Send in the clowns: Shakespeare on the Soviet screen

In the period between the end of the Second World War (Great patriotic War) and the removal of the Iron Curtain, the Soviet Bloc film industries made a number of Shakespeare films. While the Hamlet and King Lear directed by Grigori Kozintsev have justifiably been acclaimed all over the world, and extensively discussed by critics and scholars, they are completely different from the majority of screen versions of Shakespeare made in the Communist world. Almost all of the Soviet era Shakespeare films were versions of Shakespeare's Comedies. In this, the East European film makers were completely at odds with Western film makers of the same period, who concentrated almost exclusively on the Tragedies. While there were exceptions on both sides of the Iron Curtain, the differences are marked
enough to merit exploration. This paper examines a number of examples of Soviet and East German films of the Comedies, and asks a series of questions, as to how, why and for whom these films were being made.