The Merry Wives of Windsor (1982)

Excellent adaptation.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

On the whole, this production of "The Merry Wives of Windsor" is admirable. It contains nearly all of Shakespeare's lines (including a few insertions from the Quarto version); it includes some excellent performances; the staging is generally deft, and the atmosphere of the play is warmly engaging; and the sets are pleasing to the eye.Prunella Scales and Judy Davis as Mistresses Page and Ford (respectively) are especially good, but nearly all the other members of the cast -- ranging from Richard Griffiths as Falstaff to Elizabeth Spriggs as Mistress Quickly -- are also highly commendable. The one exception, surprisingly, is Ben Kingsley as Ford. To be sure, anyone playing the role of Ford has to go over the top occasionally. However, Kingsley is annoyingly histrionic in the pejorative sense of the term; his high-strung mannerisms and his falsetto utterances become quite tiresome. His performance is not unalloyedly woeful, but it is well below the level of the other performances.A few of the other reviewers on this site have criticized Richard Griffiths for his portrayal of Falstaff, but Griffiths aptly captures the nature of Falstaff in "Merry Wives" -- a play that presents Falstaff as a somewhat less shrewd character than the Falstaff of the Henry IV plays. Moreover, the girth of Griffiths made him more suitable for the role than was Anthony Quayle in the BBC's Henry IV productions (though Quayle's excellent acting compensated for his physical unsuitability).Apart from Ben Kingsley's performance, the main objectionable feature of this otherwise admirable production is that a few scenes and smaller portions of the play are rearranged. The rearrangements aren't damaging, but they strike me as pointless. (Much the same can be said about the handful of small excisions of Shakespeare's lines.) All in all, I can recommend this production heartily to anyone who wants to experience the charms of Shakespeare's play.ADDENDUM: Having now watched this production three more times, I feel that my remarks about Ben Kingsley's performance are too strongly negative. Most of his acting is in fact very good -- as one would expect from such a virtuoso Shakespearean thespian. Only at a few brief junctures does he become annoyingly histrionic with his high-pitched utterances or excessive gesticulations. I'll leave my original remarks unmodified, to indicate how someone might respond to Kingsley's performance after only a few viewings. However, my assessment of that performance is now significantly more favorable.

"The Merry Wives of Windsor" takes one of Shakespeare's most popular characters, Sir John Falstaff, and gives him a story of his own where he tries to make advances on two wives to improve his station in life but in so doing only makes a total fool of himself.Technically, this looks sumptuous with a wonderful Elizabethan set but the pace (despite a reordering of some scenes) is horribly slack. The subplot with a number of idiot suitors trying to claim the hand of Anne Page (Miranda Foster) pays off well but the build-up is terrible. The actors do what they can - Judy Davis and Prunella Scales as the two wives of the title come off with some dignity but Richard Griffiths is simply not engaging enough as Falstaff and Ben Kingsley is all over the place as Ford. Elizabeth Spriggs is quite good as Mistress Quickly and looks marvelous at the end where she impersonates the Fairy Queen.Some better pacing and more fluid comic direction would have definitely given things here a much-needed kick up the backside.

David Hugh Jones directed one other play for this series, the protracted, dull betrayal of "Pericles: Prince of Tyre." One can only conclude he has no sense of pulse, for this performance too is endless. Comedies are like sharks. If they don't keep moving forward, they die.Some actors maintain their footing anyway. The women are good across the board. Judy Davis is a surprise as Mistress Ford - she's not the first actress that comes to mind when it comes to soufflés. Prunella Scales and Elisabeth Spriggs are particularly strong.Richard Griffiths keeps promising to break loose as Falstaff but never does. He's cut all the nonsense, but there's not enough left without it. You finally wonder if he's ambivalent about playing the part at all. Michael Bryant, murderously ice-cold as Ratchkovsky in "Fall of Eagles," is here brilliantly funny as Dr. Caius. Most of the rest of the male cast are good in their parts as well.A special exception must be made for Ben Kingsley. As Ford, he is weak, thin-voiced and neurotic, and when Ford masquerades as Brook, it's "Katy Bar the Door." The actor descends into an orgy of squeaks, gurgles, twitches and eye-rolling that give us a solid idea of what Jerry Lewis would have looked like in Elizabethan times. Or perhaps Dennis Weaver's baroque turn in Orson Welles's "Touch of Evil" done in iambic pentameter. A stronger director would have stepped hard on Mr. Kingsley's shenanigans and guided this misguided missile to a safer landing.A lovely set by Don Homfrey is a valentine to the lost art of TV studio design. There is ample opportunity here for the eye to roam happily over the scenery while waiting for something to happen with the actors.

This delightful production, crammed with good things like a Christmas pudding, was originally presented at Christmas time - and what a treat! The sets evoke Shakespeare's Stratford, and the comedy is the nearest we'll get to how life was lived in the reign of Good Queen Bess. Richard Griffiths is perfect as Falstaff, rueful and gullible compared with his prime in 'Henry IV' but still thoroughly endearing. Prunella Scales and Judy Davis (then only 27) enchant as the merry wives and Ben Kingsley, though OTT, is very funny as the jealous Ford. Michael Bryant is a choice Dr Caius, Tenniel Evans a likeably Welsh Sir Hugh, and among a splendid supporting cast I must mention Alan Bennett as Justice Shallow - not least because I played the part myself in Paris once upon a time. Of course the word-play is challenging, and Falstaff's treatment is rather cruel, but the Bard ensures that at the end the fat knight is not totally discomfited, and the show ends with a glow!