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The Merchant of Venice

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Binding : DVD
EAN : 5050070027969
Label : MGM Home Ent. (Europe) Ltd
Manufacturer : MGM Home Ent. (Europe) Ltd
Publisher : MGM Home Ent. (Europe) Ltd
Release date : 2005-04-11
Title : The Merchant of Venice
Actor : Array
Audience rating : Parental Guidance
Format : Array
Languages : Array
Number of items : 1
Region code : 2
Running time : 127
Studio : MGM Home Ent. (Europe) Ltd
Theatrical releaseDate : 2004

Editorial reviews

Amazon.co.uk Review
Rarely has The Merchant of Venice, one of Shakespeare's most complex plays, looked as ravishingly sumptuous as in this adaptation, directed by Michael Radford (Il Postino). In a decadent version of renaissance Venice, a young nobleman named Bassanio (Joseph Fiennes, Shakespeare in Love) seeks to woo the lovely Portia (Lynn Collins), but lacks the money to travel to her estate. He seeks support from his friend, the merchant Antonio (Jeremy Irons); Antonio's fortune is tied up in sea ventures, so the merchant offers to borrow money from a Jewish moneylender, Shylock (Al Pacino). But Shylock holds a grudge against Antonio, who has routinely treated the Jew with contempt, and demands that if the debt is not repaid in three months, the price will be a pound of Antonio's flesh. The Merchant of Venice is famous as a "problem play"--the gritty matters of moneylending and anti-Semitism sit uncomfortably beside the fairy tale elements of Portia and Bassanio's romance, and some twists of the plot can seem arbitrary or even cruel. The strength of Radford's intelligent and passionate interpretation is that he and the excellent cast invest the play's opposing facets with full emotional weight, thus making every question the play raises acute and inescapable. Irons is particularly compelling; kindness and blind prejudice sit side by side in his breast, rendering the clashes in his character as vivid as those in the play itself. --Bret Fetzer, Amazon.com

Customer reviews

review by: date: 2008-12-08 rating:

yes and no- a review for late 2008
A spendaholic with a poor credit rating persuades his mate to borrow off his worst enemy so that he can get the rich girl he fancies and pay off his debts. The loan turns out to be decidedly sub prime and the enemy seeks to foreclose on his unusual contract.

A handsome hero down on his luck is kindly lend some money by his best mate. They have to borrow from a despised outsider. Against the odds he wins the love of his life in a fairy tale casket scene. He hears his friend is in danger and hurries to save him from the clutches of the evil outsider. His love slaps on the breeches and becomes pivotal in saving the life of the best mate.

Post 20th century holocaust, this one's a poser to adapt. And yet the magic of Bill Shakespeare's writing (I used to live only a few miles from where he was born, so he won't mind the "Bill") is that four centuries on, you can twist and knead the words to adapt it to your own interpretation. Try that with his contemporaries! Marlowe's "Jew of Malta" is the big bogey man, the villain in tights that you hiss at and scream at the stage, "he's behind you!". Shylock is difficult. You can play him straight as the evil gold loving villain after a literal pound of flesh. But there's that whole "if you prick us, do we not bleed" speech- the defence of the outsider, the smack to your liberal conscience. Possibly the reinterpretation of Shakespeare as the outsider within is correct, the child of a Warwickshire Catholic family, (who paid a fine as "recusants" rather than going to the Protestant church), seeking to both fit into the bright lights of Court and to hold true to his background and the ideals of those he held dear.

So this is the cossie adaptation, and is set mostly down the canals of Venice. This is the PC version, a vehicle for Al Pacino as an understandable, but flawed Shylock. He becomes more the central hero with the big flaw- the Hamlet who should have just left home but stayed to argue with his mother, the Macbeth who should have taken up birdwatching and tossed aside political ambition. He is spat at, made to live apart, his daughter abducted, money stolen from him. His enemy slips up and he keeps on coming for vengeance. He gets offered his money back, but he can't let go of his smouldering hatred for Antonio, and as a consequence suffers the ultimate humiliation of a forcible baptism, all he holds dear as his cultural essence to be ripped from his identity. That bit is fairly good, as is Jeremy Irons as the eponymous merchant, Antonio. He writhes convincingly when it looks like the forfeit of flesh is actually going to take place in the culmination of the trial scene. Two big stars, strutting their stuff.

Unfortunately the story is really about getting the girl, with a whole load of pretty caskets. And like the Grimms' homily about always giving your last biscuit to grubby strangers on the road, because in return they will give you magical gifts which will win your fortune, there's a whole lot of pretty poetry about not being taken in by outward appearances. In this interpretation, this falls by the wayside. It's the afterthought, the bright wrapping around the present. Joseph Fiennes is woeful as Bassanio (and I liked him so much in Shakespeare In Love [1999]- he seemed to really have presence). Portia is a bit giggly- not missing her vocation as a cool headed lawyer. Although an attempt is made at Venetian atmosphere- long nosed masks and courtesans showing their "charms", we've been too spoilt by Francesco da Mosto chatting in fish markets about the relative characteristics of prawns and shrimps, to be particularly taken in. The extra detail is missing.

Like Mansfield Park [1999] [2000], which upset some Austenites by daring to slam in the fact that nice 18th century houses were built on the profit of sugar plantations, this adaptation has added a little interest to the mix- it has something to say which is uncomfortable, and we are all the better for it.

But it doesn't fully deliver- we need to have our cake and eat it. Still worth a look...

review by: Peter date: 2008-12-03 rating:

Who says Americans can't play Shakespeare?
Living in London and with relatives in Warwickshire within half an hour's drive of Stratford, I'm spoilt for choice in indulging my love of the Bard. Unfortunately, I'm always coming up against those superior and assinine people who hold the equally superior and assinine view that only we Brits can play Shakespeare. My dearest wish is that Pacino's Shylock finally and irrevocably consigns this idiotic opinion, along with those who express it, to the dustbin of history. Since the original play is set in what is now Italy, I can think of no more suitable actor to play this role than the Italian American Pacino. His is a restrained Shylock and he doesn't go for thundering denunciations - quite rightly in my view. Villainous, yes, but qualified villiany. His position is set out at the start, that as a Jew, he was denied access to most professions and usury - the lending of money for interest - was one of the very few ways Jewish people in late 16th century Venice had of making a living. Pacino's Shylock is balanced by Jeremy Irons' equally restrained Antonio and by Joseph Fiennes' lovestruck Bassanio. Lynn Collins' Portia has that woefully rare blend of stunning beauty, high intelligence and witty articulation. This is a not-to-be missed Merchant of Venice, beautifully photographed and at just over two hours not too heavily cut. I have seen some reviews of this DVD bemoaning its length, but my feeling is that this disproves the aphorism that good things come in small packages. Much less than this and it simply wouldn't be The Merchant of Venice. It has pride of place among my collection of Shakespeare on DVD

review by: karajan lover date: 2008-10-10 rating:

A masterpiece dumbed down for the masses
I LOOKED FORWARD TO RELISHING THE DUKE OF ARAGON's WONDROUS SPEECH, SURELY ONE OF THE FINEST IN ALL THE BARDS PLAYS, TO WHIT "THE FOOL MULTITUDE WHO JUDGE BY SHOW, CARING ONLY FOR WHAT THE FOND EYE DOTH TEACH ... I PARAPHRASE....TO SEE ITS NOT THERE! AND THEN IT STRUCK ME< IT MIGHT INSULT 99% OF THE AUDIENCE, WHO DO INDEED JUDGE BY SHOW, AND WOULD TURN OFF IN A HUFF! GOODBYE PACINO,I CAN NEVER FORGIVE YOU FOR THIS,LIKE HAMLET WITHOUT HAMLET!

review by: A soul doctor, so to say date: 2008-08-19 rating:

The tragic innuendo of Shakespeare's language is missed
This play by Shakespeare is worth a pound of gold, at least. It reveals with crudity one side of Shakespeare and Shakespeare's time most people would like to ignore: his supposed anti-Semitism. Everyone wants to ignore it because no one can see the double talk Shakespeare is a great master of. In his days Jews were seen as vultures, tolerated vultures but vultures all the same. Of course Shakespeare could have avoided dealing with the subject. He did deal with it several times. The Saracen in Titus Andronicus is another heroic case. He also had to deal with it because of what was happening around him. Shakespeare was a conscious and socially oriented mirror of his time. His theatre was committed to the real world. He managed to survive longer than his friend and competitor Marlowe because he probably was more prudent and careful. He might have avoided the dangerous spots, nocturnal or diurnal. But even so, he had an art that Marlowe never had. He knew how to speak with a forked tongue, he knew double entendre, he knew double talk and he had many tongues in his many cheeks; This is the case with this particular play and the film, I must say, does not totally show this duplicity. Apart from the famous tirade on the Jew who bleeds when you prick him with a needle, the rest is not seen or shown, and yet it is said. It is not clearly exploited how the ruthlessness and the pitilessness of Skylock is totally and even with a multiplied force inverted and applied to Shylock by the good Christians who do not show the slightness pity or forgiveness or mercy towards the Jew once he is defeated. And the double language is quite obvious in the fact that the learned doctor is an impersonation (note in Shakespeare's time the two women would have been played by two men and then the two women, who would have been men, or rather boys, would have disguised as men) and this does not work today at all the same way since the two women are real women. A false doctor and false man, who is a false woman under that first skin, and who is a real boy under that second skin is speaking the law, justice, truth. What a lie! The only one who is true to his word is Shylock, even if his word is ruthless, but where is the mercy these good Christians were preaching to him, once they have won their case? All that law Shakespeare defends is shown, in the tone of a tragic comedy, as a big lie, as a farce, as a disguise of any truth, and the final episode of the two un-givable rings that were sworn never to be given away and were given to pay the services of two liars and disguised tricksters after the big farce of the use of law to pitilessly fool and victimize a Jew is the most beautiful piece of underground meaning. This is contained in Shakespeare in the balancing act he plays in which any binary element is balance (perfection being four) and any ternary element is disruption. In the "IF" little dialogue of the end Bassanio in four lines tries to build a square that never comes and the four "I" are the only real balanced element surrounded by three "gave" , five "the ring", etc. And Portia can answer with a perfect ternary structure revealing how false his reasoning is, but she is the liar, she is the serpent who forced Bassanio into giving the ring, she is the one who was who she was not and who is who she was not either. The accuser once again is a false Daniel. Daniel saved Suzanne from a lie. Portia saved Antonio with the unjust law of Venice enforced by a lying tongue, hers that was his disguising hers. That's how Shakespeare was being witty with anti-Semitism and thus distancing himself from it. Imagine the wit of the man Bassanio telling the boy playing Portia she/he will be his bedfellow and he will let Her/him lie with Her/him when he is absent. Most of the time Shakespeare uses disguises to reveal some good things like love. Here he uses disguises to reveal the forked tongues with which all these Christians are speaking. The film does not show it and prefers adding some images that exonerate the director from the accusation whereas he should exonerate Shakespeare from it, because Shakespeare does not deserve it.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines

review by: bookworm date: 2008-05-15 rating:

Wow!
I recently watched this in my English class. We are studying merchant of venice. I could get along with this film without getting confused. The topless women were pointless, and I pictured Salarino and Solanio different but never mind. Al Pacino-wow!!brilliant. my friends and i agreed that he was the best.you couldn't help but feel sorry for him when he found out Jessica had gone with his money, with the crying "jessica." We actually clapped when he finished the "Hath not a Jew eyes" speech. Very powerful. Brilliant film.

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