Page 136 - Shakespeare in the Movie From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love

I Know Not Seems / 125

his lips moving—does seem the most satisfying cinematic solution
to a stage soliloquy contained in a film.
There were fascinating dramatic decisions as well, such as
Gertrude purposefully seizing the goblet (which she knows to be poi-
soned) and drinking rather than allowing Hamlet to do so. Less suc-
cessful was having Hans Canineberg play Claudius as a stock villain,
without Shakespeare's subtle emotional shading. Prof. Lillian Wilds,
of the California State Polytechnic University at Pomona, hailed
Schell as "the least quirky" of the filmed Hamlets. Utterly without
neuroses, particularly in regard to his mother, he is "at once a suf-
fering human being and the humanistic Prince . . . the much written,
about private and public persons into which traditionally the Renais-
sance ruler was divided," particularly in the plays of Shakespeare.
It made sense, then, that for their unifying symbol Wirth and
Schell chose not Olivier's luxurious oedipal bed but the twin thrones,
always empty. Central to the opening shot, the camera returns to
them throughout; at the end, Claudius, dying, struggles to crawl back
onto his throne. Hamlet chooses to sit on that throne and expire
there, dying a king. Such visual symbolism makes it clear that this
Hamlet is actuated not by modern Freudianism but by Shakespeare's
own insistence on the need for a proper ruler if a city-state hopes to
avoid falling into chaos and ruin.

Neither Fish nor Fowl
Hamlet
Warner Bros., 1964; John Gielgud-Bill Colleran

To commemorate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, Sir
John Gielgud (himself a legendary Hamlet in the soft, romantic tra-
dition) directed Richard Burton in what would emerge as the twen-
tieth century's most macho stage incarnation. Due to Burton's
ongoing affair with Liz Taylor and rumors that America's Queen
Elizabeth would be in the audience for most performances, the show
sold out. On nights when Taylor did not make an appearance, a siz-
able portion of the audience walked out. Yet ticket sales are ticket
sales. The production, which premiered on April 9, 1964, at the
Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, ran for 138 performances.
The Gielgud-Burton Hamlet represented an intriguing, if doomed,
attempt to develop a new means of sharing top Manhattan produc-