BEFORE: Ah, Hamlet - this is something of a relief after watching "Othello", since Hamlet is the Shakespeare play I know the most about. On the next level down is probably "Romeo & Juliet" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream", but I've got giant gaps in my Shakespearean knowledge, only enough about plays like "Troilus and Cressida" and "Love's Labours Lost" to answer the most basic trivia questions. I'll have to start addressing that one day, I suppose.
Laurence Olivier carries over from "Othello", and now he's much younger, and a white guy. Damn, as a young man looked very much like Sting, circa 1983, or perhaps Rocky from "Rocky Horror Picture Show".
THE PLOT: Prince Hamlet struggles over whether or not he should kill his uncle, whom he suspects has murdered his father, the former king.
AFTER: Well, it just doesn't get more classic than this. This film won the Best Picture Oscar for 1948, and Olivier won Best Actor, and was nominated as Best Director. I've seen the 1990 filmed version with Mel Gibson, but not the 1996 version with Kenneth Branagh or the 2000 version with Ethan Hawke.
And it looks fantastic, even though it's in black and white - the contrasts are great, and unlike "Othello", it wasn't filmed in a set that looks like a stage, the castle here looks like a real castle, with large rooms and halls and archways, and all that helps with the dramatic lighting. So it's not a flat black and white, it's a rich black and white, the kind that Hitchcock really favored.
And what really comes across here is the indecision and introspection that many people say is Hamlet's downfall - it's such a faithful adaptation that if I have any real points to make, or NITPICK POINTS for that matter, I'd be making them about Shakespeare's play itself, and not this version of it. Like the fact that it's asking a LOT of an audience to make them sit through two hours of talkie-talkie just to enjoy one swordfight.
But I also have to take issue with excising the comic relief, Rosencrantz AND Guildenstern, entirely from the plot. OK, I can see if you take out the comic characters the whole play is theoretically made more dramatic as a result, but it's not faithful to the original in that sense - old Billy Shakes couldn't help but put a little comedy in his tragedy, and vice versa, to entertain the groundlings.
Also starring Basil Sydney (last seen in "Around the World in Eighty Days"), Eileen Herlie, Norman Wooland (last seen in "The Guns of Navarone"), Felix Aylmer, Jean Simmons (last seen in "The Grass Is Greener"), Terence Morgan, Anthony Quayle (last seen in "The Wrong Man"), Peter Cushing, John Laurie (last seen in "The 39 Steps"), Esmond Knight (last seen in "The Prince and the Showgirl"), Stanley Holloway, Harcourt Williams (last seen in "Roman Holiday"), Patrick Troughton.
RATING: 6 out of 10 pirates
No comments:
Post a Comment