Among Shakespeare's tragedies Hamlet usually leaves me cold. I love Richard III, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Henry IV (Part 1 more than Part 2, like most people), Henry V, Anthony and Cleopatra, but Hamlet and King Lear are two plays that have long failed to move me in any meaningful fashion, except complete and crushing boredom in a lackluster Globe production of King Lear back in Boston in 2015. (I also saw Hamlet in 2011 at Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival and frankly have no memory of it.) But after watching a very good production of Hamlet at Shakespeare Dallas a few days ago, I decided to finally watch the Hamlet DVD starring Kenneth Branagh I had bought some time ago, and true to myself, I couldn't resist getting the video of Laurence Olivier's Hamlet for comparison.
Before I go on, I want to give a special mention to my go-to book on all things Shakespeare, Shakespeare after all, by Marjorie Garber, which has a chapter on each Shakespeare play. Quoting the book's description on Amazon.com: "A brilliant and companionable tour through all thirty-eight plays, Shakespeare After All is the perfect introduction to the bard by one of the country’s foremost authorities on his life and work". I bought it a few years back at the Barnes & Noble at 82nd and Broadway on the Upper West Side (of course I mean New York City) and it has stayed with me ever since. Garber starts her chapter on Hamlet by commenting on how many expressions we find in it have passed into common language and I have had the same feeling.
I am partial to Laurence Olivier, since I adore his Richard III and enjoy his Henry V (although when it comes to Henry V, no one comes close to rivaling Tom Hiddleston's performance in my book), and I also treasure black-and-white movies from the 1930 and 1940s, so it will come as no surprise that his Hamlet handily wins the contest for me, in spite of the creepiness of having 40-year-old bleached-blonde Olivier play Hamlet while 29-year-old Eileen Herlie reprise the role of his mother Gertrude, which she had also played on stage. (The creepiness hits a high when Gertrude kisses her own son on the lips several times in Act I Scene 2. As a side note, after those Shakespearean debuts, Heirle spent 32 years in the cast of the soap opera All My Children. I suppose people pay their bills however they can, and soap operas might have been a more lucrative source of income for her than theater. Yet, one cannot escape the thought that her talent might have been better served elsewhere.)
I particularly loved the use of light, shadow and framing, always striking in Olivier's movies. The bit about Rosencrantz and Guilderstern is cut, unfortunately, as are other bits to keep the movie's length at two hours and a half, which at times gives the movie a chopped feel, but many parts were spellbinding throughout, from Hamlet's interaction with the Ghost to his discovery that Ophelia is dead at the cemetery and to both Hamlet and Laertes being pulled into actions beyond their control, Laertes being used as a pawn by the King, Hamlet being forced by the King to take part in a duel, lust for power throwing the kingdom in disarray, as well as the moment Gertrude understands the drink is poisoned and drinks it to save her son. I've never cared much about the play, but I couldn't stop watching this movie.
In the past, I have always found the plot very contrived, especially the play within the play (curiously, the use of a ghost as a plot device doesn't bother me at all), although one has to give Shakespeare kudos for the idea of meta theater. I've also never cared much for the Hamlet-Ophelia romance. Watching Olivier's Hamlet, I found myself truly enjoying the play for the first time, perhaps because the production values of the movie are high without being lavish as in the Branagh DVD, so one gets the impression that each set could be a theater set, except that the camera seamlessly follows the actors from a set to the next.
Now, to be fair to the Branagh DVD, I felt it had better ensemble acting, while the Olivier movie is plainly an instrument to showcase Olivier's acting. For instance, in the Branagh DVD, the scene where Polonius announces to the King and Queen he might have found out the reason of Hamlet's trouble is a textbook case of great acting, the actors feeding off each other's response as if they had never heard those lines before. Branagh's version of Hamlet also keeps Guildenstern and Rosencrantz. At four hours, though, I have to admit I found it too long. In fact since it comes in 2 DVDs and the length of the first DVD was 2 1/2 hours, I initially thought it was the whole play and the second DVD contained extras. Shakespeare's time was very different from ours and maybe it made sense back then to have 4-hour-long plays as entertainment, but I just have too many things to do (including fun things, I'm not just talking about work - simply, I'm talking about doing and creating things instead of consuming them, in particular TV watching) to put up with 4 hours of Hamlet.
While Olivier had cut maybe a little too much of the part about the itinerant theater troupe, Branagh keeps too much of it, and then imposes on us ridiculous flashbacks of Hamlet and Ophelia sleeping together, apparently to suitably titillate the 1995 viewer. (There is no way Ophelia would have let that happen. She is from a good family and knows she would have had zero chance of having Hamlet marry her then.) Kate Winslet does make a better Ophelia than Jean Simmons, who later became a star (she was only 19 when she starred in Olivier's movie and it shows), although Simmons does an outstanding job in the madness scene - the scene where she puts flowers in her hair and sings to herself. Winslet is shown in a straitjacket, and the movie of many irrelevant or ridiculous flashbacks doesn't even show her floating away in the meadow. The sets on the Branagh movie are sumptuous, and Branagh keeps the bit about the conflict with Norway that is erased from the Olivier movie, which casts the protagonists in a very different light: how irresponsible of them to indulge in those internecine battles when danger is looming. Overall the Olivier movie, spare and with its stunning use of light, is a better version of Hamlet. I just wish Gertrude hadn't been 11 years younger than her son and hadn't kissed him on the mouth. That was just creepy. Thankfully it happens only in one scene and as the movie progresses the viewer is completely engrossed in the action. The cuts each lead made only shed important light into what Olivier and Branagh viewed as the essence of the play. For Olivier it is clearly a family drama about power and revenge. Branagh puts Hamlet in a bigger picture of conflict with another country, adding a layer of betrayal.
Perhaps one day someone will hit the sweet spot and provide a 3 1/4 - hour movie version of Hamlet that perfectly balances all its elements. But no movie will ever capture the feeling of watching the play on stage. To get a sense of the behind-the-scenes work that goes on in preparing a production, Discovering Hamlet featuring Derek Jacobi and Kenneth Branagh provides a good introduction to the world of theater.
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