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| Hamlet (Laurence Olivier) confronts his father's ghost. |
Release Date: May 4, 1948. Running Time: 155 minutes. Screenplay: Laurence Olivier. Based on the play by: William Shakespeare. Producer: Laurence Olivier. Director: Laurence Olivier.
THE PLOT:
Hamlet (Laurence Olivier), the Prince of Denmark, is troubled. His beloved father, the king, has died, and his mother (Eileen Herlie) has not even paused to mourn before marrying the new king - his uncle, Claudius (Basil Sydney). This leaves Hamlet in a black mood, fuming that his mother remarried "within a month."
That night, he has an encounter with his father's ghost. The spirit tells him that his death was not the accident that had been reported, but instead an assassination carried out by Claudius. The ghost demands revenge, but Hamlet decides he must verify the truth before acting. He feigns madness to buy time to put together a plan, using a troupe of traveling actors to stage a very specific play.
"The play's the thing, wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king!"
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| Hamlet feigns madness, while Ophelia (Jean Simmons) looks on helplessly. |
LAURENCE OLIVIER AS HAMLET:
Prince Hamlet: There are two primary interpretations of Hamlet's feigned madness: that he's doing exactly what he claims, faking madness to buy himself time to observe his uncle; and that he's actually driven over the edge into genuine madness. Olivier's Hamlet firmly falls into the first camp. He only really plays manic in a few scenes in the middle third of the film. The rest of the time, he's mostly morose and brooding - until the final sword match, which he approaches with genuine excitement.
Few actors are as comfortable with Shakespeare's language as Olivier. Most Shakespeare films require about twenty minutes or so of adjustment for me to get used to the style of speech before falling into the stories; Olivier is able to make the dialogue sound almost... normal, with vocal tone and gestures that, combined with careful staging, keep the intended meaning of almost every line quite clear. That isn't to say it's a naturalistic performance; all the acting is definitely theatrical. But it's very controlled: emotions are heightened, but the acting doesn't cross the line into being hammy.
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| Claudius (Basil Sydney) celebrates his inheritance, having claimed both his late brother's throne and his widow. |
OTHER CHARACTERS:
King Claudius: Basil Sydney's Claudius is a big, booming figure. We first see him extending a full goblet direct to camera, celebrating his marriage to his late brother's widow by drinking and carousing well into the night. That image receives a callback, in a far tenser situation, near the movie's end. Sydney plays him not as a villain, but as a man who wants to enjoy the finest things in life. When he views Hamlet's altered play, his face is a picture of guilt and fear: fear of discovery, certainly, but also guilt over what he did out of envy for his brother's position and wife. Because Sydney plays him as a superficially likable man instead of as a villain, it becomes easy to see why the court has so effortlessly shifted its loyalties to him.
Queen Gertrude: Eileen Herlie, as Hamlet's mother, was more than ten years younger than Olivier. The casting of a younger woman does help to emphasize the lust that drove Claudius to his worst deeds, and it furthers Oliver's interpretation of an incestuous attraction between Hamlet and his mother (something that is not particularly supported by the actual text). However, this comes at the cost of internal credibility; I never for an instant believe these two as mother and son. Herlie's actual performance is good, and I enjoyed the conscious decision to make her Gertrude increasingly aware of her husband's culpability, which stands in contrast to many versions that simply make her oblivious.
Polonius: Olivier's adaptation cut significant amounts of text in an effort to maintain focus on Hamlet's own state of mind. These cuts include most of the comedy relief moments, leaving it to Felix Aylmer's Polonius to lighten the mood. Aylmer plays him as a garrulous, obsequious fool, but not a bad-hearted one. Whether he's passing contradictory advice to his children, babbling to the king while insisting (at length) that he'll be brief, or attempting to engage with the apparently insane Hamlet, he remains ingratiating, even as it's clear that he's both full of himself and lacking in self-awareness.
Ophelia: Jean Simmons was nominated for Best Supporting Actress as the emotionally fragile object of Hamlet's affections. I'm afraid I can't agree with the nomination. Though Simmons was a generally good actress, her performance here just doesn't work for me. Ophelia's break with reality feels too sudden, and not of a piece with her early scenes, and I didn't particularly believe her and Olivier as a couple. When I reflect on my least favorite parts of the movie, her scenes are the ones that unfortunately come most into my mind.
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| Hamlet discovers the skull of someone from his past, in a grave dug for someone from his present. |
THOUGHTS:
Laurence Olivier's Hamlet is an almost 75 year old, 2 1/2 hour, black-and-white, highly theatrical version of the William Shakespeare play. All of which sounds like rather a chore, doesn't it? The sort of thing that's served up to captive audiences of busily sleeping high school English students.
In 1948, however, it was a major popular success, and it's not hard to see why. Star/director Olivier was a long-time Shakespeare veteran, and was also one of the top talents in the motion picture industry. In his "Big Three" Shakespeare films - Henry V, Hamlet, and Richard III - he balanced both backgrounds, providing strong translations of the Shakespeare plays in a way that also worked as good entertainment.
THEATRE MATCHED WITH CINEMA::
The visual style was the first thing that drew me into this movie. Olivier would later reveal that the reason the film was shot in black-and-white was because he "was in the middle of a furious row with Technicolor." Whatever the cause, it's a huge boon. The black-and-white perfectly suits the sets, which are enormous and spare, dwarfing the actors in a way that recalls German Expressionism. Meanwhile, the lighting during key moments draws on the language of film noir, with faces frequently bathed half in light and half in shadow.
The overall presentation is distinctly theatrical. Save for soliloquies, Olivier favors wide shots over close-ups. The large, often multi-stage sets seem designed to allow one scene to move into another with minimal transition. In the film, this is often accomplished with a camera move to another part of a set, while on stage I can easily imagine the same being done by dimming one segment's lighting while raising another's. Acting is heightened, as well, with the full cast matching Olivier's performance style.
At the same time, this is very much a movie and not a filmed play. Camera movements are unusually pervasive for a film of this era. In addition to pans and tilts that take us from one scene to another, there are sustained tracking shots. A particularly memorable one follows Ophelia as she exits her final scene. Flashbacks visualize the contents of expositional monologues, allowing us to hear Shakespeare's words while seeing the action they described brought to life. Though sustained shots are favored for most of the film, more rapid cuts and close-ups are suddenly brought into play during moments of violence and strong emotion. There's a lot of stage technique at work in this film, but it's always paired with an equally strong sense of cinema.
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| King Claudius holds court with Queen Gertrude (Eileen Herlie). |
HEAVY ABRIDGEMENT, BOTH FOR GOOD AND ILL:
Hamlet is a very long play. Kenneth Branagh's "complete" film version runs just over four hours, and it's routine for even stage versions to make substantial text trims to avoid similar running times.
Gone is the entire subplot involving the character of Fortinbras, the Norwegian crown prince, and the efforts by Claudius to negotiate his way out of a possible invasion by Norway. Also gone are the comedy relief supporting characters of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Hamlet's college friends who - depending on interpretation - are either purely innocent victims of Hamlet's rage or greedy opportunists in league with Claudius. The text in general has been slashed almost in half, with some lines redistributed to other characters to cover the trims.
Most of the time, this is a good thing. The edits keep the film focused and well-paced. The first third is particularly strong. The opening scenes are often a struggle for Hamlet adaptations, tasked with introducing potentially too many characters and plot threads. Olivier manages to keep this portion of the story flowing well; enough time is given for viewers to meet the characters and understand the backstory, but it moves along well enough to avoid dragging. The final Act is also well handled, with the climactic duel as expertly staged as I've seen.
That said, things get a bit messy in the middle. The removal of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern makes Hamlet's feigned insanity feel tacked-on, rather than integral to the story. Most of the moments involving the prince acting crazy, and growing progressively more manic during the act, have been abridged out. His most manic moment, which ends in a sudden and shocking act of violence, comes on too suddenly. This has a knock-on effect on the Ophelia subplot, whose developments feel similarly rushed as a result.
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| The final duel: Hamlet realizes that he's walked into a trap. |
REMAKES AND RETELLINGS:
There have been too many films versions of Hamlet for me to even attempt to list them all. Olivier's 1948 film was considered the gold standard for decades. A few other notable versions include:
Hamlet (1969). Nicol Williamson's performance as the Danish Prince has often been credited as superior to Olivier's. I can't comment, as I haven't seen the movie... but I have not heard one bad word about Williamson's performance from anyone who has seen it. That said, the film, which ran less than two hours, was even more heavily abridged than Olivier's, and has received some criticism for choppiness.
Hamlet (1990). Speaking of choppy... Director Franco Zeffirelli's film boasts a surprisingly strong central turn by Mel Gibson, whose Hamlet falls firmly on the "genuinely insane" side of the ledger. Supporting performances are generally strong, with Ian Holm's Polonius deserving special mention; Holm plays against the standard "garrulous idiot" interpretation, and the result is so memorable that the film's second half greatly suffers for his absence. This version is a bit choppy, however, with Zeffirelli positively whipping through the First Act, seemingly impatient to get to the scenes where "Mel plays crazy," while the final duel isn't nearly as well-staged as in the Olivier version.
Hamlet (1996). Director Kenneth Branagh's 4 hour "complete" film of Shakespeare's play. Parts of it serve as vindication for making some cuts, and some of the cameos are distracting; Jack Lemmon, in particular, looks as if he wandered in from the set of a very different film. That said, Branagh is as comfortable with Shakespeare as Olivier was, and he pitches his Hamlet to a more grounded level that makes him easier to relate to. Derek Jacobi is probably my favorite Claudius, Kate Winslet is both appealing and credible as Ophelia, and cameos by John Gielgud, John Mills, and Charlton Heston(!) are memorable and yet fit perfectly within the story. With apologies to Olivier, this would get my vote as the definitive version.
...And special mention should be made of Hamlet (1960), a low-budget German television production with Maximilian Schell that became the subject of (somewhat unfair) mockery by Mystery Science Theater 3000.
OVERALL:
Trivia tidbit: 1948's Hamlet was the first British film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture; yes, as British they seem, both Cavalcade and Mrs. Miniver were actually American-made films.
It's an overall quite good version of the Shakespeare play. Olivier is adept at balancing stage and film techniques, and his abridgements mostly keep the pace moving along... although some the cuts do hurt the middle of the story.
It isn't my favorite version of Hamlet - but it still holds up as a good adaptation, and a surprisingly accessible one as well.
Overall Rating: 8/10.
Best Motion Picture - 1947: Gentleman's Agreement
Best Motion Picture - 1949: All the King's Men
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