The Oscar Project #21: Hamlet (1948)

by Chris Marshall:

"I don't see why people admire that play so. It is nothing but a bunch of quotations strung together."

I have a confession to make. I taught 8^th grade English for a while. I took an entire class on Shakespeare. I’ve been alive for almost 27 years. And yet this was the first time I have ever seen/read/absorbed any version of Hamlet. Of course I knew the story, but it was learned entirely through osmosis. I think The Simpsons did a version of it. In any event, I’d never seen it.

The quote at the beginning of the post comes from Isaac Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare (though he was quoting somebody else at the time), and it’s easy to see why somebody might think that way. It seems like every line is a famous quotation or phrase that has become commonplace in the English language. To thine own self be true. Brevity is the soul of wit. Murder most foul. The primrose path. Mind’s eye. And the entire “to be or not to be” soliloquy. It all came from Hamlet.

I should say it’s easy to understand why somebody might think the second sentence is true. It’s obvious why people admire it so much. Even I am not enough of a troll to come out and criticize Hamlet. That’s just not something that’s done. It’s been acknowledged as a masterpiece by many far wiser than me, and I don’t question that.

But that’s not to say the Laurence Olivier version is without flaws. I know the material lends itself to big performances, but much of the cast was afflicted with the overacting bug so common during that era of film. Olivier himself is hard to find fault with, however. His role is so completely different than it was in Rebecca, and yet in both instances he found a way to invest himself so completely in the character. I just wonder how much of his performance as Hamlet is attributable to him and how much of the credit belongs to the director. Oh, I’m being told that Olivier was the director too.

He looks amazingly like Sting in this movie.

I mean, I wasn’t completely in love with the movie, but the most important takeaway was that at least I’ve seen it now. I’ve had to shamefully hide my Shakespearean ignorance for a long time now, and this is a major step in the right direction. Sure, I could name almost all the characters prior to viewing it, but I didn’t know who any of them were. I always assumed Claudius was a good guy. And I thought poor Yorick (alas!) was a major character. Now I know better!

Maybe now I should seek out some of Olivier’s other Shakespearean works—or perhaps Branagh’s—but part of me doesn’t feel cultured enough for that. I’ll just stick with The Lion King; it’s Hamlet in lions’ clothing. Or maybe I’ll just wait half a century. 50 years later, in 1998, Shakespeare in Love would win Best Picture, and that’s gotta be close enough, right? Hasn’t Gwyneth Paltrow had just as legendary a career as Laurence Olivier?

Well, maybe not. Still, I’d take these Shakespearean adaptations any day over the onslaught of musicals I’ll face in the next two decades. And I give Olivier a lot of credit for his willingness to hack and slash the play down to two and a half hours. I’m all for being faithful to the source material, but I’m glad I didn’t have to sit through 4+ hours of this. I’m a busy man. All the King’s Men isn’t going to watch itself.