As You Like It

Synopsis: Feature film. Great Britain’s first feature-length Shakespeare sound film and Laurence Olivier’s first screen performance in a Shakespeare play. An energetic production set in an elaborate studio forest with real livestock. The film’s scenarist, J.M. Barrie, informed Elisabeth Bergner’s overly studied, acrobatic and Peter Pan-inspired Rosalind.
Language: English
Country: Great Britain
Medium: Film
Technical information: Black-and-white / Sound
Year of release: 1936
Duration: 95 minutes; 3,419 (16mm) feet

Director

Paul Czinner

Cinematographer

Harold Rosson; Jack Cardiff

Writer

J.M. Barrie; William Shakespeare

Music

William Walton

Costume

Joe Strassner; John Armstrong (2)

Cast

Notes: DVD released for sale in the UK in 2007. Different prints show different credits. In the 1936 US version Robert Cullen (as R.J. Cullen) is credited as production manager and scenarist. In the 1949 re-release he is credited only as production manager and Carl Mayer with the adaptation. Similarly for the 1936 version, Elisabeth Bergner’s name is above the title for the opening credits; in the 1949 re-release Laurence Olivier’s name is above the title.

The BFI National Archive, London holds a 35mm master and viewing print.

The Birmingham Shakespeare Library holds a typescript.

Budget $1m
General: Excerpts of this production were shown as part of the first British TV broadcast demonstration in London on 26th August 1936.

David Lean is editor on the film and Ninette de Valois (uncredited) is the choreographer.
Reviews: "Bergner is playing the wrong role, in the wrong language, in the wrong medium" - Anderegg, Michael, Cinematic Shakespeare (Landham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004).

Jackson, Russell, ‘Remembering Bergner’s Rosalind: As You Like It on film in 1936’ in Holland, Peter (ed.), Shakespeare, Memory and Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 237-255.

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British Universities Film & Video Council