Hamlet (1964)
Shakespeare's 17th century masterpiece about the "Melancholy Dane" was given one of its best screen treatments by Soviet director Grigori Kozintsev. Kozintsev's Elsinore was a real castle in Estonia, utilized metaphorically as the "stone prison" of the mind wherein Hamlet must confine himself in order to avenge his father's death. Hamlet himself is portrayed (by Innokenti Smoktunovsky) as the sole sensitive intellectual in a world made up of debauchers and revellers. Several of Kozintsev directorial choices seem deliberately calculated to inflame the purists: Hamlet's delivers his "To be or not to be" soliloquy with his back to the camera, allowing the audience to fill in its own interpretations.
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The subtitles on this one are terrible. Shakespeare's actual words come up about half the time; the rest of the dialogue is untranslated. If you know the story, it's at best a waste of time: the entire *adaptation* aspect is lost, and even so *you* are filling in half the story. If you dont know the story, it's probably impossible to follow. The adaptation may be brilliant but it's a form of masochism to watch for a non Russian speaker.
I've never understood those who insist that Shakespeare's plays were written by an aristocrat like the Earl of Oxford. Only a man who lived life on the edge could have written the way Shakespeare did; it's difficult to imagine an upper-class twit writing "Hamlet" or "King Lear." Perhaps it's easier for people in eastern Europe or the former Soviet Union to understand Shakespeare than Americans; in many ways, living conditions there are much closer to Elizabethan England than anything we can imagine. Like Shakespeare, they have had to endure tyrannical governments, social injustice, religious persecutions, and other ordeals the more prosperous West scarcely remembers. Grigori Kozintsev's "Gamlet" illustrates this thesis. Here is a no-frills "Hamlet," in beautiful black-and-white, with a brilliant score by Dmitri Shostakovich and an exceptional cast. It's not surprising that Innokenti Smoktunovsky (Hamlet) was a holocaust survivor: pain is etched on his face, and for once Hamlet's suffering doesn't seem put on. Anastasia Vertinskaya is lovely as a tiny, fragile Ophelia, and Elsa Radzin is stunning as the queen. This is a surprisingly traditional Hamlet, free of trendy modernistic interpretation, almost nineteenth-century in its use of period detail. It's almost the kind of "Hamlet" one might have seen in the days of Edwin Booth or Sir Henry Irving; only Vertinskaya's beehive hairdo gives it away as having been made in the 1960s.
Utterly brilliant - I saw this film 17 times in the cinema when it first came out in 1964 - and I was all of 18. I'd never read Hamlet, never heard of Shostakovitch, couldn't speak a word of Russian - and yet this film changed my life! Now it's finally arrived on DVD in all its original splendour, complete with Shostakovitch's sensational score in stereo... The editing of Shakespeare's original by Pasternak is masterly, the direction faultless - but it's Innokenty Smoktunovsky's interpretation of Hamelt that lingers a lifetime in the mind. I've seen every other film adaptation of Hamlet, and none of them come anywhere close to this incredible cinematic masterpiece, which remains my #1 film of all time!
I have to marvel at the production values in this wonderful film. Exquisite sets, lighting and costumes. Stunning location. Epic original music score by Dmitri Shostokovitsch -- the music alone is more than enough to recommend this film. Great acting by, among others, Innokenti Smoktunovsky as Hamlet. Every scene an artistically complete poem of light and sound. Oh, and if you wonder what it's like to hear Shakespeare in Russian . . . it's great! The translation is by Boris Pasternak, one of the finest poets in any language. An epic treatment of the epic story.