Russian director Grigori Kozintsev, whose career began with the eccentric 1920s filmmaking collaborative FEKS (New Babylon; The Devil's Wheel), earned international acclaim for his two epic Shakespeare adaptations, Hamlet and King Lear. Avoiding the staged sets and respectful hush of the usual adaptations, his King Lear returns the play to the elements-a rocky, barren, and utterly hostile natural world. Winds howl, mad dogs roam, and countless ragged peasants crawl across the vast CinemaScope frame as King Lear (a Klaus Kinski–like Yuri Yarvet) raves and slips into madness. One critic wrote, “Of all Shakespeare's tragedies, King Lear is perhaps the best suited to Russian adaptation, being the longest, wildest, starkest, and most replete with pain and suffering at all levels.” Indeed, Kozintsev-aided by some astonishing black-and-white 'Scope cinematography, music by Shostakovich, and Boris Pasternak's brilliant adaptation-underlines all of those qualities. He also, wrote Alexander Walker, “restores what Shakespeare left out: the chorus of the common people.”