Don’t forget Kurosawa

Thanks for your article “Actually, Shakespeare’s the Man” [by Susan King, March 16], on the various movies adapted from William Shakespeare’s plays. While I realize that any list of Shakespeare-inspired films can never be complete, I thought I would add four more that deserve to be mentioned.

One of the best-known cinematic extrapolations from the Bard of Stratford is “Shakespeare in Love,” which won the 1998 Academy Award for best picture, and for good reason: This wonderful “what-if?” of how young Will came to write “Romeo and Juliet” remains one of the wittiest movies, in both story and dialogue, to come out of Hollywood in the last decade.

Another cinematic gem is Orson Welles’ 1966 condensation of Shakespeare’s four Falstaff plays (“Henry IV”

Parts I & II, “Henry V” and “The Merry Wives of Windsor”) into one searing story: “Chimes at Midnight.” It should be criminal that this compelling film is not available on DVD in the U.S.

But the two most critically acclaimed Shakespeare adaptations are both where director Akira Kurosawa transposed two plays from medieval Britain to medieval Japan: “Throne of Blood” (1957), a reworking of “Macbeth,” and “Ran” (1985), a retelling of “King Lear.”

In particular, the absence of these last two films from your list is especially bewildering.

ROBERT PAYNE

Studio City