Hailed as one of the best adaptations of this Shakespearean tragedy, Grigori Kozintsev’s KING LEAR is a striking epic interpretation based on a translation by novelist Boris Pasternak and driven by a stirring score by composer Dmitri Shostakovich. Kozintsev transposed the setting to a sparse landscape of moors and marshes, which provides an eerie backdrop to the bare castles and roaming bands of ragged, destitute wanderers. Thin, frail Yuri Yarvet’s unique interpretation of the title role, in which he focuses on the king’s suffering and pain, was internationally acclaimed. Kozintsev, a peer of Eisenstein’s who worked well into the 1960s, was a master of cinematic technique who finally achieved recognition at the end of his career for his stunning interpretations of Shakespeare. According to film historian Richard Dyer: "Paradoxically, the two most powerful films of Shakespeare plays [Hamlet and King Lear] were made not in Great Britain but in the Soviet Union." (Boston Globe)
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