Page 134 - Shakespeare in the Movie From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love

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form, mind you, as a stage designer would have evolved. No, a form
three-dimensional, spacious, filmworthy." Brown argued that with
its great spatial expanses the play Henry V had all but begged to be
filmed, whereas Hamlet, essentially a one-set story, defied effective
filmization. Brown's misconception is that since the camera can go
anywhere, it ought to; the truth is, the camera, properly understood,
is employed by the director to reveal his locale(s) as he desires us to
perceive it (them).
Films which leap about from place to place (westerns, spectacles,
and picaresques) are not necessarily more inherently "cinematic";
they only qualify as such if the director employs those spaces cre-
atively, as is the case with John Ford or D. W. Griffith. Thus, a one-
set film can be entirely successful as long as the director approaches
that single place with a creative camera. Alfred Hitchcock's Rear
Window exemplifies how truly cinematic (and nontheatrical) a
single-set movie can be.
Whatever one's complaints about this Hamlet, its enduring impor-
tance stems from the fact that Olivier often succeeded in his attempt
to search for ways in which technical devices of cinema could
heighten the impact of a stage play, rendering the notion of "canned
theater" ever more remote. Though his Hamlet is, in many respects,
aesthetic and soft, there's enough adventurous bouncing about to
suggest that the time had come to put the romantic cliche to rest,
reviving the earlier, virile Hamlet who dominated what was essen-
tially an Elizabethan Death Wish.

Hamlet, Sturm und Drang
Hamlet: Prinz Von Danemark
Bavaria Attelier, 1960; Franz Peter Wirth

Swiss-born Maximilian Schell, hailed by many critics as the Conti-
nent's equivalent to Olivier, mounted his own Hamlet onstage in
Munich during the August festival of 1960. Schell modernized the
language ("To live or not to live," he called out; "Get thee to a nun-
nery" became "get thee to a whorehouse," in keeping with Shake-
speare's intention); Schell directed the production himself. William
Glenesk, who visited the city's music hall, reported in After Dark
that old-guard audiences found Schell too antitraditional, whereas