When it premiered at London’s Leicester Square Theatre in 1955, Richard III ran 161 minutes.
Subjected to cuts by both theatrical and television distributors, the film has been shown at various lengths over the years, including versions as much as twenty minutes shorter. In 2012, The Film Foundation completed an extensive digital restoration of a 158-minute cut of the film. This restoration utilized, for the first time, the original VistaVision camera negative, the original YCM separation pro-masters, and footage trimmed from the original negative, to create the longest existing version of the film. I first saw Laurence Olivier’s film version of Shakespeare’s Richard III in a theater in New York City sometime in the late 1950s, when I was a teenage acting student. What I’ve always remembered from that screening, besides the nasty, metallic timbre of Olivier’s voice – when it suddenly rose to a shriek, he sounded just like Hitler – were his thin, carmine lips, his oxblood doublet,  and  his  scarlet  gloves.  In  other words, more than fifty years later, I could still see in my mind’s eye all the different shades of red in this Technicolor rendering of Shakespeare’s bloody historical drama about the last days of the corrupt house of York and how the twisted Duke of Gloucester, afterward Richard III (Olivier), murdered his way to the throne of England. Subsequent viewings of both 35mm and 16mm prints and the Dvd did nothing to reinforce my original impression. Sadly, the color in the prints was murky and faded. This would be unfortunate in the case of any film, but it was particularly devastating to Richard III (1955), where color is such an important expressive element – and not only because the reds are employed as a substitute for bloody thoughts and deeds. (There is very little blood actually shown on-screen.) A subtler use of color occurs in the big battle scene that climaxes the film. From the moment that we see the Earl of Richmond, afterward Henry VII, and his forces, we know he will be victorious over King Richard and his army, if for no other reason than because the pale blue-gray and light brown costumes that Richmond and his soldiers wear are perfectly matched to the colors of the sky and fields of the English countryside. The colors themselves proclaim that Henry, the first of the Tudors, is the rightful king. […] Richard III has now been restored: so we can see Olivier’s spectacle in all its glory. The director’s visual strategy is startlingly simple. Apart from the final battle, the film was shot on sets, mostly in medium and long shots employing a relatively wide-angle lens. The lens has the effect of flattening the space so that, combined with the artificiality of the sets and the unobtrusive dolly moves, the images resemble medieval paintings or tapestries. When Richard takes command of this seemingly two-dimensional space, however, it is as if we had suddenly donned 3D glasses. He achieves this three-dimensionality physically, through his robust movements, and also, taking it a step further, psychologically, by breaking the fourth wall to include us in the drama – sometimes with a mere glance at the camera, sometimes inviting our complicity by speaking entire soliloquies directly into the lens, as if there were no one else in the world but him and you.

Amy Taubin