Music director Raymond Rôze | Cinematography William Kennedy Dickson | |
Initial release 20 September 1899 (United Kingdom) Directors William Kennedy Dickson, Herbert Beerbohm Tree, Walter Pfeffer Dando Story by William Shakespeare, Herbert Beerbohm Tree Cast Herbert Beerbohm Tree, Lewis Waller, Julia Neilson, Norman McKinnel, Gerald Lawrence Similar The Milestone Collectio, Chinese Opium Den, Carmencita, Bucking Broncho, The Dickson Experime | ||
King John is the title by which the earliest known example of a film based on a play by William Shakespeare is commonly known. Filmed in London, England in September 1899, it was a silent film made from four very short separate films, each showing a heavily edited scene from Herbert Beerbohm Tree's forthcoming stage production of Shakespeare's King John at Her Majesty's Theatre, London.
The first film was of The Temptation Scene with John, Hubert and Arthur, the second of The Lamentation Scene with Constance, Philip of France, Lewis and Pandulph, the third of King John's Dying Scene with John, Henry, Pembroke and Salisbury, the fourth of King John's Death Scene with John, Henry, Falconbridge, Pembroke and Salisbury.
The filming of King John was produced and directed by William Kennedy Laurie Dickson and Walter Pfeffer Dando, the acting and production design by Herbert Tree. The cinematography was by William Dickson. A British film, the production company was the British Mutoscope and Biograph Company.
The EYE Film Institute Nederland has an incomplete copy of the third film lasting just under one minute. The last seconds of the scene are missing from the EYE copy; the BFI National Archive has a film clip of a few frames of the missing part.