As with most of the silent films on this dvd, King Lear is of most interest to students of film history· King Lear is one of the most complex of Shakespear's plays, making it difficult to translate to mime·
Of particular interest is the colorizing used in the film· There was, of course, no color film in 1910· If color was used, the film had to be colorized by hand, a tedious process· Apparently the version of King Lear produced for the dvd was cobbled together from several fragments, some colorized, some not·
I am not certain how these films were colorized, but I did see one reference to "stencils", perhaps using a technique used by the engineering department of a firm I onced worked for· We produced color-coded maps, each color represented a different feature· Perhaps fifty or so copies of each map was produced· Stencils were cut for each color on a map sheet· Colored ink was then hand applied using the stencils· If this was the technique used to colorize the film, a separate set of stencils would be required for each of the hundreds of frames in a movie-an expensive and tedious process· Perhaps some automation was developed. In any event, colorized films would be only distributed to high-end theaters and movie circuits.