VENICE has not looked as damp and miserable since Donald Sutherland splashed around the lagoon in Don’t Look Now. In Michael Radford’s adaptation of The Merchant of Venice, a wintry mist rises off the Grand Canal and half the cast chokes on the vapours. The other half loafs around the Ducal palace waiting for Leonardo to invent the washing machine. Their shirts are filthy, and their endless parties will eventually give birth to Rentokil.

This is uncharted territory for a film director. No one has ever made a full-length feature of Shakespeare’s cruellest “comedy”, let alone had the budget to film it in situ.

Who will pick up the tab for this Titanic decadence? Who will bail out the dashing aristocrat, Bassanio (Joseph Fiennes), so that he can pursue his expensive quest to win the hand of fair Portia (Lynn Collins)? What price love? Step forward Antonio (Jeremy Irons), the infatuated merchant of the title who forfeits a pound of his own flesh to bankroll the spoilt young buck he would die to sleep with. There’s a titillating instant when Bassanio flops on to Antonio’s bed and tosses his long hair over his shoulders. I have never seen two male leads milk a homosexual frisson quite so feebly. Instead, there is manly bluster, and frothy lessons about constancy.

Despite speeches that are stripped to the bone, every romantic line between Portia and Bassanio overeggs the moment. The result is that even the sharpest exchanges look as if they are being performed by actors trying to sprint under water.

But frankly it wouldn’t make much difference if they were leaping around Mars. The only interesting fly in this ointment is Shylock. Al Pacino is absolutely electric in the part, from the moment we zoom in on him at a local butcher’s. He is chopping a lump of meat out of a dead goat as if he was carving a diamond. He carefully wraps up his bloody purchase in a piece of sackcloth and then turns around, blanks the camera, and strikes his chilling bargain with Antonio with as much emotion as a machine punching out a Tube ticket.

It is a terrific piece of dirty realism. Pacino nurtures his grievances like a man stroking his boils. He mocks the fantasy that his money was borrowed to fund. And he is spat at like a football player when he comes to collect his dues.

Radford’s efforts to square the rest of his film with this rasping hero are doomed. Everyone else on screen is simply underwhelming.

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