Page 140 - Shakespeare in the Movie From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love

I Know Not Seems I 129

honest. Absent also was any hint of an oedipal complex. As to
Hamlet's problem, the Saturday Review noted that this Hamlet
"lacks not will, but opportunity"; he's here ready to kill the king
from that moment when the ghost first appears, though someone or
something always interferes. Shakespeare's "Oh how all occasions
do inform against me" is not included, though that line encapsu-
lates the film's conception of Hamlet's problem. No question,
though, that this is a work of cinema. Courtiers dash about in cloaks
and capes, while women wear furs and finery; the rich detail of
clothing compensates for a stark gray sky overhead, ever-present
symbol of an encroaching darkness that threatens to extinguish
those bright little lights deluded humans burn to convince them-
selves they are the be-all and end-all in the universe.
Stylistically, Gamlet seems less a new cinematic treatment than
Kozintsev's own application of previous approaches not only to
Hamlet but filmmaking in general. He was obviously influenced by
Olivier's version, particularly the image of a pounding surf just out-
side Elsinore castle; whereas Olivier employed such visions on occa-
sion, Kozintsev made them the film's central motif. He returns again
and again to the sight and sound until the surf all but overpowers
the film, conveying the theme of inevitable natural power in the
universe. From Olivier, Kozintsev also borrowed the technique of
Hamlet's soliloquies heard on the soundtrack, suggesting they take
place in his mind. The overall sensation was akin to watching
Richard Burton's virile Hamlet step into Olivier's imagined world.
The images of Fortinbras's army were shot with the same sense of
hard-edged period realism that Sergei Eisenstein employed for works
like Alexander Nevsky—particularly the famed battle-on-the-ice
sequence. Bosley Crowther concluded that this "Hamlet flows from
strong expressions and vibrant actions more than from words. This,
I would say, is performing Shakespeare cinematically"—that is,
reimagining Shakespeare for the medium of cinema.

Loneliness of the Long Distance Avenger
Hamlet
Woodfall Productions, 1969; Tony Richardson

Burton and Gielgud had taken pains to let the audience in on the
fact that theirs was an experimental form. "This is not a motion