In Fall 2009 Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke will shoot her dark, "scary-movie" version of William Shakespeare's Hamlet with Emile Hirsch (Speed Racer) portraying the title character as a Kurt Cobain-like indie musician at a modern liberal arts college. Music plays such a vital role in Hardwicke's vision that she's commissioned music supervisor Brian Reitzell (Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides) to write new songs for the film.
According to Hirsch, all the characters are younger than traditionally presented so that "the most brilliant poet of all time" will be accessible to teens and young adults.
Whole Handfuls of Film Hamlets Since 1900
Of the entire Shakespearean canon, only the tale of two star-crossed lovers has been adapted to moving pictures oftener than the Bard's longest drama. Hamlet has endured more than fifty cinema and TV resurrections since the turn of the twentieth century, beginning with stage legend Sarah Bernhardt's five-minute Le duel d'Hamlet.
Indeed, the great Dane is a real globe-hopping movie star; "To be or not to be" has been translated for the camera in Italy, Germany, India, and even Denmark. Among the more significant celluloid treatments of Hamlet are those following.
Hamlet (1948) - Directed by Laurence Olivier
Olivier won the lead-actor Oscar for his performance in this film-noir version, the only Shakespeare movie to take the Best Picture Academy Award. The politics were cut (with the excision of the characters Fortinbras, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern) in favor of Freudian psychology. 41-year-old Olivier emphasized the controversial "incest angle" by casting 28-year-old Eileen Herlie as Hamlet's mother, Gertrude.
Herlie revisited the role for director John Gielgud's stage production that became the 1964 "Electronovision" film Richard Burton's Hamlet. Hailed as one of the great interpreters of the play, Gielgud also provided the voice of the Ghost, who was presented only as an ominous shadow falling on Burton. Gielgud reprised the "role" for Hallmark Hall of Fame's 1970 TV production which starred Richard Chamberlain.
Gamlet (1964) - Directed by Grigori Kozintsev
Adapted by novelist Boris Pasternak and scored by Dmitri Shostakovich, the Russian Hamlet is rich with post-Stalinist politics (Fortinbras is important in Kozintsev's version). Most of the soliloquies are absent, serving to enhance the violent, energetic performance of star Innokenty Smoktunovsky, whose Hamlet is not plagued by inner conflict.
Shakespeare's Hamlet (1969) - Directed by Tony Richardson
He had starred in the stage production on which this first color Hamlet was based, but the "balding, paunchy" Nicol Williamson was less than a year the junior of Judy Parfitt (Gertrude) and Anthony Hopkins (Claudius). This likely contributed to the box-office failure of a film that had been promoted to fans of Franco Zeffirelli's recent hit Romeo and Juliet.
And speaking of that director...
Hamlet (1990) - Directed by Franco Zeffirelli
The heavily-abridged script, quick camera cuts, and casting of Lethal Weapon star Mel Gibson as Hamlet give this the air of an action flick. Zeffirelli inherited Olivier's affection for the Oedipal twist on the Hamlet-Gertrude relationship and gave the queen's role to Glenn Close, only a decade older than Gibson. This interpretation was spelled out in the closet scene when Hamlet simulated sex with his mother.
Both Alan Bates (Claudius) and Paul Scofield (the Ghost) had played the Danish prince on stage. Indeed, Scofield ranks with Gielgud and Olivier as one of the great twentieth-century Hamlets.
William Shakespeare's Hamlet (1996) - Directed by Kenneth Branagh
Branagh starred in his own adaptation, the only full-text version committed to celluloid. Vibrantly-colored sets fly in the face of Hamlet's reputation as gloomy drama. Victorian-era costumes and props bring the story closer to our own time while still making the language (somewhat) believable. The film was shot on 65mm stock, giving it an epic look; comparisons with David Lean's Doctor Zhivago were helped by the casting of Julie Christie as Gertrude.
The large, international cast features several Hollywood stars (such as Jack Lemmon and Robin Williams) but it's also chock-full of other Hamlets. Both Richard Briers (Polonius) and Simon Russell Beale (Second Gravedigger) played Hamlet on stage, as did Michael Maloney (Laertes), who also appeared in Zeffirelli's film as Rosencrantz. Nicholas Farrell (Horatio) provided the voice of Hamlet for director Natalia Orlova's 1992 half-hour, animated version. And, of course, Derek Jacobi (Claudius) assayed the lead role on stage many times and he starred in the 1980 BBC TV production opposite Star Trek's Patrick Stewart as Claudius.
29 years later, Stewart is bringing the usurping king to TV again, when he stars with former Doctor Who David Tennant in the RSC's version to air on BBC Two and later on PBS. (The film is in post-production as of September '09.)
Hamlet (2000) - Directed by Michael Almereyda
Ethan Hawke portrays Hamlet as a film student in this contemporary iteration. Claudius (Kyle MacLachlan) is CEO of the "Denmark Corporation." The Ghost (Sam Shepard) is first caught by a security camera. After killing Polonius (Bill Murray), Hamlet goes on a plane trip.
Liev Schreiber (Laertes) later took his own turn as Hamlet on stage. So did Diane Venora (Gertrude), who also played Ophelia opposite Kevin Kline's Hamlet in the New York Shakespeare Festival production that was filmed and aired on PBS in 1990.
Venora appeared as Lady Capulet in William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet, the stylized film version that starred Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes. It was to this Baz Luhrmann-directed movie that Emile Hirsch pointed as an inspiration for the new Hardwicke Hamlet.
The Ultimate Challenge for Any Actor
In the introduction to her 1992 book Modern Hamlets and Their Soliloquies Mary Z. Maher states that "the role of Hamlet is the quintessential feat for actors: to have achieved it with distinction is a mark of attainment in the profession."
Go watch some of the aforementioned movie Hamlets and decide for yourself: Did they pass the test?
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