Saw The Chronicle History of King Henry the Fifth with His Battell Fought at Agincourt in France, which is also known as Henry V, but the original name is so splendid and ridiculous and really better captures the spirit of the film. The film followed King Henry as he ascends the throne, fights the battle of Agincourt, and acquires a wife.
The film opens on a gorgeous miniature of old London. It's filmed in orangey technicolor and orchestra music is playing and the tiny ships in the harbor even glide around as well zoom in on the Globe Theater. This is a capital-P Prestige film. The whole thing is done in actual Shakespearian language, dick-jokes and all. The film is beautiful and pompous and honestly a bit of a chore.
The film has a couple of interesting things going for it: it was filmed in the 40s as a sort of propaganda film to keep British spirits up during WW2. The filming of the climactic battle between England and France had to be halted a couple of times due to British vs German dogfights happening overhead. The action of the film and the play nicely parallels the events at the time of filming.
Also: the film is very pretty. It's shot to look like the contemporary tapestries depicting the battle, with weird forced perspectives and angled buildings going every which way. There were scenes where I couldn't tell what was a matte painting and what wasn't but I could tell my eyes were being fucked with in some subtle way. The film obviously had a lot of money to throw around and many scenes are just gorgeous. The eerie wrong angles of the castles and such give it a surreal, dreamlike air.
Alas, it is a Shakespeare play after all, and a History play at that. It's not very gripping and contains some moldy old pious praise of the humble peasant (delivered by King Henry himself - so great is his heart!) Also some dire "comic" relief in the form of bumbling but good-hearted servants and wenches and drunks and so on and so on.
The film has its moments for sure, but this is a fairly dry piece of film for all of its excess. I hate to say this, but I wish they had contemporized the language a bit, or at least laid off the outrageous accents. It's not a bad film but, like its original title, it's a bit of a slog and not quite as fun as you'd hope.
