WHY DOES RICHARD III TALK TO THE CAMERA?
Speaking directly to the audience is a powerful asset which Shakespeare generally reserves for his leading characters. Without it, the audience might find it hard to engage sympathetically with Richard III who is so bent on ill-doings. Similarly the troubled and troublesome inner natures of Iago, Leontes, and Macbeth are revealed in their soliloquies.In the theatre, audiences welcome a character who steps out of the action of the play to address them, whether in Shakespeare, a pantomime or a musical. On the television screen, talking heads are so familiar that a Shakespeare soliloquy works well. The rule of traditional film-making is that actors should never look at the camera a convention which is riskier to break through than the fourth wall of a proscenium stage. I never doubted that I should challenge the naturalism of cinema by talking to the camera, as Olivier did in Richard III, although not in Hamlet; and as Branagh does as Iago, although not as Benedick in Much Ado About Nothi
