Article on Frumin and Kozintsev for Cineaste Magazine

Grigori Kozintsev’s 1970 “King Lear” is arguably the most moving Shakespeare adaptation on film. Peter Brooks and Kozintsev wrote letters to each other from England and the Soviet Union as they simultaneously planned two versions of the Shakespeare classic. Brooks wrote that his visual form – consisting of lots of medium closeups and closeups – was inspired by Carl Theodor Dreyer’s “Joan of Arc.” But his film’s volubility led Kozintsev to protest that the power of “Joan of Arc” came from its silence. Kozintsev himself chose to bring out the emotion of “Lear” by transcending historicism and prioritizing the power of its events over dialogue.

It was fantastic working with Boris Frumin, a mentor to many important American filmmakers as well as to myself, and with the pioneering Gary Crowdus and his staff at Cineaste Magazine, for this article. My research on Kozintsev’s film – and the phenomenon of “glocalization” – was initially guided by the wonderful Julie Peters in her “Global Shakespeare” class at Columbia’s graduate English Literature program. Please read the interview to learn about an important part of film history and its impact on the developments of the film industry in America today: https://www.cineaste.com/summer2020/from-minimalism-to-neorealism-boris-frumin-interview

And keep reading this blog to see a few photos that are not featured in the article, of Frumin on set and a book he was given by Kozintsev as a gift!

Boris Frumin, first Assistant Director, on set with actor Leonhard Merzin, who played Edgar:

Frumin talking to Grigori Kozintsev:

A book of poems by prominent Soviet poet Arseny Tarkovsky, father of Andrei Tarkovsky, given by Kozintsev to Frumin. The inscription reads, “Great poems of the father of the great director to remember days of baptism by fire on ‘King Lear'”: