Page 139 - Shakespeare in the Movie From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love

128 I Shakespeare in the Movies

ductions are likely to be on display in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Though best known for his epic novel Dr. Zhivago, Nobel Prize
winner Boris Pasternak spent far more of his life translating Shake-
speare into Russian than creating original prose and poetry. Like-
wise admired for realpolitik filmmaking, such as New Babylon
(1928), director Grigory Kozintsev also penned a respected tome, Our
Contemporary William Shakespeare, focusing on elements that
make the Bard accessible to modern audiences.
Not surprisingly, the two joined forces on what they hoped would
be the definitive Russian Hamlet. Considering the project's growing
prestige, acclaimed composer Dmitri Shostakovich signed on to
create a symphonic score, while the Soviet Union's most highly
regarded actor, Innokenti Smoktunovsky, agreed to play the lead.
Filming began early in January 1963 at Leningrad's Len-film Studio,
where authentic weapons and sets of armor, dating back to the six-
teenth century, were borrowed from the nearby Hermitage as well as
Moscow's Historical Museum. In fact, though, less than one-half of
Gamlet was shot on soundstages.
Scenes originally written as interiors were reconceived for exterior
shots; such sequences were filmed in black-and-white wide screen
for a somber epic along Estonia's Baltic coast, fifteen miles west of
Talinn. There a Danish-style castle had been constructed over a ten-
month period. The movie was shot during autumn months, taking
advantage of seasonal winds and menacing clouds, thereby visualiz-
ing the gloomy aura so essential to this reading.
The result was the most "external" Hamlet ever, which struck crit-
ics as a fascinating new approach to, or total misreading of, Shake-
speare's most "internal" play. Even Hamlet's death was played
outside, with hundreds of peasants crying (suggesting Shakespeare's
notion of Hamlet as "loved by the general"); Horatio's famous farewell
("Good night, sweet prince") was eliminated. Such cuts were ques-
tionable; still, Gamlet, appearing simultaneous with the Gielgud-
Burton version, did much to reinstate the character as a man of action.
Esquire duly noted: "This is a Hamlet who rides and duels a lot more
than he reflects,- Smoktunovsky looks a little like Burton and plays
the part in the Burton style, as a vigorous type much more at home
with horses and women than with ideas." In addition to any sense of
weakness being removed, also gone, sadly, was Hamlet's ironic wit.
The Russian Hamlet barely paused for reflection. Most soliloquies
(including the essential "To be or not to be . . .") were cut, as was
what many consider Hamlet's moment of truth: his decision not to
kill Claudius at prayer, moments after the Ghost has been proven