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These are, after all, classic songs. For financial reasons, we looked first at some of their lesser-known songs. Brilliant though many of them are, it’s no accident they are minor works by comparison with some of those which will appear here. They are hummable with apparently easy rhymes and yet they still also manage to catch just a snapshot of the human condition with such effortless ease which makes them as touching ever.”
So as well as the Cheek To Cheek, prepare for other classic numbers like There’s No Business Like Show Business, You Can’t Take That Away From Me and, courtesy of two of the cast’s more mature members, Richard Briers and Geraldine McEwan, another of Fred and Ginger’s great showstoppers, The Way You Look Tonight.
As if Shakespeare alone wasn’t tough enough, how did Branagh confront the knotty business of finding an ensemble cast that could do proper justice not just to the verse but also look like convincing musical performers?
Apart from Nathan Lane, already a wonderfully tried and tested Broadway musical star, and other older troupers like Briers, McEwan and Timothy Spall, it was, says Branagh, “a big guesstimate” when he began blending his younger team of top Anglo-American talent
like Silverstone, Nivola, Ejogo, Lillard and McElhone, best known to date for more straightforward contemporary comic and dramatic roles. Lester was perhaps an exception having, in his own words, already “minced professionally” in
can do when they sing and dance. A certain rawness that comes out of character works well for this piece.”
Having settled on his cast, Branagh gathered them together for a three-and-a-half week rehearsal period: “It’s not a long time when
to be in the film not to let them- selves down especially in the dancing. So all over this place for a month before shooting there were people in corners dancing up and down, grabbing choreographers and dance doubles. It was a fantas- tic sight. Look, we’re not kidding ourselves about our ability; we’re not pretending we’re another Fred and Ginger. What we’re after is the feeling those numbers generated.”
Stirred into this already exhilarating mix are all kinds of potential treats - the odd homage to Esther Williams here (with an aquatic number shot in Branagh’s own pool), a Busby Berkeley-style kaleidoscope there. A real chal- lenge for cinematographer Alex Thomson re-united with Branagh for the first time since their Hamlet in Panavision Super 70.
“Here’s high romance, musical comedy and musical at the same time,” says Thomson, who turned 70 in January. “It’s as Chris Challis used to call it, ‘lit to the edges.” I think we’ve managed that with some style. The Fuji film has helped enormously. It’s a lovely stock, the blacks are great. I tend to overexpose by a half a stop - well, I usually do that any- way - but we are getting very rich negatives. It all looks so lush, helped of course by designer Tim Harvey’s gorgeous sets. It’s not an expensive picture... but it looks it.”
“I told the actors
this will be musical comedy boot camp
and you won’t know what’s hit you. It’ll be unlike any other film experience.”
musical shows such as Company and Up On The Roof.
Says Branagh: “Aside from some anchor people in there whose work I already knew, I could only go on instinct. They’d have to have the capacity and appetite for Shakespeare as well as the singing- and-dancing and the ability to work inside an ensemble. I also needed enthusiasm. My feeling was that we should be exploiting what actors
you’re doing the play as well. But,” he told them, “this will be musical comedy boot camp - and you will not know what’s hit you. It’ll be unlike any other film experience. We’ll start at eight in the morning and you’ll get home at eight in the evening. The work will be very hard... but it will be worth it.” Much to Branagh’s great delight, “all turned out have a gritty deter- mination that once having agreed
Photos inset: Kenneth Branagh, Matthew Lillard, Alessandro Nivola and Adria Lester in Love’s Labour’s Lost; above left: Kenneth Branagh and Julie Christie in Hamlet centre: Love’s Labour’s Lost crew left to right: 1st camera operator Nic Milner, camera trainee Joshua Lee, DP Alex Thomson, grip Bill Geddes, script supervisor Caroline Sax, seated front: 1st camera focus puller Chyna Thomson and 1st camera clapper loader Tammo Van Hoorn; right: Kenneth Branagh as Henry V (Courtesy Movie Store Collection)
EXPOSURE • 12 & 13