The Immortal Gentleman: Shakespeare drinking in a pub for an hour

If you are looking for a big, fancy Hollywood epic about the Bard, you should probably just keep moving. The Immortal Gentleman is not that. It is a very dusty, very stagey British movie from 1935 that feels like you're watching a play through a thick layer of cobwebs. 🕸️

It is mostly for people who like to see old actors in itchy-looking costumes shouting at each other in small rooms. If you hate slow, black-and-white movies where nothing much happens except for talking, you will absolutely hate this. But if you have a soft spot for weird theater history, it’s kind of a trip.

The whole thing takes place in a tavern in Southwark. It's 1616, and William Shakespeare (Bertram Dench) is hanging out with his writer buddies, Ben Jonson and Michael Drayton. They spend most of the movie drinking ale and being very loud. To be honest, it’s probably the most realistic part of the movie. Writers love to sit in pubs and talk about themselves.

Shakespeare keeps looking at the regular people in the pub and seeing his own characters in them. A girl looks a bit sad and suddenly he’s talking about Juliet. An old man looks grumpy and boom, it's Hamlet. It’s a bit on the nose. It is like the movie is trying to prove he was a genius by showing he just copied the people sitting next to him.

The Tavern Vibes

The sets are clearly made of painted wood and hope. You can tell they didn't have a huge budget because the lighting is a bit flat and the tavern looks like it would fall over if someone sneezed too hard. It reminded me a bit of the simple sets in The Fiddling Fool, where you just have to accept that you're watching a stage play on a screen.

I noticed that Ben Jonson’s beard looks like it might be held on with very weak glue. Every time he laughs—which is often—I was worried it was going to migrate to his ear. The acting is also very "theatrical." Everyone projects their voice like they are trying to reach the back row of a stadium, even though they are sitting three inches apart.

• The Bread: It looked incredibly hard. Like, break-your-teeth hard.
• The Laughing: There is so much forced laughing in this movie.
• The Tights: So many men in tights.

There is this one scene where a soldier asks Shakespeare to recite "The Seven Ages of Man." It’s a bit awkward. It feels like that one friend at a party who gets pressured into doing a "bit" and then everyone just has to stand there and watch. Shakespeare looks very intense while doing it, though. 🎭

Then they all start singing "Sigh no more, ladies." This part goes on for a long time. Like, a really long time. I found myself looking at the background extras just to see if they were as bored as I was. One guy in the back was just staring into space, probably thinking about what he wanted for dinner.

As they get more drunk, the movie starts showing us scenes from Twelfth Night. It’s like a dream sequence but with more 1930s makeup. The transitions are kind of clunky. It’s not quite as smooth as the musical numbers in something like Our Gang Follies of 1936. It just sort of... happens.

I forgot to mention the music. It is very "flutey" and high-pitched. It’s the kind of music that makes you feel like you should be eating a turkey leg at a Renaissance fair. 🍗

The ending is where it gets really weird. This woman named Jane, who is Jonson's cousin, finds Shakespeare passed out. She thinks he is dead! She starts getting all emotional, but then he wakes up and gives this speech about how he will live forever. It is a bit of a weird flex, but I guess he was right.

It’s funny how the movie treats him like a mystical figure instead of just a guy who wrote plays. But that was the style back then. They loved making things feel important even when they were just filmed in a small studio in London.

The pacing is a bit of a mess. Sometimes it feels like it’s moving at a crawl, and then suddenly it’s over. It doesn't have the grit of something like The Squealer. It’s much more polite. Too polite, maybe. I wish someone had spilled a drink or started a fight.

I did like seeing a young Leo Genn. He has a very distinctive face. It’s always fun to see famous actors before they were "the" actors we know now. He’s just a face in the crowd here, basically.

Is it a good movie? Not really. It’s a curiosity. It’s a weird little piece of film history that someone decided to make because they liked Shakespeare. It feels very personal, like a group of theater nerds got some cameras and decided to have a party. 🎉

If you have an hour to kill and want to feel like you're in a dusty British library, give it a watch. Just don't expect any explosions. The biggest explosion here is when someone drops a pewter mug. It’s' greatest sin is probably just being a little bit dull in the middle.

But hey, at least we get to see Shakespeare hungover. That’s something you don't see every day. 🍺