Hamlet **** (1969, Nicol Williamson, Anthony Hopkins, Judy Parfitt, Marianne Faithfull, Gordon Jackson) – Classic Movie Review 9601

Director Tony Richardson shoots his 1969 film Hamlet during the run of his acclaimed stage production of the play at London’s Roundhouse Theatre (The Roundhouse in Chalk Farm was a great venue in the late Sixties and early Seventies), using the sets and cast from the production.

The lively London stage version of the play makes a slightly disappointing movie as it is filmed only moderately as cinema by Richardson, though it is lit up with rousing performances, and its purpose must have been to preserve those performances on film, a job well done.

Nicol Williamson is electrifying as the Dane, pop star Marianne Faithfull is fine as a surprise Ophelia, Anthony Hopkins and Judy Parfitt are strong and solid as Claudius and Gertrude, and old Roger Livesey makes a super Gravedigger (as well as First Player). It is Livesey’s final full-length feature movie before his death on 4 February 1976, aged 69, though he did later appear in Futtocks End (1970) and on TV.

There is a much trimmed text and tampering (two crucial scenes are reversed, with extra lines added) in the screenplay by Richardson, and there are too many big head shots, allowing us to see Gertrude’s fillings, and muddy visuals in the Technicolor photography of Gerry Fisher, shooting the first movie version of Hamlet in colour. It runs only 117 minutes, where a full text needs four and a quarter hours.

The end credits of cast and characters are narrated in the manner of Fahrenheit 451.

Roger Lloyd Pack plays Reynaldo, and also appears as one of the players and as one of Laertes’s followers.

Williamson was only was ten months younger than Parfitt and 14 months older than Hopkins (aged 31).

Also in the cast are Gordon Jackson as Horatio, Mark Dignam as Polonius, Michael Pennington as Laertes, Ben Aris as Rosencrantz, Clive Graham as Guildenstern, Peter Gale as Osric, John J Carney as Player King, Michael Elphick as Captain and Anjelica Huston as Court Lady.

It is filmed at The Round House, Camden, London.

Hamlet is directed by Tony Richardson, runs 117 minutes, is made by Woodfall Film Productions and Filmways Pictures, is released by Columbia Pictures, is shot in Technicolor by Gerry Fisher, is produced by Neil Hartley, Hans Gottschalk, Leslie Linder and Martin Ransohoff, is scored by Patrick Gowers and is designed by Jocelyn Herbert.

Filmways Pictures also produced Peter Brook’s 1970 King Lear and Peter Hall’s 1968 A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 9601

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