1) The context

With Yuri Yarvet as Lear (moi il me fait penser à Doc dans "Retour vers le futur", mais c'est tout à fait inofficiel) ; Oleg Dal as the Fool, with a shaven head (and somehow, as i read on a website, he does look a bit like Gollum…)

In 1964, Kozintsev's Hamlet was released and earned high praise both in Russia and the West. As a consequence, Kozintsev was invited to and attended many western film festivals including Cannes. Kozintsev cherished these trips to the west as he was able to see many films that were not shown in the Soviet Union. He was particularly eager to see the films of Kurosawa, Ford, Capra and Fellini. But it was the films of Orson Welles, Citizen Kane in particular, that made the deepest impression on him. In fact it was Citizen Kane that inspired Kozintsev to film King Lear in black-and-white rather than in color.

2)The film

Opens with a crowd of beggars and crippled people walking in a desolate, rocky landscape, on Shostakovitch’s insistent music.

- The characters

All along the story, the relationship between Lear and the Fool is very « tactile » (a lot of physical contact).

At the beginning we can see how Lear is litterally too tired for his crown, for his title: he has somebody else read his decision about the division of the kingdom, while he plays with his fool (in the way he would play with a dog), by the fire (a huge, aggressive fire).

However he still is perfectly confident ; after scene 1 Lear gives orders as he walks, without speaking, just pointing at what he wants to take with him.

Tom : in the translation from English into Russian, the phrase « Tom I nothing am » (when he disguises into a beggar) has disappeared.

Cordelia is the only one wearing white clothes, she’s the only light, white spot among the dark-dressed crowd (so when she’s absent, there is no white spot…)

End : Lear + Cordelia are carried away, dead, side by side. From the moment they meet again, Kozintsev shows an increasingly incestuous and exclusive relationship. Cordelia looks at her father all the time with loving eyes, hearing only his words –especially when they’re taken to prison (at that point when Lear is perfectly satisfied with the situation because in prison they will be together forever)
- The setting
The constantly moving camera shows a constant disturbance

windswept landscapes providing an very vivid milieu

a very important location work : towering castles, shadowy chambers, crowded villages hay-strewn barns.

A lot of reverse tracking shots preceding characters

- Kozintsev about his film

Kozintsev told Ronald Hayman in the Summer 1973 issue of the Transatlantic Review:
"When Lear goes mad at the beginning of the storm scene, this is the beginning of an absolutely new relationship with nature. I try to illustrate with this landscape a country which is not bare, not cruel. I try to show Lear himself as a part of nature, in a field of flowers. His hair spreads like moss, the grey hair of nature. Once man is seen as a part of nature, the movement towards regeneration can begin. Cordelia too has her own landscape--sea and a very wide landscape--with waves and seagulls. All the important characters have their own atmosphere and there are relationships not just on the level of character but between different aspects of nature."
Another standout feature of the film is the stark and melancholy score by Shostakovich. "I've been working with Shostakovich all my life," Kozintsev remarked, "and I think his understanding of the whole tragic and grotesque imagery in Shakespeare is perfect. And in King Lear I didn't use just dignifying fanfares and drum-rolls. There is also the voice of suffering. I love the pipe music he composed for the Fool (the Fool plays pipe after Lear’s Death – a very melancholic melody) I think this is a real voice of Shakespeare and I'm very grateful to Shostakovich. When I hear Shostakovich's music I think I've heard Shakespeare's verse."