Is It Noir? Revisiting The Merchant of Venice

MGM

 Some time back, I posited The Merchant of Venice was noir. Additionally, I said it could be a comedy as well, though just reading it, a lot of the nuance doesn't come through. Someone in the comments noted Shakespeare is meant to seen, not read. It just so happens I'm watching a Shakespeare play a week, including the questionably canonical Edward III. (I still posit Will was a script doctor on that one, and boy did it need doctoring.) My viewing has including live plays, Zoom readings by various local Shakespeare groups, and of course, movies either by the RSC or Hollywood and the UK cinema. And I've seen The Merchant of Venice now, this time the Al Pacino version.

Henry Winkler once said he noticed when English actors do Shakespeare, they sound like they're ordering a pastrami sandwich, but American Shakespearean actors sound like their doing classical oration. It's not necessarily a bad thing (and the exceptions to either are legion), but the assertion holds as a generalization. And here it works. 

Antonio, Bassano, and Portia are ordinary characters, their actors giving understated performances in this film. And then we have Shylock, who is not in very many scenes, but he has to cast a huge shadow over the proceedings. The bulk of the cast is English or English-trained. But Shylock is played by Al Pacino. And if Pacino does anything well, it's stealing every scene he's in.

But all the other things people say about this play? Antisemitic? It's actually a play about antisemitism, and once these characters step off the page, you realize the Bard took a very dim view about how the English treated the Jews under Queen Elizabeth and King James. But he's not talking about England. He's talking about Genoa and Venice. Right?

Is there a romance between Antonio and Bassano? Well, you can't read this play without at least picking up on an intense bromance. I love my male best friends, but I'm not risking bankruptcy or having Michael Corleone carve a pound of meat out of me to pay for their weddings. I might put a night at BW3 on my credit card, which my stepson and I did for our youngest. (The groom's alcohol-fueled transformation into Jack Sparrow was hilarious!) In the movie? It's not stated, but it's there. These men are more than just buddies, and fair Portia is a prize. 

But it's Shylock, the loan shark, who owns this play. And Pacino puts his lines in context. Most people are used to hearing Christopher Plummer's scenery-chewing Klingon reciting some of Shylock's lines in Star Trek VI. But as Chang gleefully tries to straight-up murder the crews of two starships, he rattles off out-of-context lines spinning in his chair and delivering the lines wrong. (It works in the context of this movie as it prompts McCoy to growl, "I'd give real money if he'd shut up!") Pacino is not going "Look at me! I know Shakespeare!" as he introduces his leetle friends to his enemies. No, the "Prick us, do we not bleed" speech isn't showing off. It's a man victimized by the world around pleading for his listeners to understand. He's a classic noir villain, wanting violence as revenge wrapped in legalism (with Cain, Richard Wright, and Jim Thompson taking copious notes), but he has a painful motivation. He's tired of being treated like garbage. He's good enough to take his money but spat upon otherwise? Shakespeare excels at this kind of character, one who will play the monster if he can't be the hero. Or even just a man. In this, he has much in common with Shakespeare's Richard III, but Dick is straight up a very bad man. Shylock just wants his due.

Oh. And it's still a comedy. I mean, Murphy's law, bromance, and everyone tripping all over themselves? It's like Succession on acid.

Elizabethan Noir

MGM

My current read is The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare's seminal play about greed and revenge. The play is often criticized for its anti-Semitic tone and rightfully so. The characters' main beef with ruthless money lender Skylock is he's a Jew. And yet, Will seems to be giving Elizabethan England a well-deserved punch in the eye for it. After all, this is where the line, "Tickle us, do we not laugh; prick us, do we not bleed? Wrong us, shall we not revenge?" (And I cannot not hear that in Christopher Plummer's voice.) It's Shakespeare's way of saying, "Well, if you treat me like a monster, don't be surprised if I become one."

But Shylock is by no means a hero. The prejudice against him fuels his rage, but at only five scenes in, I've only seen him in one. That's actually a brilliant piece of writing. (Well, it is Shakespeare. Even his duds are impressive. Except Edward III, and he was likely the script doctor on that one. "Why didn't I give this to Marlowe to fix. Joan of Kent? Zounds!") Shylock is such a presence that he shifts the center of gravity in every scene he's in. I'm just reading this, not watching Plummer or Patrick Stewart or Al Pacino play him, and he immediately grabs one's attention, a malevolence rivaling Shakespeare's Richard III in the play of the same name. 

But we know Shakespeare for two types of plays: Histories and comedies. His comedies are hit or miss, and I admit, I don't really connect with those very much. They are probably best seen performed rather than read. The histories, more often than not, are what grab my attention. But Shakespeare wrote in a transitional period, moving from poems to prose, from the epic to the everyday. Had Shakespeare lived two centuries later, might he have adapted Tom Jones (current Audible listen), complete with all the bawdiness he held back on in the days of Elizabeth and King James I? (Yeah. The Bible guy. Who clearly never read it. That's a rant for a different forum.)

Henry V and Julius Caesar and Richard III, however, are epic figures, heroes and villains (and sometimes both) who operate on Olympian levels. But what of The Merchant of Venice? It's the titular merchant, Antonio, who takes out a loan for his friend, Bassanio, then defaults on it. The penalty is, legally, "a pound of flesh." 

Wait a minute. You take out a loan and, instead of debtors prison or the lender taking all your stuff, as usually happens, he gets a literal piece of you? That sounds a lot like...

A loan shark. Now, I've known an actual loan shark, as in he worked for one of the Five Families back in the day. You hear stories of leg-breaking, but more often, an actual loan shark would prefer breaking things and intimidation. Your broken leg impedes your ability to earn the vig. However, Shylock is, to put it mildly, a bit of a jerk. There's animosity between Shylock and Antonio, and it goes beyond the prejudice Shakespeare saddles his characters with. Shylock hates Antonio's guts, and helping himself to a pound of those guts drives that home. Antonio knows this and takes the loan intending to pay it back and rub Shylock's nose in it. Antonio is not a nice guy, nor is he Shakespeare's standard hero. Like Shylock, he's ruthless.

So, does that mean The Merchant of Venice is noir?

In some ways. Typically, in noir, the protagonist is screwed and comes either to a bad end or winds up diminished. (If Shylock had his way, Antonio would be diminished by a pound.) But the First Folio listed Merchant as a comedy. Why? Because the fair Portia and her friend Nerissa pose as lawyers and con Shylock in a move worthy of Tom Cruise in the movie version of The Firm. (I still like that better than what Grisham wrote, if only for the look on Paul Sorvino's face when he realizes the kid he came to whack just outmaneuvered his own law firm.) So the comedy aspect, in terms of the classical definition of a comedy, fits. 

But this is really, really dark. Antonio's scheme to put one over on Shylock backfires. We already know Shylock is a vengeful, angry man. So while his methods are abhorrent, you have to recall the old Chris Rock line, "I'm not saying I approve, but I understand!" Kind of like watching a Hannibal Lector movie and wonder when he'll just eat some annoying character. (They were legion in Hannibal.)

But Antonio is the arrogant rich man. Shylock is the ruthless money lender. The mob even named the slang for loan shark after him. Head-to-head, it's almost an episode of Penguin or Tulsa King.