Page 145 - Shakespeare in the Movie From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love

134 / Shakespeare in the Movies

his back, staring up into space, including critical words to Gertrude
in her bedchamber. Most often Hamlet was glimpsed lying outside
the castle, "grazing in the grass," as a pop tune of the time put it.
This choice transformed the character's body language into a visual
metaphor for a generation that chose to tune in, turn on, and drop
out. Chamberlain's Hamlet does not appear all that different from
Peter Fonda, ruminating while on LSD, in Roger Corman's Trip
(1967). Likewise, director Wood's choices for individual scenes
reflected the antipsychological, proromantic point of view; whereas
Olivier led his audience down dark tunnels, Wood favored brightly
sunlit courtyards leading into green gardens—truly, a flower-power
Hamlet.
Claran Madden, the pretty, talented unknown cast as Ophelia,
clicked nicely with Chamberlain; they provided the youth-cult
chemistry that had worked so well in Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet.
Two legendary stage Hamlets appeared in supporting roles. Michael
Redgrave avoided the cliche of a bumbling, doddering Polonius,
making him a vital servant of the system. John Gielgud's ghost,
decked out in, as one critic noted, "a Bonaparte bonnet worn at a
rakish angle," struck some viewers as eccentric; actually, this is the
perfect "father" to Chamberlain's Hamlet—-a romantic-era ghost.
What emerges is an entirely original interpretation, a notable
alternative to previous offerings. As Jay Halio noted in "Three
Filmed Hamlets" (Literary/Film Quarterly, 1973), Wood cinemati-
cally emphasized Christian elements inherent (but never before
emphasized) in the story. Here the ghost leads Hamlet away from
the castle into a churchyard, where their confrontation takes place
beneath a dominating cross. Hamlet's "To be or not to be . . . "
speech is intercut with images of Ophelia, on her knees before an
altar. When Hamlet heads toward his mother's "closet," the camera
films him from behind a statue of Madonna and Child. The same
week this Hamlet was broadcast, George Harrison's recording of
"My Sweet Lord" topped the record charts. In the early 1970s, the
youth culture was turning conservative, Students for a Democratic
Society giving way to the Jesus movement. This Hamlet caught that
moment of transition in a work of popular culture.
In Chamberlain's mind, the play was "primarily concerned with
the meaning of action. Most people act on firmly held convictions
that, if examined, have little logical basis but proceed rather from
emotional processes to which they themselves may be blind." Laertes,
one of Hamlet's many foils, is such a man; he never thinks things