The more refined one is, the more unhappy: Chekhov in film

My favorite playwright is Anton Chekhov, a man who wrote boldly ahead of his time, freeing Russian theater of its historical drama constraints, or at least tried to. A young Constantin Stanislavsky didn’t quite know what to make of Chekhov’s plays and still tried to stage them as historical dramas, often with bad results. It was later that Stanislavsky would discover his method and treat Chekhov the way he should, as comedy, albeit dark and sometimes brooding. Over the years, many many directors have taken their shot at...