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WHICH Hamlet?
(Laurence Olivier 1948, Grigori Kosintsev 1963, Tony Richardson 1969, Franco
Zeffirelli 1990, Kenneth Branagh 1996, Michael Almereyda 2000)
Three of these movies can be dismissed from your “WHICH Hamlet?” line-up, prior to the
final decision – namely, that your collection needs all the other three.
I omit all subsidiary versions, including those from television, and one of the worst films
I ever walked out of – the 1921 Danish silent in which Asta Nielsen plays Hamlet as a woman
in disguise. The question had, by the time I left, boiled down to: “Is she in love with Horatio,
Laertes, or Fortinbras?” The intense summer heat, plus the non-stop laughter of a group of
academics, for whom the film was being screened, and who were anxious to appear impressed
by nothing, drove me out into the night.
Three hit-and-miss Hamlets
Richardson: Tony Richardson’s Hamlet is derived from his stage production. Its cast is
identical to the stage cast, and it is an economy version, shot in different parts of the Round
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House (which is a large, circular North London engine-shed, converted into a theatre).
Relying on his actors’ familiarity with the text, to cut down shooting time, and to disguise the
fact that he has no scenery, Richardson keeps his camera in close to the action, and films in
long takes, which gives the film great intimacy. Gerry Fisher’s camerawork makes it look
highly professional. All this would be useful if Hamlet were interesting. But Nicol
Williamson’s droning, nasal delivery and weird vowel sounds (he says, not “to”, “do”, and
“you”, but “tew”, “dew”, and “yew”), reduce the character’s stature from the outset, and, not
for the first time, a performance that was raved over when it was given, thirty-seven years
later makes you wonder why. The absence of sets, and the fact that whatever’s going on,
we’re in the thick of it – for there are no long shots or establishing shots – also makes it
impossible to distinguish the play’s small, private scenes from the three huge, public ones,
and a major effect is lost. There’s no social ambiance, which in the cinema you expect, and
which the best ones provide.
One strange effect of Richardson’s film is that Gertrude, Ophelia and the court ladies
(amongst whom the young Angelica Huston is visible), are all made up as pale as possible, as
if they’re ghosts already. I suppose it’s a way of trying to show how peripheral women are in
Hamlet – though in fact, their “frailty” is a central theme.
Branagh: Kenneth Branagh’s mammoth disaster is filmed in Panavision, but its size, glitter
and production-design ambition (its exteriors are filmed at Blenheim Palace), fail to disguise
– as it seems designed to – Branagh’s own zero-charisma performance in the lead.
Shakespeare’s Hamlet is intellectual, introspective, neurotic, self-analytical, self-deceived,
over-rhetorical, hysterical. He’s not normal. He’s not One of the Lads, which is what Branagh
tries to convert him into.
Hamlet is the most cuttable play ever written: whole scenes and characters can be and
normally are removed, without disturbing the drama at all: rare is the actor who has played,
for example, either Voltemand or Cornelius. But Branagh cuts nothing, and rearranges
nothing. For this he got the weirdest Oscar nomination ever: having done zero adaptation, he
was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay. The price is very high speed delivery, crude
cutting, lashings of not very good music in case the audience is bored, and numerous
sequences to illustrate with visuals what they may be too thick to derive via their ears. From
the opening, in which, despite the excellent visibility, Bernardo crashes into Francisco and
falls on top of him, nothing convinces, and everything is OTT. It seems a film directed and
edited in a self-induced panic.
It’s above all notable for the astonishing, star-fucking principle with which it’s cast, with
mega-luminaries of today and yesteryear in every nook and cranny. There are acting parts
which only exist in this version of Hamlet, seen in the wordless cutaway sequences: John
Mills is Old Norway … Judi Dench is Hecuba … Gielgud is Priam … Ken Dodd is the live
Yorick, and his skull has dentistry to match. But it doesn’t end there. Billy Crystal is the First
Gravedigger (he has as little idea how to play him as Michael Keaton has to play Dogberry in
Branagh’s Much Ado). Simon Russell Beale – himself a famous Hamlet – is the Second
Gravedigger. Jack Lemmon, far too old to be in any army, is Marcellus. Charlton Heston is
the First Player. Add to these Richard Attenborough as the English Ambassador, and Robin
Williams as Osric, and you have some idea of the size of Branagh’s ambition. Except, no!
there’s more! Reynaldo, another part normally cut, is played by Gerard Depardieu! The
vulgar ostentation of it all beggars belief – how did Branagh expect to get away with it?
It’s clear that the clashing schedules of all these impressive people made filming hell, and
that few were there together with the other actors in their scenes. Attenborough and Williams
are very badly edited-in, and for Heston they have to use a body-double in some shots. The
idea is a stinker, because you wonder who you’ll see next – will Tom Cruise be the Priest? In
addition, none of the big names act very well, and the Americans are all weak.
This is a version to avoid.
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Almereyda: The modern-dress version of Michael Almereyda has one really good
performance in the confident King of Kyle MacLachlan, and one very vividly-realised idea,
the setting of Ophelia’s breakdown in the Guggenheim Museum. Elsewhere its attempt to
adapt Shakespeare to 1990s corporate Manhattan is interesting. The film is well worth seeing
as a major curiosity, though Hamlet transplanted to a completely foreign milieu is not Hamlet.
Ethan Hawke as Hamlet is short, pale, and creepy in his Andean woolly hat. He’s also dull –
which can’t be right for Hamlet. Almereyda’s invention is considerable: at one point Hawke
is watching, on two separate televisions, James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, and John
Gielgud – one of the most famous Hamlets ever (he’s Kenneth Branagh’s Priam), doing the
speech to Yorick’s skull. The “politic worms” scene is set in a laundromat: “How all
occasions” climaxes in an airliner toilet. Osric is a fax. Only the idea of a fencing match in the
roof garden of a tower block fails to convince.
Sam Shepard is excellent as the Ghost – dematerialising at one point into a Pepsi
dispenser. Bill Murray looks ill-at-ease as Polonius: but Polonius never works in the cinema –
you need an audience.
He who plays the King: Before I look at the three really excellent versions, I should state my
conviction that Hamlet is himself a charismatic, parasitical serial-killer, and the King a
version of Everyman, with whom the audience should identify. The fact that the King’s a
fratricide, in the tradition of Cain, makes him normal. It’s Hamlet, in his non-stop verbalising,
fruitless self-examination and failure to do anything except kill irrelevant parties, who is the
human freak, but because he has so many soliloquies we see the action through his eyes,
which distorts it. The King should thus be carefully cast to redress the balance: this is the one
virtue of the Almereyda version – if anything, McLachlan, a more charismatic presence than
Hawke, causes the desirable effect to be overdone.
Tony Richardson has Anthony Hopkins as the King. Hopkins – a superb actor in nonShakespearean roles – has never had much success with Shakespeare in the theatre, indeed,
has been outstandingly bad in most of the Shakespeare leads he’s undertaken. Exceptions are
the movie of Titus Andronicus; and the King, here. Sometimes he rattles speeches off as if
they’re the phone book, but for the most part he gives the part the sad humanity it needs. But
place him opposite Nicol Williamson’s flat Hamlet, and you have stasis: the most important
scene between them – “Oh, my offence is rank!” is neutralised by being placed after the
Closet scene, and by having Hamlet’s “Now might I do it pat …” cut completely – another
way in which we’re made to forget the play’s main narrative thread.1
Kenneth Branagh casts Derek Jacobi as the King. The qualities which make Jacobi an
excellent Hamlet, in the BBC TV Shakespeare, militate against his being a good King, for his
asexuality deprives his marriage to Gertrude of credibility, and his inability to suggest even a
forced avuncularity – as the King tries to with Hamlet before their relationship disintegrates –
weakens his relationship with Hamlet. With the director’s own mediocre Hamlet, you thus
have, where you should have mighty opposites, one blank circling another blank.
Laurence Olivier was well-known for his inability to tolerate stage rivals – hence his
casting of the short, downbeat Frank Finlay as Iago to his Othello. He casts, as the King, the
dull-but-presentable Basil Sydney, a staunch character actor, whose whiskey-sodden delivery
works well if you want the King to be just a villain, which seems Olivier’s aim. Grigori
Kozintsev has as his King Mikhail Nazvanov, a huge actor with a much more commanding
presence than Basil Sydney, but even more villainous. He is given his “Oh, my offence is
rank” soliloquy (done into a mirror, not, as so often, before a cross); but, as with Anthony
Hopkins, there is, oddly, no “Now might I do it pat …” from Hamlet, to balance it. Zeffirelli
has Alan Bates, capable of being sympathetic as well as bad – but then cuts most of “Oh, my
offence is rank”,2 which would put us into his head and give the drama the dialectic it needs.
1: I imagine that budgetary constraints made it impossible to film Williamson’s contribution here – as it probably
did to Zeffirelli’s failure to film the King’s soliloquy at all. The impossibility of affording a retake is probably why
they had to keep in the extraordinary camera-wobble in the middle of Williamson’s “How all occasions … !”
2: All Bates says is “Oh wretched state! Oh bosom black as death!” in medium shot, with his back to the camera.
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Bates was an experienced Shakespearean actor, but, as with Jacobi, there is an absence of
unambiguous masculinity about him, which is the quality in his uncle which drives Hamlet
crazy, so powerful is the love that it inspires in Gertrude. He screws one eye up, and raises his
eyebrow, a bit too often. Mikhail Nazvanov, by contrast, has masculinity a-plenty.
By this criterion, then all the movies fail except the Almereyda version, because none of
the Kings are good enough apart from Kyle McLachlan: and, with the alienated, bloodless
Hamlet of Ethan Hawke, their 1990s Manhattan version is the only one that gets the balance
almost right. Hawke is, however, lacking a few dimensions – he has, for instance, no sense of
humour, and neither does the film.
Three great cinematic Hamlets
Laurence Olivier: the Olivier film of Hamlet is one of the best cinematic Shakespeares there
are, despite my reservations, not only about Basil Sydney, but even about the Oscar-winning
performance of Olivier himself. It has a wonderful visual flair, and the black-and-white
photography imprints it on the memory’s eye at once.
Having said that, it’s also formal and sentimental. No-one’s giving a cinematic
performance: everyone’s acting for the stage, and scaling it down. They make lots of pauses,
which slow things up. This cannot be said for anyone in the Richardson or Zeffirelli versions,
where the pace is lively, and you feel involved, as you don’t here. Olivier’s Hamlet is a sad,
simple soul in an impossible situation: yes, he has a soft spot for his mother, but as she’s
played by an actress (Eileen Herlie), visibly his junior by over a decade, that’s not surprising.
“At your age the heyday in the blood is tame!” he shouts, as she cowers before him, looking
about the same age as Jean Simmons, his Ophelia, and, with her own hair, a lot more real and
vulnerable. Place him next to the manic, half-crazed Mel Gibson and you see what a
conventional, romantic reading Olivier’s is.
Cameras were in 1948 too heavy for the mobile shots they can get nowadays, but it’s still
true that Olivier keeps the characters too far away from us: we’re still spectators most of the
time. There are some shots which are exceptions: an upside-down close-up of Hamlet, lit
from below his chin, on “Oh, all you host of heaven!”: a memorable low-angle one with the
hilt of Hamlet’s sword looming across the frame as he makes his friends “swear” in I v:
another low-angle shot of him disappearing into a shaft of light as he goes upstairs to his
mother, on “I will speaks daggers to her”: the shadow of Hamlet’s head moving over Osric’s
skull the moment after it’s been taken out of the grave. And who can forget the close-up
tracking shock along the rapiers, revealing Laertes’ rapier to be unbated? I intuit several
screenings and discussions of Citizen Kane here, on the part of Olivier and Desmond
Dickinson, his lighting cameraman.
Elsinore is well-designed but underpopulated. It doesn’t look like a bustling court. The
next two films took note here, and decided to rectify things. Olivier twice takes his camera all
over the building in long trick tracking shots, for reasons that aren’t clear, for they hold up the
action.
But the Olivier Hamlet has two trump cards which make it absolutely necessary to have
in your collection: the Play, and the Duel. All six versions take the conventional line on the
play, namely, that The Mousetrap awakens the conscience of the unsuspecting King, and that,
out of control, he disrupts the proceedings with “Give me some light! Away!” For a cooler,
more controlled exit, see how Patrick Stewart does it in the BBC TV Shakespeare version.
But Oliver’s camera-movements and reaction-shots build up the tension to the climax, and he
then edits the chaos after the climax, as no others do.
And his duel is brilliant (Denis Loraine, fight arranger): using rapier and dagger
throughout, he and his Laertes, Terence Morgan, really look in danger of killing one another,
and indeed apparently were: Morgan, encouraged by Olivier to “come closer” in one shot, did
so, and pierced Olivier’s throat, though without doing major damage. This is a screen swordfight to put next to the one between Romeo and Tybalt in the Zeffirelli Romeo and Juliet.
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Grigori Kozintsev: the Russian version, in Cinemascope, has black-and-white photography
which is even better than Olivier’s (at least on DVD),3 and films its castle interiors and
exteriors with uncompromising harshness – the exteriors are real Estonian locations, which
gives it a conviction denied to Olivier, all of whose shooting is done in a studio. Near the
opening, the castle’s massive drawbridge is closed, and its correspondingly massive portcullis
comes down. The cast are locked into Elsinore, their prison, never to escape. Outside is the
sea (an idea borrowed from Olivier), and the huge waves, filmed in slow motion, seem at first
to represent flight, but, in their inexorability, they will just cast you back to your doom.
Ophelia is trapped by her father and her brother. She’s taught a dance – a grotesque, jerky
dance, making her look like a puppet. Being fitted into her mourning garments, she’s trapped
into a metal corset. Only insanity offers her an escape. Hamlet, thanks to the King’s edict,
does escape, to England: but he has to return. Kozintsev shows him by the shore when he
comes back, dressed as a poor man and contemplating the freedom of a seagull: but soon he’s
fighting with Laertes over Ophelia’s body, and the tragedy moves closer to its culmination.
The Russian Hamlet is in some ways the most impressive of the three really good ones.
Its settings and costumes show what an unlimited Soviet budget could do (Fortinbras really
has an army), and the way the Danish court is bodied forth gives the drama a social grounding
which makes it more tragic. Especially moving is Ophelia’s mad scene, in which she stops
Laertes’ insurrection by wandering in amongst the bands of hard military men, and distributes
twigs for flowers, making the guards forget the proletarian insurrectionists they’re tying up,
and the insurrectionists forget the guards who’ve defeated them. It doesn’t seem Marxist at
all, and probably isn’t.
One odd feature: we never see the King dead. We don’t actually see the sword-thrust
which kills him, either; and as soon as whatever has made the impact on him has made the
impact, he runs off, bellowing – but doesn’t die before us. We see the corpses of Laertes, the
Queen, and Hamlet: but final closure is denied us. Has the King, like Russian criminal
autocracy, survived every attempt to end it?
Innokenti Smoktunovsky was the leading Russian actor of his generation, and plays
Hamlet with brooding dignity, but doesn’t enlarge one’s conception of the part much beyond
what Olivier revealed.
Franco Zeffirelli: this film is in colour, and, like Kozintsev’s, interchanges studio interiors
with real exteriors – principally Leeds Castle in Kent – so seamlessly that one can’t tell which
is which. Because I’d seen Olivier and Kozintsev so often, the idea of a Hamlet in colour took
some time to overcome my prejudice: but the quality of the acting – particularly that of Mel
Gibson and Glenn Close – was ample compensation. Whereas the verse-speaking in Olivier’s
version is RADA-beautiful, as in 1948 it was bound to be, Zeffirelli opts, like Richardson, for
a conversational style, quick and quiet: and the result, as with Richardson, is to bring us right
into the characters and their relationships: some of the reaction-shots are superb at creating
tension. As with Kozintsev, you believe in the castle, with its windy corners, its seagulls, its
barking dogs, and people running to and fro: though Zeffirelli doesn’t use the castle as a
metaphor in the way that Kozintsev does. For some scenes he takes the camera on to the
beach, like Kozintsev, though he doesn’t film the sea as dramatically as the Russian.
Zeffirelli has one big advantage over all the rest: a great actress, Glenn Close, as Gertrude
(few major performers like the role). With the sort of impeccable English diction we expect
from Americans these days, she conveys the Queen’s silliness and weakness so
sympathetically that her death is the most shocking and moving death in all six films – the
expression on her face when she realises she’s been poisoned has to be seen to be believed,
and her agonised convulsions in death are horrible. It’s worth getting the DVD for just this
moment.
Mel Gibson may be a mega-movie star in a way that none of the other Hamlets ever were,
but he’s an excellent actor, and is encouraged by his director to go into areas of hysteria,
3: I’m grateful to Svetlana Klimova for the DVD of Kozintsev’s Hamlet.
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brutality and buffoonery which make the part so much more interesting, and worrying. It’s
said Zeffirelli chose him because of his performance in Lethal Weapon, where he plays a cop
so distraught with grief he doesn’t mind whether he dies or not: a good preparation for
playing Hamlet. See how, in the “politic worms” scene, he jumps up on to a table and kicks
scrolls everywhere. Listen to the way he goes completely Australian on the line “Oh throw
away the lesser part of it, and live the purer with the other half!” This may be accidental, but
it shows an abandon of a sort which one could never accuse Olivier or Smoktunovsky. Yet he
can be as solemn as need be when the scene demands it.
Mel Gibson’s Hamlet has my vote as the most multi-dimensional one: the only daring
one, indeed. All the rest, fearful of posterity’s verdict, play safe.
Ghosts
The six Ghosts form a striking series of contrasts. Olivier does its voice himself,
electronically depressed a tone or two, and with heavy breathing which anticipates Darth
Vader. The poisoning is shown, in a dissolve-away flashback. The figure we see is in full
armour with mists about it, and what’s visible of its face seems already in a state of postmortem disintegration. Richardson doesn’t show you the Ghost at all, but lights glaringly the
faces of the characters looking at him, and has Nicol Williamson, his Hamlet, do the Ghost’s
voice, as Olivier does. The battlements are not open-air, but the tunnels of the Round House,
which, very well photographed, give the scenes an effective claustrophobia. But because we
don’t see the Ghost, his message is lost, and we aren’t aware of the burden he lays
(ambiguously) on Hamlet, to revenge his murder. Thus the plot of the play, unless you know
the script intimately, is hard to follow.
Kozintsev has a terrifying ghost – a seven-foot figure in full armour, with a long cloak
billowing out behind him in slow motion. Shostakovich’s music roars and pulsates, and the
Ghost’s face is only visible once, just before “The glow-worm shows the matin to be near”,
when we see only his eyes, full of sadness. This is the only one of the films, and the only
Hamlet in my memory, in which the Ghost carries more moral weight than any other
character. It makes for a very clear narrative.
Zeffirelli has Paul Scofield as the Ghost, and uses him in a way directly opposed to the
frightening Russian version: this Ghost is dressed as a monk, not a warrior: he’s human, looks
pale and unhappy, moves slowly, and is dimly and eerily lit. When he speaks, it is with the
quiet conviction which being in Limbo would give you.
Branagh’s ghost is Brian Blessed, a staple of Branagh’s repertory company. He, too, is
huge (and in full armour, even though the film has a nineteenth-century Ruritanian setting),
and he whispers his lines loudly, wearing stark blue contact lenses in which he never blinks.
All the while, the ground fissures and steams about him. But his sequences were obviously
shot without his Hamlet, and the editing is unable to suggest that they are together on the spot
at the same time. Sam Shepard, for Michael Almereyda, is by contrast a physical presence,
embracing Hamlet passionately at one point, and the relationship between the two is intimate,
helped throughout the film by the way the dialogue is broken up and taken at a 1990s
conversational pace.
Hamlet and his Ophelias
Another important touchstone is – how is Hamlet’s relationship with Ophelia interpreted?
Near the start, Olivier lingers over a shot of the two staring at one another down a long
corridor, while a sad oboe theme on the soundtrack expresses regret and sadness. In the
Nunnery scene, having rumbled the presence of her father and his uncle from the outset, he
throws her down on to the stone floor with a concussing clunk (she’s Jean Simmons, in a silly
blond wig), then actually lifts a strand of her hair as she lies there sobbing, and kisses it, even
though she’s not in a position to notice – it’s his invisible way of making a “just kidding”
gesture. He says “To a nunnery, go” as if it’s a sincere piece of advice, then runs upstairs and
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does “To be or not to be” staring down at the waves.4 Stewart Granger, Simmons’ husband at
the time, said Larry had a bit of a pash on his wife, so couldn’t resist the tiny bit of sentiment.
It’s a pity he had to give in to his off-screen feelings, for Shakespeare’s Hamlet doesn’t
seem very fond of women at all. When Ophelia’s love for him meets his hysterical misogyny,
it’s one reason why she goes mad. Richardson and Williamson will have none of this, and
play with great determination against the text, making the pair lovers: “I loved you not,” says
Hamlet, with an ironic smile, as she swings before him in a hammock – “I was the more
deceived,” she answers with another smile, and they kiss tenderly (she is Marianne Faithfull).
Then he sees Polonius spying through a grill, and has more reason than usual to get cross. Her
“Oh, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!” makes no sense, for his is the reaction, not of a
lunatic, but of any lover who’s been betrayed; and the King’s “Love! His affections do not
that way tend!” makes still less sense, when it’s just been shown that they do.
Grigori Kozintsev will have none of this perverse stuff. Nevertheless, as Hamlet, pinning
Ophelia to the wall during the Nunnery scene, mutters “I loved you not” into her ear, you can
see how they turn one another on. But in the prison-society dominated by such a Stalinesque
king as Mikhail Nazvanov, love cannot flourish – only violence and deceit. You aren’t
yourself, you’re who the state says you are. An invented comic sequence has the King
marching towards the play, and putting on a false smile, whereupon the courtiers trailing after
him put on false smiles too – even the musket-toting guard puts on a false smile. Hamlet’s
speech about the recorders, and how no-one can play upon him, is given much more weight
than usual.
Mel Gibson is seen staring from the battlements at Ophelia (Helena Bonham Carter),
during Polonius’ speech to Laertes, but it’s not clear why. When they come into dramatic
contact, there’s no sexual feeling at all, just remonstration and hysteria on his part, and
bewilderment on hers – which seems right. Zeffirelli is, so far as I know, the only one of the
directors who’s completely gay (Tony Richardson was bisexual), so he’s not sentimental
about women, or nostalgic over what might have been. Part of the Nunnery scene is here done
just before the Play; it increases Hamlet’s tension, and Ophelia’s unease at his mental
unbalance. After the play has finished, he says “To a nunnery, go!” kisses her violently, then
adds a casual “Farewell!” and disappears. By this time it’s clear that they’re both suffering
from mental unbalance.
Zeffirelli’s is a very intelligent, subtle analysis, and is the best version, in this as in other
respects.
Branagh has Kate Winslett as Ophelia, and they have several nude scenes together –
perhaps to sell the movie to America. It convinces even less than the relationship in Tony
Richardson’s version.
Ethan Hawke seems to have been the boyfriend of his Ophelia (Julia Stiles), at some time
in the past; but, with greater loyalty to the text, his father’s death and reappearance is shown
as having knocked all the stuffing out of him: so that when, unbuttoning her shirt during the
Nunnery scene, he finds that she’s wired, his bitterness is everything it should be. Julia Stiles
plays Ophelia very well as a dumb inadequate, which makes sense of her submissiveness and
willingness to be used. Ophelia is the reverse of the self-assertive, but just as self-destructive,
Juliet.
The verdict, then: buy Olivier, Kozintsev, and Zeffirelli: Kozintsev’s is the best film,
Zeffirelli has the best Hamlet.
4: This idea is pinched from the opening of Hitchcock’s Rebecca.