The 10 greatest non-English Shakespeare movie adaptations of all time
As the recent success of the romantic comedy Anyone But You proved beyond all reasonable doubt, William Shakespeare remains big business in modern cinema. The playwright’s immortal works continue to inspire artists everywhere.
The Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell romp became the highest-grossing feature ever based on a Shakespeare play, not that he could have ever imagined two dazzling Americans frolicking around would be the end result when he penned Much Ado About Nothing at the turn of the 17th century.
However, as the most heavily-adapted writer in the history of cinema by quite a margin, it’s not really a surprise. ‘The Bard’ has always been a mainstay of screen and stage, and not just on the English-language front, either.
There have been plenty of classics emerging from all over the world that applied their own flourishes to Shakespearean stylings, and the following ten are comfortably among the cream of the crop.
The 10 best non-English Shakespeare movies:
10. Johnny Hamlet (Enzo G. Castellari, 1968)
Maybe not the greatest Shakespeare adaptation from an artistic, technical, or thematic standpoint, but it’s hard not to love the sheer ridiculousness of Hamlet being transformed into a spaghetti western.
It’s a surprisingly slavish adaptation, too, with Andrea Giordana’s title hero returning home having fought in the American Civil War to discover his father has been murdered and his mother married his uncle, even if it’s an Italian film made by an Italian cast and crew that’s spoken in Italian. But, really, that’s beside the point.
The revenge tropes of Hamlet mesh surprisingly well with the spaghettified vision director Enzo G. Castellari has in mind. While it was never going to win any awards, it goes to show just how malleable the work of ‘The Bard’ can be as it applies to cinema.
9. Maqbool (Vishal Bhardwaj, 2004)
With the late Irffan Khan in superb form, director Vishal Bhardwaj quickly became known as Indian cinema’s foremost purveyor of modernised Shakespeare movies, and with very good reason.
In this instance, Macbeth is refitted into the hard-boiled gangster thriller Maqbool. Khan’s title character serves as the right-hand man of a nefarious underworld figure while engaging in a secretive affair with his mistress. As anyone who has read the source material knows, ascension comes at a cost.
Foregoing the supernatural elements in favour of realism, Maqbool provides an authentic, unflinching, and riveting criminal saga that underlines Shakespeare’s timeless themes. His stories are capable of being applied to any country at any moment and remaining as resonant as ever.
8. Shakespeare Must Die (Ing Kanjanavanit, 2012)
Quite possibly the most controversial film based on ‘The Bard’ to have been made in recent times, Shakespeare Must Die was banned by the sitting government of Thailand at the time of its release, with that status having only recently been rescinded.
The story follows a theatre troupe in a fictional nation putting on their own production of Macbeth. While it’s an incredibly faithful adaptation that runs for a butt-numbing 176 minutes, one character named ‘Dear Leader’ who carried more than a passing resemblance to former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra raised governmental eyebrows.
The local Ministry of Culture explained its ban by saying Shakespeare Must Die “has content that causes divisiveness among the people of the nation,” and it would be more than a decade until the ban was officially lifted in early 2024. Not just a top-tier Macbeth, but a genuine disruptor.
7. The Banquet (Feng Xiaogang, 2006)
A tale of love and betrayal, Feng Xiaogang’s The Banquet – released in the United States under the decidedly more badass title of Legend of the Black Scorpion – puts a wuxia twist on Hamlet.
Unfolding during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period in 10th century China, revenge and an unquenchable thirst for power serve as the backdrop to the titular feast, leading every key player to lay their true cards on the table.
In this version, though, the focus is shifted onto Zhang Zhyi’s Empress Wan, the Gertrude substitute. Daniel Wu’s Crown Prince Wu Luan fills the typical lead role, but the overarching narrative remains the same in a truly epic retelling of Hamlet that balances scope and spectacle with aching tragedy.
6. Haider (Vishal Bhardwaj, 2014)
In the final chapter in the aforementioned Bhardwaj’s Shakespearean trilogy that began with Maqbool and continued through Othello redux Omkara, the vistas of Denmark are replaced by the snow-capped landscapes of Kashmir for the filmmaker’s take on Hamlet.
A modernised iteration but still a period piece, Shahid Kapoor’s Haider Meer returns home during the insurgencies of the mid-1990s to discover that’s not the only reason he barely recognises his home anymore, with duplicitous family members and murders afoot.
It ticks all the Hamlet-adjacent boxes by incorporating ghostly apparitions, scheming uncles, and unrequited love, but rooting Haider in a moment in history plagued by bloodshed and casualties lends it not only added immediacy but a sense of scale that’s often lacking in other adaptations.
5. Ran (Akira Kurosawa, 1985)
Nobody did Shakespeare quite like the legendary Akira Kurosawa, with ‘The Bard’ influencing the iconic auteur even when he wasn’t dipping into the back catalogue for inspiration.
Ran finds the Japanese maestro getting to grips with King Lear, with Tatsuya Nakadai’s ageing warlord deciding to abdicate the throne of power he’d dedicated his life to consolidating. He’s got three sons ready to step up to the mantle, but they don’t care much for the idea of sharing power.
An epic in every sense of the word, it’s Kurosawa firing on all cylinders as he often tended to do each time he picked up the megaphone, with Shakespeare continuing to act as one of the director’s greatest muses despite the centuries that separated them.
4. Caesar Must Die (Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, 2012)
One of the more idiosyncratic takes on Shakespeare, Paolo and Vittorio Taviani combine the staging of a classic tragedy with docudrama, cinema verité, and absurdism for a film that won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival.
Set in Rome‘s Rebibbia Prison, the co-writers and co-directors enlisted real convicts to play roles on-screen, with a group of prisoners deep in rehearsal for their upcoming production of Julius Caesar, and the lines between life and art become increasingly blurred throughout its lean 75 minutes.
The more they familiarise themselves with the material, the more the prisoners forge their own opinions on the political machinations present in the play, yielding a unique concoction that’s simultaneously a Shakespeare adaptation, a standalone feature, and an incisive social commentary.
3. Hamlet: The Drama of Vengeance (Svend Gade, 1921)
Silent film favourite Asta Nielsen wasn’t the first woman to play Hamlet on screen or stage, but she did play the title role in one of the most subversive adaptations of its era, one that remains potent in its insights even today.
Upending convention was hardly all the rage in 1920s cinema, but by placing its own fascinating spin on such a well-worn story, The Drama of Vengeance thrived in bending the rules to position Nielsen’s Hamlet as being born female, only for her mother to withhold that information in favour of positioning her child as a male heir so they can inherit the throne.
It instantly adds an air of freshness to the proceedings. Nielsen uses one of the most famous literary characters to her fullest advantage, making it easy to see why she became one of the silent era’s first international stars.
2. King Lear (Grigori Kozintsev, 1971)
Released the same year as the English-language adaptation of the same story directed by Peter Brook, Grigori Kozintsev’s King Lear quickly became known as not just the superior of the two but one of the best translations of the text ever committed to film.
There are only so many ways any screenwriter or director can twist Shakespeare to suit their vision before it becomes something else entirely, but the Russian version succeeds most by adhering to the expected plot beats while showcasing new sides of the title character.
In most cases, King Lear divides his kingdom and then gradually succumbs to his madness. However, Kozintsev expands his focus to cover not only how that decision impacts his family but also the kingdom he rules over. This is a minor change, then, but a powerfully effective one nonetheless.
1. Throne of Blood (Akira Kurosawa, 1957)
It’s that man Kurosawa again, with Throne of Blood, a staggering spin on Macbeth that boasts Toshiro Mifune at his very best as Taketoki Washizu, which thrives in spite of ignoring Shakespeare’s dialogue almost entirely.
Of course, Macbeth can be Macbeth with or without the characters reciting the words of ‘The Bard’ verbatim, and there’s no better example of how that can be to the immense benefit of an adaptation than this one.
The aesthetic, atmosphere, cinematography, performances, drastic shifts between calm and fury, immaculate editing, and an unending sense of dread instilled in the audience despite the fact everybody knows how things are going to pan out in the end, non-English Shakespeare has never outclassed Throne of Blood.
