I will have to get around to the whole thing, presumably when I’m watching all of Molly Ringwald’s films in order and when the process is more cost effective. Shot in the same year as Pretty In Pink. Amazing.

Now The main draw of that clip is hearing Woody speaking Shakespeare’s real verse after he mangled it so entertainingly in Sex*. Interesting that in both projects he played the fool. His delivery is quite dry and somewhat like his voiceover for Radio Days. But it is profoundly disappointing after all of these years since first reading about the film at university in the 90s to discover that it is just a cameo and there are no shots of him crouching meaningfully with a Lear figure in the wilderness.

For his part, Woody had this to say to Stig Bjorkman on the experience:

“That was a unique experience, because I love Godard’s work. I never saw that movie. But he asked me, he was here, came into this room and asked me if I would like to be in his King Lear. For him I would have done anything because he’s one of the really great masters. And he said it would only take a few hours in the morning. So I went over to the place where they were filming, and he was in his bathrobe, with his cigar, directing. He had a very small crew, like three people or something. One cameraman, one sound person and somebody else. It couldn’t be more sparse. And I felt while was doing it, this is going to be a very silly movie. A very foolish movie. But I thought, this is for Godard. And I got a chance to meet him. Then I left and I’ve never heard about the movie since. I never saw it.”

Apparently Godard only read the first and last few pages of the play and went from there which rather explains things. Only The Cinema has a longer review.