Fool: Lear�s shadow.
Lear: I would feign learn that; for, by marks of sovereignty, knowledge and reason, I should be false persuaded I had daughters.
Fool: Which they will make an obedient father.
(I.IV. 205-210 )
By placing the Fool to the left of the screen and Lear to the right, Brook makes the camera travel in the �logical� direction of left-to-right when the Fool speaks and the opposite way when Lear does, hinting at the true metaphorical �sight� the Fool possesses. By filming the shot in deep-focus, Brook makes us aware of the presence of Goneril in the background between the two, hinting at the watching daughter who will soon banish her father and prove the last line of the Fool�s to be true.
As the above scene suggests, Brook�s film has a heightened sensitivity when it comes to the relationship between framing and camera movement. As the conflicts between Lear and his daughters, Goneril and Regan, Edmund and Edgar grow, so Brook increasingly frames two characters facing each other on opposite sides of the screen, a spatial divide between them. The significance of the camera frame is also employed in a far more subjective fashion during Lear�s admonishing of Regan and Goneril. As he delivers his �O, reason not the need� speech (II.II. 430-451), the camera begins with a head and shoulders shot of Lear addressing his (off-screen) daughters to the camera�s right. As the speech develops, the camera�s static position is violently interrupted by four movements that increasingly distort the framing, placing Lear off-centre and concluding with a close-up of his furious eye - a commentary on how he has finally �seen� what his daughters are really like. The effect is to turn Lear�s emotional turmoil into the audience�s own inertia through sudden and unexpected movements. This sequence, emphasising Lear�s emotions, is typical of the film: though they are few, the clear majority of point-of-view shots Brook uses are taken from Lear�s perspective. This begins in the very first scene where each daughter in turn talks directly to the camera, and develops into the later panning shots of the dead rats Lear contemplates after the heath scene . The intention is clear: the focus of the play is first and foremost Lear�s journey � from power to degradation, from blindness to sight, and from life to death.
Brook�s technique in filming the spoken word is clearly explained by Birkett . Mindful of what he regarded as the �actor-manager� pieces of Olivier and (to a lesser extent) Welles, Brook was wary of making the delivery of verse overtly theatrical with the camera simply becoming subservient to the lead�s performance. Theatrical performances, once placed in the more intimate context of the filmic close-up, could easily become bombastic and seem overly rhetorical, yet he appreciated that �sometimes the words must stand for themselves. All superfluous action must be eliminated�. This extended to images projected for the sake of spectacle, which could ultimately detract from the power of Shakespeare�s language:
Although one can find images which may seem appropriate, images that are in no way at odds with the text, sometimes images become unnecessary or even unwanted � they can actually get between the audience and the power of the words .
Conversely, Birkett explained how the idea of simply using a blank screen was in many ways anathema to the whole intent behind making �film Shakespeare�: it would simply look as if �the whole mechanism had broken down�. Ultimately, Brook decided to tackle the problem on two fronts: by reviewing the delivery of the verse and experimenting with the camera frame. Through rehearsal he concluded that passages usually delivered in an exclamatory way could be spoken in a much more understated style, as long as the emotional truth of the character was respected. Additionally, what we often find in Brook�s film is a heightened attention to the framing of the speaker. Many dialogues are filmed with the back of the speaker�s head being shown, the focus being placed on the events or character they are addressing. Profile shots in varying degrees of focus are also used, most memorably during Gloucester�s blinding. Here, immediately after the brutal act that culminates in a metaphorical blackout, Brook provides a soft-focus profile shot of Gloucester as he recovers. This technique prevents the scene from becoming theatrically hysterical while also commenting on the events through the transfer from blackout to a soft-focus profile: now blinded, Gloucester can begin to truly �see� for the first time. The trauma of the blinding has literally thrown the camera into a state of unfocused trauma itself, but it is only from this point that the character�s journey of personal discovery can begin. As Kott concludes, �all characters must be uprooted from their social positions and pulled down, to final degradation�� . Surprisingly, the effect these techniques have is to dislocate the characters from their words. Though we are rarely in any doubt as to who is speaking, the understated delivery and occasional absence of moving mouths due to the angle or focus chosen has an almost Brechtian distancing effect. We acknowledge the relationship between word and image, and yet they are presented almost separately for our consideration: it is as if Brook has found a way of re-imagining in film the free association of word and image possible in the theatre. The effect is to prevent an audience from simply sympathising with the tragedy�s protagonists, but instead constantly reinterpret what they are watching.
The scene on the heath is a definitive example of how the visual can accompany and replace the aural to brilliant effect whilst remaining true to the text�s dramatic purpose, resisting the temptation to pander to cinematic spectacle. Brook delves deepest into his central character�s psyche though a remarkable variety of shots. It opens with a realistic but symbolic sequence: Lear, fighting with the reigns of his horses, finally loses control and crashes - a literal demonstration of how his daughters� rejection has finally sent him �off the rails�. This is followed by an out-of-focus long shot of Lear climbing a hillside, his small figure followed by (the even smaller one) of the dutiful Fool. In a single shot Brook encapsulates their relationship: Lear striving to get away from the one character who is telling him the truth, a character whose name reflects what Lear has actually been up to this point. Samuel Beckett�s influence on Brook is evident in the composition of this image: it is like a scene from Waiting for Godot or Endgame, the depiction of a double-act who are trying to escape one another but ultimately can�t, trapped as they are in a desolate, almost apocalyptic landscape. The lack of focus emphasises the deeply subjective nature of the sequence to come, returns to the motif of sight and blindness, whilst also playing with cinematic expectation .
