Page 133 - Shakespeare in the Movie From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love

122 / Shakespeare in the Movies

sider suicide only after being convinced (if wrongly) that the woman
he loves is among the nest of vipers. In keeping with the psycholog-
ical interpretation, Olivier presents most of that speech (and other
soliloquies) as a voice-over, which is set against images of crashing
surf, thematically suggesting inner turmoil. Working closely with
set designer Roger Furse, Olivier achieved a balance between unique
and universal elements. The castle is at once actual and surreal, spe-
cific enough to satisfy the cinema's demand for a grounding in real-
ity and symbolically shaded to suggest that what happens in this
microcosm mirrors the universe itself.
As to the character, Professor Peter Donaldson saw the interpre-
tation as "narcissistic," and Hamlet's "deep and persistent doubts
about the value of the self" were traceable to Olivier's life (as
revealed in his biography, Confessions of an Actor). If we all discover
something of ourselves in Hamlet, it makes sense that Olivier
would, too, but as an auteur rather than interpreter, presenting his
Hamlet. Shakespeare had done much the same thing when he had
Hamlet write a play, then request a naturalistic acting approach
("Speak the speech, I pray you, trippingly on the tongue"),- thus,
Hamlet is Shakespeare.
Philip T. Hartung noted in Commonweal a striking contradiction
in interpretation: "Hamlet is well established in the film as a man
who could not make up his mind, (but) is portrayed by Olivier as a
man with a delightful sense of humor and a confidence in himself
that belie the gloomy Dane." Throughout most of the movie,
Olivier's passive Hamlet threatens to dissolve into the castle walls; at
other moments, including the sea battle, he becomes a Douglas
Fairbanks-like swashbuckler, leaping about in dazzling displays of
derring-do. Perhaps, though, this is not such a contradiction. During
Olivier's school days at All Saints, he was forced to play Katharina in
The Taming of the Shrew (doing so, by all reports, brilliantly), though
he'd rather have acted Petruchio. The character, perceived as femi-
nine, desperate to prove his masculinity, is essential to Olivier's auto-
biographical approach. But the character's dichotomy stretches
beyond the personal. Olivier, though relying on the romantic view
of Hamlet, also wanted to include hints of the Elizabethan man of
action. This can be taken as an attempt to fuse the two traditions,
much as his filmmaking approach fused cinema with literature.
As to that, in the Saturday Review, John Mason Brown expressed
fascination with what he perceived as Olivier's basic stylistic prob-
lem: "to find an outward form for an inward tragedy. Not such a