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The Merchant of Venice

  • TV Movie
  • 1980
  • TV-14
  • 2h 37m
IMDb RATING
7.2/10
324
YOUR RATING
Warren Mitchell in The Merchant of Venice (1980)
ComedyDrama

A rich merchant, 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... Read allA rich merchant, 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 mar... Read allA rich merchant, 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 with which to go wooing, and Antonio... Read all

  • Director
    • Jack Gold
  • Writer
    • William Shakespeare
  • Stars
    • John Franklyn-Robbins
    • John Rhys-Davies
    • Alan David
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    7.2/10
    324
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • Jack Gold
    • Writer
      • William Shakespeare
    • Stars
      • John Franklyn-Robbins
      • John Rhys-Davies
      • Alan David
    • 17User reviews
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • See production info at IMDbPro
    • Won 2 BAFTA Awards
      • 2 wins & 2 nominations total

    Photos1

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    Top cast21

    Edit
    John Franklyn-Robbins
    John Franklyn-Robbins
    • Antonio
    John Rhys-Davies
    John Rhys-Davies
    • Salerio
    Alan David
    Alan David
    • Solanio
    John Nettles
    John Nettles
    • Bassanio
    Richard Morant
    Richard Morant
    • Lorenzo
    Kenneth Cranham
    Kenneth Cranham
    • Gratiano
    Gemma Jones
    Gemma Jones
    • Portia
    Susan Jameson
    Susan Jameson
    • Nerissa
    Daniel Mitchell
    • Balthasar
    Warren Mitchell
    Warren Mitchell
    • Shylock
    Marc Zuber
    Marc Zuber
    • Prince of Morocco
    Enn Reitel
    Enn Reitel
    • Launcelot Gobbo
    Joe Gladwin
    Joe Gladwin
    • Old Gobbo
    Roger Martin
    • Leonardo
    Leslee Udwin
    • Jessica
    Peter Gale
    Peter Gale
    • The Prince of Arragon
    Richard Austin
    Richard Austin
    • Antonio's Servant
    Arnold Diamond
    Arnold Diamond
    • Tubal
    • Director
      • Jack Gold
    • Writer
      • William Shakespeare
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews17

    7.2324
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    Featured reviews

    10david_barnett1

    Magnificent

    One is compelled to give three very rousing cheers to any performance of this, my favourite Shakespeare play, that does not cut out words and phrases offensive to that curse of the modern age, political correctness.

    As another reviewer has said, The Merchant was written in another age when sentiments that would now land one in trouble were commonplace.

    Shylock is definitely not the hero of this play but it is impossible to think of him as an out and out villain either. Warren Mitchell brings out this ambiguity well.

    The Olivier performance, although unmissable, omits too much to the Jew's discredit.

    The recent Al Pacino production, which I bought the minute it became available, was also a great letdown with potentially racist/anti-Semitic words left out and with the text, what was left of it, horribly modernised. It was visually stunning, though.

    It may have been wrong of Portia to say what she did of the Prince of Morocco when he bade her a sad farewell, but those were the words that the Bard put in her mouth and they should be left there.

    The whole 37 plays, that the BBC produced in the 1970s/1980s, are now available on DVD. An excellent investment!
    8keith_williamson

    This was the program that first got me interested in Shakespeare

    I remember this play very fondly, and, while it is over twenty years since I saw it and I may be more critical of it now, any program that can turn on a cynical youth to Shakespeare can't be all bad.

    I have read the comments about Warren Mitchell and would disagree, his is one of the two performances I particularly remember. Yes, it is a very unsympathetic performance, why should it be other? It is also very anti-Semitic, why should it not be? Shakespeare was amongst other things a product of his age and the politics of his age. Why do we feel that we have to tinker with the past to sanitise it and to make it what it wasn't? Surely, A lot can be learnt from looking at things as they actually were and to learn from that.

    I only wish it was available to purchase now.
    8mhk11

    a good production of a disquieting play

    Jonathan Miller and Jack Gold have chosen to accentuate the anti-Semitism of the play in this production. In so doing, they have highlighted the sheer vileness of most of the Christian characters without sweetening the character of Shylock. Shylock, excellently portrayed by Warren Mitchell, is intelligent and sharply witty and sometimes poignantly appealing; yet at other times he is ruthlessly vindictive. However, what this production makes powerfully clear is that his ruthless vindictiveness is a product of the shameful ways in which he has been treated by his Christian contemporaries. Their coarse bigotry and outright abuse -- along with their sanctimonious blindness to their own grievous faults -- have brought out the worst in Shylock (whose miserliness as a moneylender, likewise, is due to his being barred from every other profession in medieval Venice).

    Gemma Jones is not beautiful, but her acting in the role of Portia is outstanding. Portia is perhaps the most repellent character of all, as she addresses Shylock with her marvelous disquisition on the quality of mercy and then proves to be unremittingly merciless and devious in her treatment of him. In addition to being a foul bigot, she plays a tiresome and cruel trick on her husband which may have seemed funny to audiences in Shakespeare's time but which seems today to be a further confirmation of her grandiose egocentricity. The only discernible aim of that trick is to establish her dominance over Bassanio and Antonio by humiliating them.

    Even more tiresome than Portia's silly trick is the character of Launcelot Gobbo -- one of the most grimly unfunny clowns (and the most odiously anti-Semitic clown) in Shakespeare's whole oeuvre. Enn Reitel does a good job of portraying this rebarbative character.

    Also repulsive are Salerio and Solanio, two characters who -- like most of the rest of the Christians in the play -- appear to be unacquainted with the activity of productive work. Their vicious hatred of Jews and their general decadence are brought out well in this production by John Rhys-Davies and Alan David.

    The characters of Nerissa and Bassanio are less overtly bigoted and distasteful than the other Christians, and they are deftly performed here by Susan Jameson (who is beautiful) and John Nettles.

    Most of the other parts in the play are likewise adeptly performed. Every production of "The Merchant of Venice" has to come to grips with the savage prejudices that are so salient in the play. By underscoring the intensity and ugliness of those prejudices, this production helps to reveal the extent to which they deform the society in which they are prevalent.
    6tonstant viewer

    One Play That Has Spoiled in Storage

    Jews had been banned from England in 1290, and Shakespeare and his contemporaries most likely never saw one. The story is that Christopher Marlowe had a big hit with "A Jew of Malta" and Shakespeare's company across town needed a Jewish play quickly to compete. Marlowe's protagonist was a monstrous jumble of medieval stereotypes, while Shakespeare countered with a much more rounded portrait.

    Nonetheless, to give the Bard what he asked for in this script strikes modern audiences as barbaric. Videos with Laurence Olivier and Al Pacino have strategically pruned texts, and Orson Welles completely abandoned a planned production on the grounds that there's enough anti-Semitism in the world already.

    It's not a question of political correctness, which as we know, is only having to be polite to people we feel entitled to be rude to. It's a question of recognizing the humanity in Shakespeare's characters, which is a major part of his genius. Surely his original audience laughed at the taunting of Shylock, and cheered his forced conversion at the end. But Shakespeare takes this cartoon villain, and gives him a tender moment to remember his late wife Leah, a chance to reproach Antonio for his loutish behavior, and getting back the reply, "I'd do it again in a minute." And the "Hath not a Jew eyes" speech is something that one could not hope to find in a British play for centuries before or after.

    Warren Mitchell, his director Jack Gold and his producer Jonathan Miller, have come up with a Shylock who is by far the most interesting character in the play. Despite the inappropriate Yiddish accent (surely Shylock's household spoke Ladino), Mitchell reacts with wide-eyed resignation while receiving insults, and collapses in heated agony at his final defeat.

    By comparison, the others are a milky lot, without pulse or passion or dimension, aside of course from their obsessive anti-Semitism. With all the unpalatable verbal abuse presented intact, we leave the play with the impression that Antonio is tired and a bad judge of character, Bassanio is a blank slate, Portia is a smug, doll-like, self-impressed manipulator and a racist. Gratiano and his friends are loudmouthed bullies with nothing more to offer. Lorenzo is vapid, Jessica is nasty and stupid. Gobbo plays coarse tricks on his blind father and is more idiotic and annoying than most Shakespearean clowns.

    Shylock may be repellent in parts, but at least he's alive. That's not easy to say about the rest of the people here.
    8thetrev

    beats Larry hands down

    Warren Mitchell's portrayal is amazing. Rather than the over-playing of Olivier Mitchell shows a man who is loathed by all and yet is also obviously a product of this loathing. His shifts between pleasure and pain, glory and defeat, hatred and hurting are superb.

    A previous poster comments on Mitchell's accent. fair enough, but why just pick on his. All the others should be speaking Italian. Mitchell's Yiddish accent is fine and, for the most part, resists the urge to go 100% comic.

    Another poster wrote of the production failing to 'resolve the antisemitic overtones of the play'. So what? Antisemitism has never been resolved and it certainly wasn't in the play... nor, do I feel, was it meant to be. We feel little sympathy for the 'winners' in this piece. Their own virulent antisemitism has been shown and the creation of it, Shylock's twisted avenger, is also obvious.

    What surprised me was how, even though I knew the play, Portia came across as the biggest, self-righteous cow in the piece. I had never thought of how the caskets could refer to her when the matter of outer beauty housing less than beautiful things. This beautiful woman has a heart of stone towards the Jew and the foreigners.

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    Comedy
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    Drama

    Storyline

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    Did you know

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    • Trivia
      Although this episode screened to relatively no controversy in the UK, in the U.S., it created a huge furor. As soon as WNET announced the broadcast date, the Holocaust and Executive Committee (H.E.C.) of the Committee to Bring Nazi War Criminals to Justice sent them a letter demanding the show be cancelled. WNET also received protest letters from the Anti-Defamation League (A.D.L.) and B'nai B'rith. Additionally, Morris Schappes, editor of Jewish Currents, wrote an open letter of protest to The New York Times. The H.E.C. stated that Shylock can arouse "the deepest hate in the pathological and prejudiced mind", urging WNET "that reason and a reputable insight into the psychopathology of man will impel you to cancel the play's screening." They later stated, "our objection is not to art, but to the hate monger, whoever the target. This includes the singular and particular work of art, which, when televised, is viewed by millions and alarmingly compounds the spread of hate." The A.D.L. stated that screening the episode would be "providing a forum for a Shylock, who would have warmed the heart of Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher." PBS and WNET issued a joint statement citing the protests of Saudi Arabians regarding the screening of Death of a Princess (1980), a docudrama about the public execution of Princess Masha'il, and quoting PBS President Lawrence K. Grossman; "The healthy way to deal with such sensitivities, is to air the concerns and criticism, not to bury or ban them." PBS and WNET also pointed out that both Producer Jonathan Miller and Warren Mitchell are Jewish. For their part, Miller and Director Jack Gold had anticipated the controversy, and prepared for it. In the Stone and Hallinan press material, Gold stated, "Shylock's Jewishness in dramatic terms, is a metaphor for the fact that he, more than any other character in Venice, is an alien." Miller stated "It's not about Jews versus Christians in the racial sense; it's the world of legislation versus the world of mercy."
    • Goofs
      When Jessica leaves her father to go with her lover, she does not close the door. However, when she and her companions leave, the door must have been shut from within even though nobody is within.
    • Connections
      Featured in Did You See..?: Episode #1.8 (1980)

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    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • December 17, 1980 (United Kingdom)
    • Country of origin
      • United Kingdom
    • Official site
      • arabuloku.com
    • Language
      • English
    • Also known as
      • The Complete Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare: The Merchant of Venice
    • Production companies
      • British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)
      • Time-Life Television Productions
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Tech specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      • 2h 37m(157 min)
    • Color
      • Color
    • Sound mix
      • Mono
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.33 : 1

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