IN MAKING HIS cinematic Hamlet, Laurence Olivier didn’t just film a play, he revamped the classic revenge tragedy as A Film. Unfortunately, the tools and tendencies of cinema end up undermining the strength and complexity of Hamlet’s character. Cinema provides opportunities to build lavish castle sets, create clever visuals to change scenes, and melodramatize Olivier’s lines with shrilly violins and close-ups, but Hamlet needs isolation and simplicity to convey his paralyzing ambivalence. The audience ought to wonder and worry where Hamlet is and what he’s doing in his solipsistic sanctuary of abstract words and ideas. Alas, that is impossible through Olivier’s camera lens.
The chief flaw of this self-directed, self-starred production is that the celebrated self-hatred of the tortured prince of Denmark is overwhelmed by the obvious self-love of Laurence Olivier. Olivier uses voice-overs so he can mug dramatically for the camera, and he seriously chops up the play to shape it to his own dramatic ends, entirely omitting Hamlet’s insightful levity with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and the repartee between the Grave Diggers. This Hamlet is all drama, all Olivier.
But you know what? Since Shakespeare left hardly a peep on how his plays should be fleshed out, all of this griping may amount to one interpretation against another. Shakespeare might have intended Hamlet to be a self-adoring, philosophic glam-puss, as in Olivier’s vision, or he may have wanted a brooding wordsmith riddled with self-doubt, as in mine.
Furthermore, when it came to showtime, Shakespeare produced blockbusters. He knew exactly how to shape and structure plot and character to resonate with an Elizabethan audience, just as Laurence Olivier had insights on how to reform Hamlet to capture the 1948 moviegoer. He earned an armful of Oscars doing so (Best Actor and Director among them), and the frequent revivals of his film version recognize Olivier’s instrumental role in inspiring cinema’s continuing obsession with Shakespeare. In the end, the Bard may rest easy in his grave, as Olivier perpetuates the drama’s success — no matter how much I squirm in my seat at how ill-fitting Olivier is in Hamlet’s skin.