Long lost until 1995, Richard III (1912) was donated to the AFI by Oregon-based collector William Buffum, who preserved the nitrate reels in his basement from 1960 onwards. The film has survived in near mint condition by Buffum's meticulous yearly rewinding each reel to guard against sticking and to look for signs of deterioration. The Institute when restored the fading tints with funding support form the Joseph H. Kanter Foundation and commissioned Italian film composer Ennio Morricone (The Good the Bad and the Ugly, The Mission, The Untouchables) to score the silent tragedy. With Frederick Warde as Richard, James Keane's Richard III is the classic interpretation of the rise and demise of the villainous king. Shot for $30,000, at the time a huge budget, Richard III is the first Shakespearean feature film ever made. There are many interior castle scenes recreated in the studio, but there is also on-location cinematography shot in Westchester County and the Bronx, which makes for a film which interestingly shifts between expressionism and realism.
The discovery of Richard III is one of the most significant of thousands of historic film finds made by AFI over the last 30 years. AFI has also been a major collaborator in several of the most prestigious film restoration projections of the last 10 years, including Lawrence of Arabia, My Fair Lady, and Vertigo. In another of its most widely-recognized film preservation projects, AFI spearheaded the decade-long worldwide search to recover lost footage from Frank Capra's classic film Lost Horizon and supervised the film's subsequent restoration.
The great challenge and dream for any actor, Shakespeare's Richard III is the ultimate exercise in expressing the breadth of human emotion. The portrait of the cold-hearted King, from his bloodlust for power to his internal doubt, has such nuance and subtly that any leading man would find it daunting.
From Laurence Olivier's classic Technicolor widescreen Richard III (1954), to Al Pacino's exploration of an actor's will and desire of playing the villain-king in his documentary Looking for Richard (1996), Shakespeare's Richard III has seen many an incarnation, including Chilean auteur Raoul Ruiz's 1986 version and Richard Loncraine's highly original 1995 interpretation with Ian McKellen as the lead.
