Hamlet on screen

::"See also Shakespeare on screen."

Over fifty films of William Shakespeare's "Hamlet" have been made since 1900. [Thompson, Ann and Taylor, Niel "HAMLET" (The Arden Shakespeare 3rd Series, Thompson Learning, 2006) Introduction, p.108] Seven post-war "Hamlet" films have had a theatrical release: Laurence Olivier's "Hamlet" of 1948; Grigori Kozintsev's 1964 Russian adaptation; a film of the John Gielgud-directed 1964 Broadway production, "Richard Burton's Hamlet", which played limited engagements that same year; Tony Richardson's 1969 version (the first in color) featuring Nicol Williamson as Hamlet and Anthony Hopkins as Claudius; Franco Zeffirelli's 1990 version starring action-hero Mel Gibson; Kenneth Branagh's full-text 1996 version; and Michael Almereyda's 2000 modernisation, starring Ethan Hawke.

Because of the play's length, most films of "Hamlet" are heavily cut, although an exception is Branagh's 1996 version, which uses a full text.

Approaches

The full conflated text of "Hamlet" can run to four hours in performance, so most film adaptations are heavily cut, sometimes by removing entire characters. Fortinbras can be excised with minimal textual difficulty, and so a major decision for the director of Hamlet, on stage or on screen, is whether or not to include him. Excluding Fortinbras removes much of the play's political dimension, resulting in a more personal performance than those in which he is retained. Fortinbras makes no appearance in Olivier's and Zeffirelli's versions, while in Kozintzev's and Branagh's films he is a major presence. [Guntner, J. Lawrence: "Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear on film" in Jackson, Russell (ed.) "The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film" (Cambridge University Press, 2000) pp.117-123]

Another significant decision for a director is whether to play up or play down the incestuous feelings that Freudian critics believe Hamlet harbours for his mother. Olivier and Zeffirelli highlight this interpretation of the plot (especially through casting decisions) while Kozintzev and Branagh avoid this interpretation. [Guntner, pp.120-123]

Harry Keyishan has suggested that directors of "Hamlet" on screen invariably place it within one of the established film genres: Olivier's "Hamlet", he claims, is a film noir; Zeffirelli's version is an action adventure and Branagh's is an epic. [Keyishian, Harry "Shakespeare and Movie Genre: The Case of Hamlet" in Jackson, Russell (ed.) "The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film" (Cambridge University Press, 2000) pp.72-81, at p.75] Keyishan adds that "Hamlet" films can also be classified by the auteur theory: Olivier's and Zeffirelli's "Hamlets", for example, can be viewed among the body of their directorial work. [Keyishian, pp.73-4]

ignificant theatrical releases

Laurence Olivier, 1948

This black and white British film of "Hamlet" was directed by and starred Laurence Olivier. It was Olivier's second film as director, and is the second of his three Shakespeare films. It has received the most prestigious accolades of any Shakespeare film, winning the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Actor.

The film opens with Olivier's voiceover of his own interpretation of the play, which has been criticised as reductive: "This is the tragedy of a man who could not make up his mind." [Brode, p.120] Olivier excised the "political" elements of the play (entirely cutting Fortinbas, Rozencrantz and Guildernstern) in favour of an intensely psychological performance. [Guntner, p.118] He played up the Oedipal overtones of the play, to the extent of casting the 28-year-old Eileen Herlie as Hamlet's mother, opposite himself (aged 41) as Hamlet. Film scholar Jack Jorgens has commented that "Hamlet's scenes with the Queen in her low-cut gowns are virtually love scenes." [Jorgens, Jack "Shakespeare on Film" (Bloomington, 1997) p.217 cited by Davies, Anthony in "The Shakespeare films of Laurence Olivier" in Jackson, Russell (ed.) "The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film" (Cambridge University Press, 2000) p.171] In contrast, Jean Simmons' Ophelia is destroyed by Hamlet's treatment of her in the nunnery scene: ending with her collapsing on the staircase in what Deborah Cartmell calls the position of a rape victim. [Cartmell, Deborah "Franco Zeffirelli and Shakespeare" in Jackson, Russell (ed.) "The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film" (Cambridge University Press, 2000) p.215] According to J. Lawrence Guntner, the style of the film owes much to German Expressionism and to "film noir": the cavernous sets featuring narrow winding stairwells correspond to the labyrinths of Hamlet's psyche. [Guntner, p.119]

Grigori Kozintsev, 1964

"Hamlet" ( _ru. "Гамлет"; "Gamlet") is a 1964 film adaptation in Russian, based on a translation by Boris Pasternak and directed by Grigori Kozintsev, with a score by Dmitri Shostakovich. [Guntner, pp.120-121] The film is heavily informed by the post-Stalinist era in which it was made: Pasternak and the star, Innokenty Smoktunovsky, having been imprisoned by Stalin. [Guntner, p.120] In contrast to Olivier's film, Kozintzev's is political and public. Where Olivier had narrow winding stairwells, Kozintzev had broad avenues, peopled with ambassadors and courtiers. [Guntner, p.121] The camera frequently looks through bars and grates, and J. Lawrence Guntner has suggested that the image of Ophelia in an iron farthingale symbolises the fate of the sensitive and intelligent in the film's tough political environment. [Guntner, p.120]

Kozintzev consistently cast actors whose first language was not Russian, so as to bring shades of other traditions into his film. [Sokolyansky, Mark "Grigori Kozintzev's Hamlet and King Lear" in Jackson, Russell (ed.) "The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film" (Cambridge University Press, 2000) p.202] Smoktunovsky's individual manner of acting distinguished the film from other versions, and his explosive behaviour in the recorder scene is viewed by many critics, as the film's climax. [Sokolyansky, p.203] Douglas Brode has criticised the film for presenting a Hamlet who barely pauses for reflection: with most of the soliloquies cut, it is circumstances, not an inner conflict, that delays his revenge. [Brode, pp.127-9]

Franco Zeffirelli, 1990

Franco Zeffirelli's 1990 film of "Hamlet" stars Mel Gibson as the Dane, with Glenn Close as Gertrude, Alan Bates as Claudius and Helena Bonham Carter as Ophelia.

Film scholar Deborah Cartmell has suggested that Zeffirelli's Shakespeare films are appealing because they are "sensual rather than cerebral", an approach by which he aims to make Shakespeare "even more popular". [Cartmell, Deborah "Franco Zeffirelli and Shakespeare" in Jackson, Russell (ed.) "The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Screen" (Cambridge University Press, 2000) p.212, quoting a Zeffirelli interview given to The South Bank Show in December 1997.] To this end, he cast the Hollywood actor Mel Gibson - then famous for the "Mad Max" and "Lethal Weapon" films - in the title role. Cartmell also notes that the text is drastically cut, with the effect of enhancing the roles of the women. [Cartmell, p.215]

J. Lawrence Guntner has suggested that Zeffirelli's cinematography borrows heavily from the action film genre that made Gibson famous, noting that its average shot length is less than six seconds. [Guntner, pp.121-122] In casting Gibson, the director has been said to have made the star's reputation part of the performance, encouraging the audience "to see the Gibson that they have come to expect from his other films": [Quigley, Daniel "Double Exposure", in "Shakespeare Bulletin" winter 1993 pp.38-9, cited by Keyishian, p.77] Indeed, Gibson was cast after Zeffirelli watched his character contemplate suicide in the first "Lethal Weapon" film. [Keyishian, pp.72-81] Harry Keyishan has suggested that "Hamlet" is well suited to this treatment, as it provides occasions for "enjoyable violence". [Keyishian, p.77] J. Lawrence Guntner has written that the casting of Glenn Close as Mel Gibson's mother (only eleven years older than him, in life, and then famous as the psychotic "other woman" in "Fatal Attraction") highlights the incest theme, leaving "little to our post-Freudian imagination". [Guntner, pp.121-122] and Deborah Cartmell notes that Close and Gibson simulate sex in the closet scene, and "she dies after sexually suggestive jerking movements, with Hamlet positioned on top of her, his face covered with sweat" [Cartmell, p.215]

Kenneth Branagh, 1996

In contrast to Zeffirelli's heavily cut "Hamlet" of a few years before, Kenneth Branagh adapted, directed and starred in a version containing every word of Shakespeare's play, running for around four hours. [Crowl, Samuel "Framboyant Realist: Kenneth Branagh" in Jackson, Russell "The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film" (Cambridge University Press, 2000) p.232] He based aspects of the staging on Adrian Noble's recent Royal Shakespeare Company production of the play, in which he had played the title role. [Crowl, p.223]

In a radical departure from previous Hamlet films, Branagh set the internal scenes in a vibrantly colourful setting, featuring a throne room dominated by mirrored doors; film scholar Samuel Crowl calls the setting "film noir" with all the lights on." [Crowl, p.227] Branagh chose Victorian era costuming and furnishings, using Blenheim Palace, built in the early 18th century, as Elsinore Castle for the external scenes. Harry Keyishan has suggested that the film is structured as an epic, courting comparison with "Ben Hur", "The Ten Commandments" and "Doctor Zhivago". [Keyishian, p.78] As J. Lawrence Guntner points out, comparisons with the latter film are heightened by the presence of Julie Christie ("Zhivago's" Lara) as Gertrude. [Guntner, pp.122-123.]

The film makes frequent use of flashbacks to dramatize elements that are not performed in Shakespeare's text, such as Hamlet's sexual relationship with Kate Winslet's Ophelia. [Keyishian, p.79] These flashbacks include performances by several famous actors in non-speaking roles: Yorick is played by Ken Dodd, Old Norway by John Mills and John Gielgud appears as Priam in a dramatisation of the Player King's speech about the fall of Troy. [ [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116477/ Hamlet (1996) ] ]

Michael Almereyda, 2000

Directed by Michael Almereyda and set in contemporary Manhattan, this film stars Ethan Hawke, who plays Hamlet as a film student. It also features Julia Stiles as Ophelia, Liev Schreiber as Laertes, and Bill Murray as Polonius. In this version, Claudius becomes CEO of the "Denmark Corporation", having taken over the firm by killing his brother. The film is notable for its inclusion of modern technology: for example, the ghost of Hamlet's murdered father first appears on closed-circuit TV. The script is heavily cut, to suit the modern day surroundings. Ethan Hawke is the youngest of the big-screen Hamlets, at 29. [ [http://www.filmhead.com/reviews/2000/hamlet2000.html Filmhead.com review] accessed 6 April 2007.]

Other screen performances

In the late ninetenth and early twentieth centuries, the central character, Prince Hamlet, was perceived as effeminate; so it is fitting that the earliest screen success as "Hamlet" was Sarah Bernhardt in a five minute film of the fencing scene, in 1900. The film was a crude talkie in that music and words were recorded on phonograph records, to be played along with the film. [Brode, Douglas "I Know Not Seems: Hamlet" in "Shakespeare In The Movies" (Oxford University Press, 2000 (but page numbers taken from Berkley Boulevard paperback edition, 2001)) p.117] Silent versions of the play were directed by Georges Méliès in 1907, Luca Comerio in 1908, William George Barker in 1910, August Blom in 1910, Cecil Hepworth in 1913 and Eleuterio Rodolfi in 1917. [Brode, p.117]

In 1920, Svend Gade directed Asta Nielsen in a version derived from Edward Vining's 1881 book "The Mystery of Hamlet", in which Hamlet is a woman who spends her life disguised as a man. [Brode, p.118] Maximillian Schell caught the spirit of the times in his performance in the Munich August Festival of 1960: an idealist activist standing up to Claudius' corrupt establishment. This version was successfully televised, but technical and dubbing issues caused it to be less successful on the English language big-screen. [Brode, pp.123-5] The English version is best remembered for being mocked on one of the final episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000. John Gielgud directed Richard Burton in a successful run of the play at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in 1964-5. A film of the production, "Richard Burton's Hamlet" played limited engagements in 1964. It was made using "ELECTRONOVISION", which proved to be an ineffective hybrid of stage and screen methods, although its novelty value made the film a commercial success at the time. [Brode, 125-7]

Philip Saville directed Christopher Plummer in a TV version usually called "Hamlet at Elsinore", filmed in black-and-white at Kronborg Slot, the castle at Elsinore where the play is set. It featured Michael Caine as Horatio and Robert Shaw as Claudius. [McKernan, Luke and Terris, Olwen (eds.) "Walking Shadows: Shakespeare in the National Film and Television Archive" (British Film Institute Publishing, 1994) p.54] Tony Richardson directed Nicol Williamson in a 1969 version, the first "Hamlet" in color, which proved to be a critical and commercial failure: partly due to the decision to market the film as a tragic love story to teenage audiences who were still flocking to Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 "Romeo and Juliet", and yet to cast opposite Marianne Faithfull's Ophelia the "balding, paunchy Williamson, who looked more like her father than her lover." [Brode, p.130] Richard Chamberlain was a rarity: an American actor in the central role of an English-set Shakepeare production. His critically acclaimed television "Hamlet" was, in his words, "pressed into service as part of the student protest, with Hamlet as victim of the generation gap." [Brode, p.132-3] The BBC Television Shakespeare was a project to televise the entire canon of plays. Their version of Hamlet starred Derek Jacobi as the prince and Patrick Stewart as Claudius. [ [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080835/ Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (1980) (TV) ] ] S4C's "" series included a half-hour abridgement of Hamlet, featuring the voice of Nicholas Farrell as the Dane. The animator, Natalia Orlova, used an oil-on-glass technique: a scene would be painted and a number of frames would be shot, back-lit; then some paint would be scraped off and the scene partially repainted for the next frame. The effect has been described as "oddly both fluid and static ... capable of [representing] intense emotion." [Holland, Peter "Shakespeare Abbreviated" in Shaughnessy, Robert (ed.) "The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Popular Culture" (Cambridge University Press, 2007) p.44]

Kevin Kline directed and starred in a production of "Hamlet" for the New York Shakespeare Festival which was televised in 1990 as part of the Great Performances anthology series on PBS.

Adaptations

Edgar G. Ulmer's "Strange Illusion" was the first post-war film to adapt the "Hamlet" story, and was one of the earliest films to focus its attentions on a young character's psychology. [Brode, p.147]

"Hamlet" has been adapted into stories which deal with civil corruption by the West German director Helmut Käutner in "Der Rest ist Schweigen" ("The Rest is Silence") and by the Japanese director Akira Kurosawa in "Warui Yatsu Hodo Yoku Nemeru" ("The Bad Sleep Well"). [Howard, Tony "Shakespeare's Cinemantic Offshoots" in Jackson, Russell (ed.) "The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film" (Cambridge University Press, 2000) pp.300-1] In Claude Chabrol's "Ophélia" (France, 1962) the central character, Yvan, watches Olivier's "Hamlet" and convinces himself - wrongly, and with tragic results - that he is in Hamlet's situation. [Howard, pp.301-2] A spaghetti western version has been made: "Johnny Hamlet" directed by Enzo Castellari in 1968. [Howard, p.300] "Strange Brew" (1983) is a movie featuring the comic fictional Canadians Bob and Doug MacKenzie (played by Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas). The movie contains a number of plot elements and other details that parallel "Hamlet".Fact|date=April 2008 Aki Kaurismäki's "Hamlet Liikemaailmassa" ("Hamlet Goes Business") (Finland, 1987) piles on the irony: a sawmill owner is poisoned, and his brother plans to sell the mills to invest in rubber ducks. [Howard, p.302] Tom Stoppard directed a 1990 film version of his own play "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead", which incorporates scenes from "Hamlet" starring Iain Glen as the Dane; Douglas Brode regards it as less successful on screen than it had been on stage, due to the preponderance of talk over action. [Brode, p.150]

The Lion King

A recent significant film adaptation of the Hamlet story is Disney's Academy Award-winning animated feature The Lion King, in which the king's brother murders the king, taking his place as ruler of the Pride Lands. The exiled son of the late king (the central character, Simba) is exhorted by his father's ghost to challenge his wicked uncle. As befits the genre, the tragic ending of Shakespeare's play is avoided.cite video | people = Don Hahn, Roger Allers, Rob Minkoff | title = The Lion King: Platinum Edition (Disc 2) | medium = DVD | publisher = Walt Disney Home Video | date= 2003] cite book | last=Vogler | first=Christopher | title="The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure For Writers" | date=1998]

Theatrical performances within films

Another way in which film-makers use Shakespearean texts is to feature characters who are actors performing those texts, within a wider non-Shakespearean story. "Hamlet" and "Romeo and Juliet" are the two plays which have most often been used in this way. [McKernan and Terris list 45 instances of uses of Hamlet, not including films of the play itself, at pp.45-66. They list 39 such instances for Romeo and Juliet at pp.141-156. The next closest is Othello, with 23 instances, at pp.119-131.] Usually, Shakespeare's story has some parallel or resonance with the main plot. In Ernst Lubitsch's 1942 "To Be or Not to Be", the title soliloquy becomes a subtle running gag: whenever Jack Benny's character - the pompous actor Joseph Tura - begins the speech, a member of the audience loudly walks out: usually to make love to Tura's wife, played by Carole Lombard. [Howard, p.296] Shelley Long's character plays Hamlet in the 1987 film "Outrageous Fortune". [Howard, p.309] Kenneth Branagh wrote and directed the low-budget "In The Bleak Midwinter" (released in the USA as "A Midwinter's Tale") immediately before shooting his famous "Hamlet". Shot in just 21 days, and telling the story of a group of actors performing "Hamlet" on a shoestring to save a village church, the film is a tribute to Ealing Comedies, and to the foibles of the acting profession, shot in black and white. [Crowl, p.226] The film "Hamlet 2" centers around a high school drama class and their teacher, played by Steve Coogan, attempting to stage a very experimental and controversial musical sequel to "Hamlet".Fact|date=September 2008

The BFI National Archive contains at least twenty films featuring characters performing (sometimes brief) excerpts from "Hamlet", including "When Hungry Hamlet Fled" (USA, 1915), "Das Alte Gesetz" (Germany, 1923), "The Immortal Gentleman" (GB, 1935), "The Arizonian" (USA, 1935), "South Riding" (GB, 1937), "My Darling Clementine" (USA, 1946), "Hancock's 43 Minutes" (GB, 1957), "Danger Within" (GB, 1958), "The Pure Hell of St Trinian's" (GB, 1960), "Shakespeare Wallah" (India, 1965), "The Magic Christian" (GB, 1969), "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, But Were Afraid to Ask" (USA, 1972), "Theatre of Blood" (GB, 1973), "Mephisto" (Hungary, 1981), "An Englishman Abroad" (GB, 1983), "Withnail and I" (GB, 1986), "Comic Relief 2" (GB, 1989), "Great Expectations" (GB/USA, 1989), "Hysteria 2" (GB, 1989), "The Voice Over Queen" (USA, 1990) and "Tectonic Plates" (GB, 1992). [McKernan and Terris, pp.45-66]

List of screen performances

Silent Era

Talkies

List of screen adaptations

This list includes adaptations of the Hamlet story, and films in which the characters are involved in acting or studying Hamlet.

*"Oh'Phelia" (UK, 1919) animated burlesque of the "Hamlet" story. [McKernan and Terris, p.47] :Anson Dyer director
*"To Be or Not To Be" (USA, 1942) is the story of an acting company in 1939 Poland.:Ernst Lubitsch director:Jack Benny as Joseph Tura:Carole Lombard as Maria Tura
*"The Bad Sleep Well" (aka "Warui yatsu hodo yoku nemuru") (Japan, 1960) is an adaptation of the Hamlet story set in corporate Japan.:Akira Kurosawa director:Toshirô Mifune as Koichi Nishi
*"Angel of Revenge/Female Hamlet" (Turkey, 1976) [ [http://www.sinematurk.com/ara.php3?kod=1276&section=film Sinematurk] accessed 26 August 2007.] :Metin Erksan, director:Fatma Girik as a female Hamlet
*"Hamlet liikemaailmassa" (aka "Hamlet Goes Business" in the USA) (Finland, 1981).:Aki Kaurismäki director:Pirkka-Pekka Petelius as Hamlet
*"To Be or Not To Be" (USA, 1983) is a remake of the Ernst Lubitsch film. [McKernan and Terris, p.60] :Mel Brooks director and as Frederick Bronski:Anne Bancroft as Anna Bronski
*"Strange Brew" (Canada, 1983), a comedy. Something is rotten in the Elsinore Brewery.:Dave Thomas co-director and as Doug McKenzie:Rick Moranis co-director and as Bob McKenzie
*"Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead" (USA, 1990) film based on Tom Stoppard’s stage play.:Tom Stoppard director:Gary Oldman as Rozencrantz (or Guildenstern):Tim Roth as Guildenstern (or Rozencrantz):Richard Dreyfuss as the Player King
*"Renaissance Man" (USA, 1994) is the story of an unemployed advertising executive teaching "Hamlet" to a group of underachieving trainee soldiers.:Penny Marshall director:Danny DeVito as Bill
*"The Lion King" (USA, 1994) Disney’s animated adaptation of the Hamlet story.:Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff directors:Matthew Broderick as the voice of Simba (the Hamlet character):James Earl Jones as the voice of Mufasa (the Old Hamlet character):Jeremy Irons as the voice of Scar (the Claudius character)
*"In The Bleak Midwinter" (aka “A Midwinter’s Tale”) (UK, 1996) tells the story of a group of actors performing "Hamlet".:Kenneth Branagh director:Michael Maloney as Joe (Hamlet):Julia Sawalha as Nina (Ophelia)
*"Let the Devil Wear Black" (USA, 1999)Fact|date=January 2008:Stacy Title director:Jonathan Penner as Jack Lyne (Hamlet):Jamey Sheridan as Carl Lyne (Claudius):Mary-Louise Parker as Julia Hirsch (Ophelia)
*"The Banquet" (China, 2006)Fact|date=January 2008:Feng Xiaogang, director:Zhang Ziyi as Empress Wan (Gertrude):Daniel Wu as Prince Wu Luan (Hamlet):Zhou Xun as Qing Nu (Ophelia):Ge You as Emperor Li (Claudius)

References

External links

* [http://bardolatry.com/hamlet-on-film/ Hamlet on Film]