| Hamlet (1964 film) | |
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| Directed by | Grigori Kozintsev Iosif Shapiro (co-director) |
| Written by | William Shakespeare Boris Pasternak Grigori Kozintsev |
| Starring | Innokenty Smoktunovsky Mikhail Nazvanov Elze Radzinya Anastasiya Vertinskaya |
| Music by | Dmitri Shostakovich |
| Cinematography | Jonas Gritsius |
| Distributed by | Lenfilm |
| Release date(s) | 1964 |
| Running time | 140 min. |
| Language | Russian |
| IMDb profile | |
Hamlet (Russian: Гамлет) is a 1964 film adaptation in Russian of Shakespeare's Hamlet, based on a translation by Boris Pasternak. It stars Innokenty Smoktunovsky as Prince Hamlet.
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Background
The character of Hamlet, a student prince tormented by corrupt authority, was always an important figure to Russian intellectuals. However, unlike the English emphasis on the character's tragic flaws, Russian interpretations are always very socially aware. After the Russian Revolution Constructivists were reluctant to produce the play in a traditional style and were more interested in adapting it to modern settings. Gordon Craig's production at that time was received coldly. In the late 1920s, the Party encouraged young Communists to seek out and challenge enemies of the People within the Soviet political system. The Communist interpretation of Hamlet was to see him as a young man bravely fighting the corrupted royals. 1932, Nikolai Akimov, a member of the Russian avant-garde artist group "The Factory of the Eccentric Actor" (FEKS) produced an anarchic version of Hamlet. FEKS' ideas were closely related to Dadaism and Futurism. In this version Hamlet is a shameless fraud who scares people with a fake ghost in order to gain power. By the late 1920s or early 1930s, the party declared social realism as the party's formal policy of art, and FEKS' eccentric productions became unwelcome. Kozintsev, a former member of FEKS who had once embraced revolutionary ideals wholeheartedly, had changed since his persecution by Stalinists. He became cautious so as not to violate Party doctrine. However, he was also against both the English and pre-revolutionary Russian approaches that had emphasized the character of Hamlet, and also to the Constructivist idea of adapting Hamlet into modern times. His film of Hamlet maintains the traditional plot and setting. Nevertheless, the influence of Kozintsev's early participation in FEKS could be found in scenes of Ophelia's eccentric dances, or Hamlet enjoying accompanying the traveling mechanics.[original research?] The translator, Pasternak, and the star, Smoktunovsky, had both been imprisoned by Stalin before making the film.[1]
Adaptation
Unlike Laurence Olivier's 1948 film, Kozintzev's is political and public rather than personal. Where Olivier had narrow winding stairwells, Kozintzev has broad avenues, peopled with ambassadors and courtiers.[2] 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.[3] The film also shows a few shots of ordinary people in ragged clothes, who are like the grave digger: good-hearted and only wishing to live peacefully. Kozintzev consistently cast actors whose first language was not Russian, so as to bring shades of other traditions into his film.[4] 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.[5] Film scholar Douglas Brode has criticised the film for presenting a Hamlet who barely pauses for reflection: with most of the soliloquies cut his revenge is delayed by circumstances rather than by any inner conflict.[6] At the end of his life Hamlet does not take his seat, but walks out of the dark palace and sits on stairs facing the sea. The circle is completed, as the film opens with a shot of the sea.
Cast
- Prince Hamlet - Innokenty Smoktunovsky
- Claudius - Mikhail Nazvanov
- Gertrude - Elze Radzinya.
- Polonius - Yuri Tolubeyev
- Laertes - Stepan Oleksenko
- Ophelia - Anastasiya Vertinskaya
- Horatio - Vladimir Erenberg
- Rosencrantz - Igor Dmitriev
- Guildenstern - Vadim Medvedev
- Fortinbras - A. Krevalid
Awards
- 1964 Special Jury Prize of Venice Film Festival (Won) - Grigori Kozintsev.
- 1964 Golden Lion of Venice Film Festival (Nominated) - Grigori Kozintsev.
- 1964 Best film on the Wiesbaden Shakespeare Film Festival.
- 1964 On the All-Union Film Festival
- Special Jury Prize for The outstanding realization of the Shakespeare's tragedy and best music - Dmitry Shostakovich.
- Prizes of the Soviet Union of Painters - E. Yeney, S. Virsaladze.
- Prize of the Soviet Union of Cinematographers - Innokenty Smoktunovsky.
- 1965 USSR State Prize (Won) - Grigori Kozintsev, Innokenty Smoktunovsky.
- 1966 BAFTA Award for Best Film (Nominated) - Grigori Kozintsev.
- 1966 BAFTA Film Award for Best Foreign Actor (Nominated) - Innokenty Smoktunovsky.
- 1966 Special Jury Prize of San Sebastian Film Festival (Won) and Prize of the Nation Federation of film societies of Spain.
- 1967 Golden Globe for Best Foreign-Language Foreign Film (Nominated).
See also
References
- ^ 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)
- ^ Guntner, p.121
- ^ Guntner, p.120
- ^ 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
- ^ Sokolyansky, p.203
- ^ Brode, pp.127-9
- ^ John Collick, "Grigori Kozintsev's Hamlet and Korol Ler." Shakespeare, Cinema and Society. Manchester, Manchester U.P., 1989.
External links
- (Russian) Full information
