Merchant Of Venice Comparative Essay

There are three main components of Radford’s portrayal of The Merchant of Venice that create an all around superior film than Nunn’s portrayal of the Shakespeare play, the time period, the cast, and the way the film is shot.Michael Radford kept the time period that the film takes place in the same as the original text, while Trevor Nunn did not and changed the time period in his movie to in between World War I and II. The cast in this adaptation of The Merchant of Venice are great actors and at the helm is Academy Award winner Al Pacino. The way this film is shot feels like a major motion picture, and the way the lighting, the extras, and the sets are organized makes it seem so real unlike Nunn’s version where it feels like someone filming a stage production. Because of the time period, the cast, and the way this film was shot is overall why Michael Radford’s version of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of …show more content…
The lighting and sets give this film such a realistic feeling like you are actually in the story experiencing what the characters are too. The sets are so detailed and filled with extras making it feel like an actual location. In Nunn’s adaptation of The Merchant of Venice, there are few people on screen at once which is very unrealistic in a normal city. The lighting in Radford’s film version is bright and makes the colors of the costumes pop while the lighting in Nunn’s film is darker and more desaturated than normal. The angles used in Radford’s film show pores on the actors faces which make it seem so close and natural. The angles are usually farther away in Nunn’s film are farther away giving a feeling of being unconnected to what’s happening on screen. Lastly, Nunn’s sets are stage-like and fake feeling which is the complete opposite of Radford’s sets and actual locations used to film