Over fifty films of William Shakespeare's Hamlet have been made since 1900.[1] Five post-war Hamlet films have had a major theatrical release: Laurence Olivier's Hamlet of 1948, Grigori Kozintsev's Russian adaptation in 1964, Franco Zeffirelli's 1990 version starring Mel Gibson, Kenneth Branagh's 1996 version, and Michael Almereyda's 2000 film, starring Ethan Hawke. Given the play's length, most films of Hamlet are heavily cut, although an exception is Branagh's 1996 version, which uses a full text.
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Approaches to adaptation
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.[2] 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.[3] 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.[4] 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.[5]
Significant 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."[6] Olivier excised the "political" elements of the play (entirely cutting Fortinbas, Rozencrantz and Guildernstern) in favour of an intensely psychological performance.[7] 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."[8] 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.[9] 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.[10]
Grigori Kozintsev, 1964
Hamlet (Russian: 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.[11] 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.[12] 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.[13] 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.[14] Kozintzev consistently cast actors whose first language was not Russian, so as to bring shades of other traditions into his film.[15] 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.[16] 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.[17]
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".[18] 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, but with the effect of enhancing the roles of the women.[19] 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.[20] 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":[21] Indeed, Gibson was cast after Zeffirelli watched his character contemplate suicide in the first Lethal Weapon film. [22] Harry Keyishan has suggested that Hamlet is well suited to this treatment, as it provides occasions for "enjoyable violence".[23] 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".[24] 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"[25]
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.[26] 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.[27] 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."[28] 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.[29] As J. Lawrence Guntner points out, comparisons with the latter film are heightened by the presence of Julie Christie (Zhivago's Lara) as Gertrude.[30] 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.[31] 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 Pyrhhus in a dramatization of the Player King's speech about the fall of Troy.
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, Liev Schreiber and Bill Murray. 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.[32]
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.[33][34]
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.[35] Silent versions of the play were directed by George Melies in 1907, Luca Comerio in 1908, William George Barker in 1910, August Blom in 1910, Cecil Hepworth in 1913 and Eleuterio Rodolfi in 1917.[36] 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.[37] 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 to to be less successful on the English language big-screen.[38] It has recently become a favorite target of Mystery Science Theater 3000 fans, where an edited version was presented and mercilessly ridiculed by the "characters" on the series. 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.[39] 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.[40] 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."[41] 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."[42] 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. [43] S4C's Shakespeare: The Animated Tales 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."[44]
Screen adaptations
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).[45] 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.[46] A spaghetti western version has been made: Johnny Hamlet directed by Enzo Castellari in 1968.[47] 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.[48] Tom Stoppard directed a 1990 film version of his own play Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. It is generally regarded as less successful on screen than it had been on stage, due to the preponderance of talk over action.[49]
List of screen performances
- Clément Maurice director
- Sarah Bernhardt as Hamlet (sic)
- Pierre Magnier as Laertes
- Hamlet (silent film)
- Sir Johnstone Forbes-Robertson as Hamlet
- Svend Gade & Heinz Schall directors
- Asta Nielsen as Hamlet, born female and raised as a man
- Laurence Olivier director and as Hamlet
- Jean Simmons as Ophelia
- Hallmark Hall of Fame: Hamlet (TV, US, 1953)
- Maurice Evans as Hamlet
- Joseph Schildkraut as Claudius
- Ruth Chatterton as Gertrude
- Sarah Churchill as Ophelia
- Barry Jones as Polonius
- Hamlet, Prinz von Dänemark (West Germany, 1961)
- Franz Peter Wirth director
- Maximilian Schell as Hamlet
- Hamlet (aka Gamlet) (Russia, 1964)
- Grigori Kozintsev director
- Innokenti Smoktunovsky as Hamlet
- Mikhail Nazvanov as Claudius
- Anastasiya Vertinskaya as Ophelia
- Dmitry Shostakovich's music
- Boris Pasternak's translation
- Hamlet (filmed Broadway play, 1964)
- Sir John Gielgud director and voice of the ghost of Hamlet's father
- Richard Burton as Hamlet
- Alfred Drake as Claudius
- Hume Cronyn as Polonius
- John Cullum as Laertes
- Tony Richardson director
- Nicol Williamson as Hamlet
- Marianne Faithfull as Ophelia
- Anthony Hopkins as Claudius
- Hallmark Hall of Fame: Hamlet (TV, UK/USA, 1970)
- Directed by Peter Wood (the British director, not the musician)
- Richard Chamberlain as Hamlet
- Michael Redgrave as Polonius
- John Gielgud as the Ghost
- Margaret Leighton as Gertrude
- Richard Johnson as Claudius
- Ciaran Madden as Ophelia
- BBC Television Shakespeare Hamlet (TV, UK, 1980)
- Released in the USA as part of the "Complete Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare" series.
- Rodney Bennett director
- Derek Jacobi as Hamlet
- Claire Bloom as Gertrude
- Patrick Stewart as Claudius
- Lalla Ward as Ophelia
- Franco Zeffirelli director
- Mel Gibson as Hamlet
- Helena Bonham Carter as Ophelia
- Glenn Close as Gertrude
- Ian Holm as Polonius
- New York Shakespeare Festival Hamlet (TV, USA, 1990) film based on the 1990 stage production.
- Kirk Browning co-director
- Kevin Kline co-director and as Hamlet
- The Animated Shakespeare Hamlet (TV, Russia and UK, 1992)
- Natalia Orlova director
- Nicholas Farrell as the voice of Hamlet
- Kenneth Branagh director and as Hamlet
- Kate Winslet as Ophelia
- Derek Jacobi as Claudius
- Julie Christie as Gertrude
- Richard Briers as Polonius - along with cameos from such actors as Charlton Heston, Richard Attenborough, Billy Crystal, Gerard Depardieu, Jack Lemmon, and Robin Williams.
- Hamlet (TV, USA, 2000)
- Campbell Scott director and as Hamlet
- Blair Brown as Gertrude
- Michael Almereyda director
- Ethan Hawke as Hamlet
- Julia Stiles as Ophelia
- Bill Murray as Polonius
- Hamlet (Video, UK, 2003)
- Mike Mundell director
- William Houston as Hamlet
- The Tragedy of Hamlet Prince of Denmark (AUS, 2007)
- Oscar Redding director
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.
- To Be or Not To Be (USA, 1942) is the story of an acting company in 1939 Poland.
- Ernst Lubitsch director
- 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[52], Turkish, 1976
- 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.
- Mel Brooks director
- 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 unofficial 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)
- 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)
- 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
- ^ Thompson, Ann and Taylor, Niel HAMLET (The Arden Shakespeare 3rd Series, Thompson Learning, 2006) Introduction, p.108
- ^ 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
- ^ Guntner, pp.120-123
- ^ 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
- ^ Keyishian, pp.73-4
- ^ Brode, p.120
- ^ Guntner, p.118
- ^ 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
- ^ Cartmell, Deborah Franco Zeffirelli and Shakespeare in Jackson, Russell (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film (Cambridge University Press, 2000) p.215
- ^ Guntner, p.119
- ^ Guntner, pp.120-121
- ^ Guntner, p.120
- ^ 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
- ^ 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.
- ^ Cartmell, p.215
- ^ Guntner, pp.121-122
- ^ Quigley, Daniel Double Exposure, in Shakespeare Bulletin winter 1993 pp.38-9, cited by Keyishian, p.77
- ^ Keyishian, pp.72-81
- ^ Keyishian, p.77
- ^ Guntner, pp.121-122
- ^ Cartmell, p.215
- ^ Crowl, Samuel "Framboyant Realist: Kenneth Branagh" in Jackson, Russell The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film (Cambridge University Press, 2000) p.232
- ^ Crowl, p.223
- ^ Crowl, p.227
- ^ Keyishian, p.78
- ^ Guntner, pp.122-123.
- ^ Keyishian, p.79
- ^ Filmhead.com review accessed 6 April 2007.
- ^ Don Hahn, Roger Allers, Rob Minkoff. The Lion King: Platinum Edition (Disc 2) [DVD]. Walt Disney Home Video.
- ^ Vogler, Christopher (1998). The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure For Writers.
- ^ 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
- ^ Brode, p.117
- ^ Brode, p.118
- ^ Brode, pp.123-5
- ^ Brode, 125-7
- ^ McKernal, Luke and Terris, Olwen (eds.) Walking Shadows: Shakespeare in the National Film and Television Archive (British Film Institute Publishing, 1994) p.54
- ^ Brode, p.130
- ^ Brode, p.132-3
- ^ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080835/
- ^ Holland, Peter Shakespeare Abbreviated in Shaughnessy, Robert (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Popular Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2007) p.44
- ^ Howard, Tony Shakespeare's Cinemantic Offshoots in Jackson, Russell (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film (Cambridge University Press, 2000) pp.300-1
- ^ Howard, pp.301-2
- ^ Howard, p.300
- ^ Howard, p.302
- ^ Brode, p.150
- ^ Guntner, p.117
- ^ Guntner, p.118
- ^ Sinematurk accessed 26 August 2007.
