A ★★★½ review of Hamlet (1948) (original) (raw)

☆_”This is the tragedy of a man who could not make up his mind.”_☆

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead… because Laurence Olivier cut them from the film!

The 1948 adaptation of the legendary Shakespeare play was lauded at the time of release, directed by Olivier with himself in the starring titular role and a screenplay he helped write, but faced more contemporary criticism from his choices in taking the stage play to the big screen (quoting Wikipedia here: “controversial among Shakespearean purists,” but I hear they doth protest too much).

I'm not going to recap the story, because you either know it or you don't, and unfortunately it's way too difficult to reduce the play to a couple paragraphs. Generally the film does follow all the major events in the same order of the mad prince of Denmark; there are no atrocious alterations. You're here to see Sir Olivier absolutely crush the hardest and longest-winded character in Shakespearean history. And he really does. As the first English-language adaptation of Hamlet made for a sound motion picture, the bar is impossibly high but he elevates the film as much as he can.

However, it's hard to say that if you love Hamlet that you'll love this film, because with some of the changes Olivier thought were necessary you get a terribly bleak version that, while acted impeccably, has no other charm aside from his performance and that of Jean Simmons who plays Ophelia.

Also, I'll point out quickly that I do love the score, a great combination of epic orchestral music and other brooding sounds through the film as it gets darker and more bleak. But let's get to what those “Shakespearean purists” are so upset about.

Notable cuts and edits include the minor but beloved odd couple of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (and therefore the only possible comic tones to break up the heavy themes), the aforequoted line above that was part of a reductive opening narrative Olivier penned, eliminating your drama club crush’s favorite character Fortinbras completely, and emphasizing (or inventing?) the Oedipal intimations of Hamlet and his mother. But hey, a four-hour play is not easy to make into a 155-minute film. Others note that later adaptations on big and small screen have edited out more “fluff” as opposed to entire characters or the tricky political themes that it appears Olivier didn't want to touch. So, it's your call.

Nonetheless, the film was universally acclaimed at release, and stormed through awards season at the Oscars: Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, and three other nominations. The big wins were a big deal: it took until 1949, but this was the first non-American film to win Best Picture; and Olivier is still the only actor to ever win an Oscar for a Shakespeare role.

And one more bit of Olivier trivia: he won one Oscar for acting, ever. Just one, among something like ten nominations I think. So, you should probably watch the single movie that earned an Academy Award for performance by the greatest actor of the 20th Century. Probably.

What I'm trying to say is that it's goddamn hard to adapt Billy Shakes. Nobody has ever done it perfectly. But this version, tedious as it feels, is as good as you can possibly do with such an epic and difficult play.

Added to Laurence Olivier ranked.
Added to Best Picture Winners, ranked.