Best Picture: #21
Original Release Date: May 6, 1948
Rating: Not Rated
Runtime: 2 hours, 34 minutes
Director: Sir Laurence Olivier
Quick Impressions:
Olivier’s Hamlet confused us so much. As I watched, I kept forgetting that we were doing a Best Picture project and imagining that in the future, I would show my daughter a bunch of other Hamlets. By the end of the film, she was drawn into this delusion, too, and kept jabbering excitedly about watching the other versions herself.
“Let’s just watch all the other Hamlets!” she decided. “Every Hamlet!”
“Every Hamlet seems too ambitious,” I told her. “There are an awful lot of Hamlets.” At most, I’d suggest Mel Gibson, Kenneth Branagh, Ethan Hawk, Derek Jacobi, and maybe one of the really new cool ones and call it a day. (I don’t know which one to pick! It seems like every member of the cast of Sherlock has his own Hamlet! And David Tennant has one, too!) It gets overwhelming! Branagh’s version alone will take four hours! (We checked to confirm. It is, in fact, longer than Gone with the Wind.) At the very least, I do want to show her the Franco Zeffirelli Hamlet with Mel Gibson, Glenn Close, and Helena Bonham Carter. That’s my favorite film Hamlet. It’s the first one I saw (long before I had even read the play), so I’m afraid it influenced me greatly about how Hamlet ought to go.
My favorite Hamlet, though, I saw at the Globe when I visited a friend (who was visiting her sister) in London back when I was in college in the year 2000. At the time, though I didn’t know it, I had a broken back that was causing me horrible spasms of pain down one leg. But as a groundling, I stood transfixed for three hours watching Hamlet, staring up at the stage enraptured, charmed, strangely delighted when I felt a stray drop of spit from Polonius. I rave about how funny this production was all the time, and my daughter has always been incredulous that a famous tragedy would make me laugh so much. But then she saw Hamlet for herself and quickly conceded that even Olivier’s spooky, brooding version features moments of extreme hilarity.
I love Shakespeare. In an alternate reality, there’s a version of me who finished her dissertation on the Elizabeth complaint poem, stuck with academia, and is probably (perhaps virtually) teaching Shakespeare to a bunch of eager (and possibly infectious) college students right now. I’ve never attempted to do anything Shakespeare related with my daughter until now. (Well, when we watched The Forbidden Planet last summer during our space-a-thon, we tried to read The Tempest, but her little brother was too disruptive, so we didn’t get far.) I was curious to see how she would react to Shakespearean material. And Hamlet seemed safe enough since I have no particular attachment to that play. When it comes to Shakespearean tragedies, I far prefer King Lear, Othello, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and Julius Caesar. I have nothing against Hamlet. It’s just not special to me in any way.
And after watching Olivier’s Hamlet, I have so many mixed feelings. As an adaptation of Hamlet, it’s…how do I put this? I really did feel I was watching Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet, not William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. He cuts quite a bit–even some key characters! (It’s a good thing Tom Stoppard had access to the text. If he had only Olivier’s version to go by, we’d now have a very famous play by him called Untitled. Or maybe 404: File Not Found.) As a Hamlet, this film defies my evaluation honestly. But as a movie, it’s pretty good. I liked it more than I expected.
Please note, I have a number of friends who are not fans of Olivier’s Hamlet, but I’ve never seen the entire thing until now. In the past, I have seen several clips of the movie out of context, just snippets of Olivier speaking. I was never particularly impressed. But my opinion of the production has gone up now that I’ve seen it. (How strange, right?)
The Plot:
So you probably know the plot of Hamlet. The action kind of sneaks up on you. For a long time, Hamlet doesn’t do anything much, and then all of a sudden, everybody’s dead all over the stage.
At the beginning, Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark, declares that he’s “too much in the sun.” Quite awkwardly, he suddenly finds himself the son of his father’s brother, Claudius, who has hastily married Hamlet’s mother, Queen Gertrude, after the sudden death of Hamlet’s father (and Claudius’s brother) also named Hamlet. From Hamlet the Younger’s point of view, it’s all vaguely incestuous and depressing, and so he mopes around wittily until he’s visited by his father’s ghost who tells him that Uncle Claudius murdered him by pouring poison in his ear and urges his son to avenge his death. Hamlet has a way with words, but swift, decisive, action is not his thing. He vows that he will kill Claudius, and then…after a while….
Well, I don’t want to spoil the ending.
The Good:
Olivier kind of gives us Hamlet like he’s teaching it to us in English class or maybe presenting his final project as a student in said class. We’re getting not Hamlet prime, but his reading of Hamlet. He’s very clear about it. He offers his thesis first. A voice-over introduction tells us directly that Hamlet has a tragic flaw. His flaw is indecision. Forget studying the play and drawing your own conclusions. Just listen to Olivier’s voice and read the words on the screen.
There’s something kind of nice about this, though. He’s not giving us The Definitive Hamlet (though it appears that some audiences have received it that way). He’s giving us a movie inspired by the play, his reading of the play, put together in a way that will best work on screen. I’m not sure where I would rank it among the popular Hamlets. And I doubt that I would use it if teaching the play in the classroom, but it is, actually, a good film. And it’s quite accessible. My eleven-year-old found it easy to follow and understand.
As far as I know, it’s the only Shakespearean adaptation to win Best Picture (unless you count West Side Story). Compared to the other Best Picture winners that have come before, Hamlet is a breath of fresh air. It is completely unlike any of the other films my daughter and I have watched so far while doing this project. (Most of those are about one of the World Wars. A few are romantic comedies.) The only previous Best Picture winner Hamlet vaguely resembles is The Lost Weekend, in that both are character studies that follow a tormented protagonist. From the perspective of our Best Picture project, it’s nice to have something different come in and shake things up a little.
The film is wonderfully atmospheric. I love the vision it gives us of the stormy, isolated Elsinore, all alone on the white, tempestuous sea. For atmosphere, this film gets an A+. It reminded me a bit of last year’s gem The Lighthouse. It drags us into the sights and sounds of the remote castle on the sea right from the opening credits. It’s deliciously spooky and would make fun Halloween viewing. Usually, it’s Macbeth I associate with Halloween, but this particular Hamlet offers way more spookiness than the few moments with the fleeting ghost. All of Elsinore looks haunted and strange, the sea, the vast castle, with its winding stairs and empty corridors, Hamlet himself, often staring into space or writhing on the floor.
Hamlet is, of course, pretending to mad. But is he actually a bit mad beneath all the pretense? That’s always the question when reading Hamlet. (Well, I mean, the other question.) And in this particular version, the line is blurred beyond all recognition. Others have seen the ghost, but they do not experience interactions with this mysterious being in the (literally) pulse-pounding way that Hamlet does. Olivier’s Hamlet swoons, falls on the floor, and drags himself around in a stupor an awful lot. He’s an intensely haunted Hamlet, and sometimes we wonder if he is entirely in his right mind. After all, a person can be “mad” and pretend to be even crazier. (Trust me, I’ve tried this technique myself.)
Sometimes the dramatic swooning gets a bit much, but I do kind of like the strange shaking of the camera and the loud, creepy, relentless heartbeat that herald the coming of the ghost. Using voiceover to deliver the soliloquies is a novel technique and makes sense for the screen. I prefer to have the lines spoken by the actor, to see his lips move, but that’s an irrational preference, really. On stage, an actor must speak his thoughts if we are to hear them. But in a movie, using a voiceover makes sense. It’s actually a good idea (though off-putting to me for no reason I can defend).
Olivier certainly does deliver his lines well. He has a pleasantly melodious voice, and his musical line delivery is easy on the ears. He’s marvelous with all the humor. His face is wonderfully expressive. I found I had to explain very little to my daughter. (I think I explained the most during his double-entendre laden scene with Ophelia.) Olivier’s expert line delivery makes the film easy to follow. Even my eleven-year-old was able to laugh along in horrified delight as Hamlet toyed with Claudius about the location of Polonius’s body. Olivier is marvelous when Hamlet is witty and sly in his feigned madness. His perverse smiles, his obvious delight in obfuscation and wordplay almost make him seem actually “mad,” for altered mental states sometimes make horrific things awfully funny. It’s so hard to tell if Hamlet is an insanely good actor (as he feigns his madness) or simply a little on the unhinged side (which would prompt him to take delight in feigning madness).
Felix Aylmer makes Polonius exceedingly ridiculous (even for Polonius) and very funny. Olivier is also directing (and adapting the screenplay), so this take on the character must be his idea. He even gives Polonius extra lines. And he is very funny, especially opposite Olivier’s wickedly teasing Hamlet.
Eileen Herlie is very interesting as Gertrude. She does a lot non-verbally.
I was pleasantly surprised to see Stanley Holloway turn up as the gravedigger. I told my daughter that if we make it to the 1960s, we’ll see him again as Eliza’s father in My Fair Lady. The moment with the gravedigger is particularly good here because of the way the film shows us the grave.
And Peter Cushing! He is something else. As Osric, he has a very small part, but he certainly makes the most of it. Everything about him is ostentatious. I joked to my daughter, “He should have worn that on the Death Star! He would have upstaged Darth Vader!” He even manages to fall head-over-heels very spectacularly making one notable exit. Christopher Lee, Desmond Llewellyn, and Patrick Macnee are supposed to be in this, too, but I never found them. Cushing, however, is impossible to miss.
After Olivier, Basil Sydney gives my favorite performance as Claudius. His line delivery is excellent. His costume is odd. I laughed to myself as I watched, thinking that he looked like King Friday on Mr. Rogers. The excessive fanfare every time the king and queen present themselves formally also reminded me of King Friday on Mr. Rogers. As I watched, I just found this amusing. But then afterwards, I thought, “Wait a minute. This film was very influential. Fred Rogers probably saw it. Maybe King Friday is supposed to look like Claudius.” Who knows? I’ll have to look into it.
Best Action Sequence:
I have never in my life seen anything as crazy as that ending. Okay, I’m lying. I’ve seen many things far crazier than that. But I most certainly did not expect Hamlet to wrap up his revenge in precisely the way that he does.
The fencing at the end is fairly entertaining, but the way Hamlet finishes off that fight took me totally by surprise. It looks like such a massive stunt. Did Olivier actually do it himself? If a play on stage ended that way, the audience would scream.
Best Scene Visually:
My daughter commented continually on the transitions from scene to scene. Every time a scene ends, we do a first-person glide through the empty, winding corridors of the castle, then eventually enter another room. She would say, “Now we’re moving to the next scene again.” This certainly gives the film a recognizable visual style.
Overall, the film looks good. The set is kind of claustrophobic, but Elsinore should be, and there’s surprising depth to every scene (visual depth, depth of field perceived by the audience).
I absolutely love the look of the gravedigger scene, particularly the depth of the grave, the way the dirt flies out at us.
Best Scene:
This is so hard. I really liked the scene where Hamlet visits his mother in her chamber, but that’s because it’s one of my favorite scenes in the play. I am not sure if I like the way this film does it, particularly. I just like the scene.
I also have very fond feelings for the scene when Hamlet jokes about what he has done with the body as Claudius interrogates him in frustration because my daughter found this exchange so amusing.
The Negatives:
I’m not particularly a fan of Jean Simmons’s take on Ophelia. Certainly, Simmons is lovely, but I thought her madness looked…clunky…I don’t know…artificial. I don’t believe that she’s gone mad at all. Hamlet seems much madder to me, and he’s faking. Her madness seems fake and inadequate to me. At least she’s not over-the-top and crazed, but I just honestly find her a very boring Ophelia, which I blame on Olivier (who directed her), though the person who did her hair deserves some credit. Those perfectly symmetrical little braids look difficult to maintain.
Also, I love the play-within-a-play in the play. (It’s probably my favorite part. I’m a sucker for metadrama.) But I’m not such a fan of all the silence and whispering Olivier gives us. I need to watch this film again, though. Maybe it will grow on me.
I’m also not wildly crazy about the non-spoken soliloquies, though here I will admit my own opinion is strange. I find this a compelling, original way of doing the soliloquies. Watching, I thought, “Ah! How interesting!” But on a gut level, I just didn’t like it. I might like it on a second viewing, though.
Overall:
I like Sir Laurence Olivier as Hamlet much better than I like him as Maxim deWinter in Rebecca. His spooky, atmospheric take on Hamlet is very intriguing, and I’ll probably watch it again this Halloween. With great difficulty, my daughter ranked it #9 of the twenty-one Best Pictures we’ve seen. It isn’t really like any of the others. After seeing this, I’m all set to watch another Hamlet or maybe Romeo and Juliet. Instead, we’ll be watching Best Picture Winner #22 All the King’s Men.