Page 149 - Shakespeare in the Movie From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love

138 / Shakespeare in the Movies

then sincerely shocked when Hamlet (having spotted Polonius
hiding) abuses her.
Though it was necessary to cut the play, Zeffirelli went way too
far. At 135 minutes, his film is 3 minutes shorter than his Romeo
and Juliet, based on a briefer tragedy. The controversial cuts begin at
the beginning; there is no initial confrontation between Horatio and
the guards, a scene that establishes the Ghost's existence outside of
Hamlet's imagination; even the unforgettable "Something is rotten
in the state of Denmark" is gone. The bitter-cold mood of physical
and psychological chill is absent; in its place, a springtime setting,
which does justify the play's description of drowning Ophelia grab-
bing on to green plants and madly playing with flowers.
Unable to find a single castle that came close to resembling Den-
mark's Elsinore, Zeffirelli visited various structures in England and
Scotland. He noted which sections of them best suited his purposes
for specific scenes, then employing them for appropriate moments. A
parapet from one place serves as a backdrop for an open-air scene
atop the tower, while a suitably encroaching arch, employed for a
key moment when Hamlet catches Polonius (Ian Holm) spying,
makes the imagery appear as claustrophic as Hamlet then feels.
Besides allowing for a color epic, this approach visualizes Zef-
firelli's point of view: Hamlet, isolated in his melancholy, considers
Denmark a prison without bars. We, however, see an appealing
place, as others do. Zeffirelli's mise en scene is objective, emphasiz-
ing the contrast between Hamlet's inner vision of Elsinore and
everyone else's; Olivier's monster-movie terrain insisted we view
the setting subjectively, through Hamlet's embittered eyes.
Hamlet's lengthy advice to the players is gone, though Zeffirelli
might have included those all-important opening words: "Speak the
speech, I pray you, trippingly on the tongue"—expressing the Bard's
own belief in naturalistic acting. The great irony is that Olivier
included the speech, though his play within a play is presented as
dumb show, without the speeches Hamlet referred to; Zeffirelli
includes dialogue (the play is done in true Elizabethan style, with a
male taking on the Queen's role) but dispenses with Hamlet's acting
instructions. In Zeffirelli's version, only the king is overcome with
guilt at what he sees; other members of the court are oblivious to
the immediate subtext. In Olivier's version, the entire court gradu-
ally goes berserk, sharing Claudius's sense of guilt. The situation is
less a case of one director being right, the other wrong, than our
having two intriguing interpretations to consider.