Director Peter Brook is well known in Great Britain as a Shakespearean stage director. To his unusual cinematic interpretation of “King Lear” he brings an already classic performance, that of Paul Scofield, who played Lear in the Royal Shakespeare Company's 1962 production, also directed by Brook. Shot on the steppes of Jutland, Denmark, in the freezing cold, the film is visually spare, pared down to basics in props and costumes, with black-and-white images sometimes verging on the abstract. The verse, however, is spoken “lucidly and conversationally, (the actors) taking their tone from a restrained, unaffected performance by Scofield as the King....” (Monthly Film Bulletin). Those who attend the San Francisco Opera's current production of “King Lear” will recognize Robert Lloyd, who plays Edgar in this film, in the role of the Fool.