Hamlet (1948, Laurence Olivier) (Patreon)

66/100

Second viewing, last seen 1997. Having just recently surprised myself by praising Charlie Kaufman's direction much more highly than his screenplay, I'm now thinking of repeating things: While Olivier may be one of the great actors of his era, it's his visual acumen, not his Oscar-winning performance, that mightily impresses me here. (He lost Best Director to John Huston for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which should have won Best Picture. AMPAS got it backwards.) Spectacularly forbidding right from the jump, with some of the most Expressionistic sets and lighting seen outside of either Germany or film noir; nobody else has made the Ghost so legitimately unworldly (love the loud heartbeat accompanied by what can only be called a focus pulse), or fashioned such a psychologically resonant Elsinore. Hamlet delivers his most famous soliloquy from atop a high cliff, prepared to leap at any moment. When he arrives at the cemetery, the shadow of his head falls directly onto Yorick's skull, which hasn't yet been directly mentioned. A mobile camera prowls the castle between scenes, bridging what's necessarily discrete onstage, and the movie even continues for several minutes after its final line has been spoken. For someone so steeped in the theater, Olivier took great pains to make an actual film, not merely capture a proscenium-based production on celluloid. You could potentially enjoy this Hamlet with the volume switched off. 

Of course, you're missing half of Shakespeare's dialogue even with the volume on. My own knowledge of the play is such that I was more likely to hear changes to the text (e.g. "And there I see such black and grainèd spots as will not lose their stain," rather than "leave their tinct") than mourn the loss of missing verses, though obviously I noticed the absence of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (why not lose fucking Osric instead, if you must cut the comic relief? Olivier actually has Peter Cushing do a pratfall), plus Horatio delivering what had been Fortinbras' final speech. I'm glad we have Branagh's complete version, but this comparative speed-through still works reasonably well—there's just less magnificent poetry than usual. Weird choice to omit Hamlet's first line ("A little more than kin and less than kind"), but it's an aside and I guess Olivier, who once again mostly delivers the soliloquies in voiceover, didn't want to break out that device so early for a fleeting sarcastic gibe. And I quite like the placement of V.i (Ophelia's funeral) prior to IV.vii (Claudius and Laertes plotting Hamlet's death)—so much so that I wonder why Shakespeare wanted it the other way. My primary criticism, apart from a general lack of appreciation for the declamatory acting style then in vogue,* is how absurdly literal this Hamlet gets with its Oedipal subtext, having Hamlet and Gertrude repeatedly kiss as if they're parked at Lovers' Lane. I've never quite understood what that interpretation ostensibly adds to what's already a fearsomely complex (if admittedly somewhat ambiguous) character study, but it certainly didn't require actual make-out sessions.

* A point that I won't belabor here, since I previously addressed it when writing about Olivier's Henry V. Though I will briefly note that he's not just way too old for the role—more than a decade older than his Gertrude, in fact!—but too strident, at least for my taste. I only really like his performance at the top of IV.iii, when Hamlet's being all smarmy about where he put Polonius' body. Olivier can't bark that.