What a tedious few hours this film makes for! I enjoy Shakespeare and Hamlet is (obviously) one of his great plays. But not if you only knew it from this version.
As others have said here, it's difficult to understand all the acclaim this film received in its day. Quickly looking over the list of "Hamlet" films on IMDb, it does seen that this 1948 production was the first filmed version since the silents (or at least the early talkies) so maybe that was part of it. And I suppose at the time the staging and set might have seemed unique (?). But it just came across to me as VERY stage-y, and far too dependent on clouds of dry ice smoke for atmosphere.
The setting also suffers from an odd combination of not enough people (many scenes where nobody else seems to inhabit this big castle except Hamlet) followed by too many people (rooms suddenly fill up out of nowhere with hangers-on and courtiers). The castle is just WAY too big and full of odd, useless spaces that were probably meant to give you a sense of Hamlet's confusion and isolation but instead had me thinking about how big the soundstage must have been to build all these sets and what a pain it must have been to film and the tracking shots as the actors moved around. And the matched set of 6 trumpeters appearing out of nowhere to play elaborate fanfares every time the King walks by felt like something out of a Warner Bros. cartoon. I kept expecting them to turn sideways and be playing cards.
The age thing? The fact that Olivier was 41 is not the problem. It's the fact that with the heavy theatrical makeup and bad blond dye job/wig he looks 52. Part of what Hamlet is about is the problem of being a young adult confronting big issues for the first time in your life. In this version, you keep wondering why this middle-aged man can't get it together.
As for Olivier's talents -- well, he certainly does have the technical ability to speak Shakespeare in a way that generally makes sense of the words -- but good phrasing is NOT the same thing as being able to ACT it well.
In all, there was not one aspect of this film that made me think it was worth watching it. It gets a "3" from me only on the strength of it being Shakespeare's text (or at least some of it.)
As others have said here, it's difficult to understand all the acclaim this film received in its day. Quickly looking over the list of "Hamlet" films on IMDb, it does seen that this 1948 production was the first filmed version since the silents (or at least the early talkies) so maybe that was part of it. And I suppose at the time the staging and set might have seemed unique (?). But it just came across to me as VERY stage-y, and far too dependent on clouds of dry ice smoke for atmosphere.
The setting also suffers from an odd combination of not enough people (many scenes where nobody else seems to inhabit this big castle except Hamlet) followed by too many people (rooms suddenly fill up out of nowhere with hangers-on and courtiers). The castle is just WAY too big and full of odd, useless spaces that were probably meant to give you a sense of Hamlet's confusion and isolation but instead had me thinking about how big the soundstage must have been to build all these sets and what a pain it must have been to film and the tracking shots as the actors moved around. And the matched set of 6 trumpeters appearing out of nowhere to play elaborate fanfares every time the King walks by felt like something out of a Warner Bros. cartoon. I kept expecting them to turn sideways and be playing cards.
The age thing? The fact that Olivier was 41 is not the problem. It's the fact that with the heavy theatrical makeup and bad blond dye job/wig he looks 52. Part of what Hamlet is about is the problem of being a young adult confronting big issues for the first time in your life. In this version, you keep wondering why this middle-aged man can't get it together.
As for Olivier's talents -- well, he certainly does have the technical ability to speak Shakespeare in a way that generally makes sense of the words -- but good phrasing is NOT the same thing as being able to ACT it well.
In all, there was not one aspect of this film that made me think it was worth watching it. It gets a "3" from me only on the strength of it being Shakespeare's text (or at least some of it.)