Da'ud Bob's Movie Review
for
November 2018

This month's movie always leaves me feeling a little conflicted. It's a Shakespeare comedy that for the most part doesn't seem all that funny. And one of the central characters is a person whose treatment in the play is not something that we are comfortable with here in the 21^st Century. (But in the early 1600s, such discrimination and treatment was pretty much the norm, and in more places than Elizabethan England.) And, indeed, when this version of Shakespeare's play was first aired in the United States back around 1980, the Holocaust and Executive Committee of the Committee to Bring Nazi War Criminals to Justice sent a letter to PBS and station WNET, demanding the show be cancelled. WNET also received protest letters from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and B'nai B'rith. The ADL stated that screening the episode would be "providing a forum for a [character] who would have warmed the heart of Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher." PBS president Lawrence K. Grossman replied: "the healthy way to deal with such sensitivities is to air the concerns and criticism, not to bury or ban them." So while I have mixed feelings about this particular play, I try to face the reasons why it makes me uncomfortable, and at the same time try to avoid imposing my own morality on a 400-year-old work done in a different age. And so it is that this month, Da'ud Bob reviews for you BBC's 1980 production of The Merchant of Venice.

Starring John Franklyn-Robbins as Antonio (the "Merchant" in the title), John Rhys-Davies as Salerio, Alan David as Solanio, John (DCI Tom Barnaby in Midsomer Murders) Nettles as Bassanio, Richard Morant as Lorenzo, Kenneth Cranham as Gratiano, Gemma Jones as Portia, Susan Jameson as Nerissa, Warren Mitchell as Shylock, Enn Reitel as Launcelot Gobbo, and Leslee Udwin as Jessica, the basic story can be summed up as: A rich merchant of Venice, Antonio, is depressed for no good reason, until his good friend Bassanio comes to tell him how he's in love with Portia. Portia's father has died and left a very strange will: only the man that picks the correct casket out of three (silver, gold, and lead) can marry her. Bassanio, unfortunately, is strapped for cash to go woo her and Antonio wants to help, so Antonio borrows the money from Shylock, a Jewish money-lender. But Shylock, nursing a grudge against Antonio's insults to him, makes some unusual terms for the loan. When Antonio's business fails, those terms threaten his life, and it's up to Bassanio and Portia to save him.

Good points: Some of the costumes. The smelly basket. (No, really!) Period-style glasses. Real quill pen, not a feather pretending to be a quill pen. The well-known (so much so that it's almost a cliché now) line, "All that glistens is not gold."

Bad points: Shylock is played like a caricature. The Prince of Morocco's and his retinue's costumes. (Especially the one with the hubcap breastplate.) Gratiano's fur-trimmed coat. The Prince of Aragon's heavy accent. (Again, caricature!) Jessica's nightdress. Like most Shakespeare comedies, no one ever seems to see through the cross-dressing. I find this a bit unrealistic, but maybe that's just me. I've never particularly liked the Let's Make A Deal situation with the three caskets where one leads to marriage with Portia.

Zero breasts. No blood. Zero bodies. Ring fu. Knife fu. Gratuitous dwarf. Gratuitous cross-dressing. Every time I see this play and it comes to the part where Bassanio is asking to borrow money from Antonio so he can go woo Portia, I want to quote from another of Shakespeare's characters in another play, Polonius in Hamlet: "Neither a borrower nor a lender be; for loan oft loses both itself and friend, and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry." Academy Award nomination to Warren Mitchell as Shylock for "If you wrong us, shall we not revenge?" A 37 on the Vomit Meter. Two stars. Da'ud Bob says, "Check it out!"

Upcoming movies and miniseries to watch for!

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