Hamlet ***** (1964, Innokenti Smoktunovsky, Mikhail Nazvanov, Elza Radzina) – Classic Movie Review 9602

Director Grigori Kozintsev’s 1964 world cinema masterpiece Hamlet is quite unlike any other version with a very cinematic vision shown by director Kozintsev, especially in his dramatic depiction of the towering castle of Elsinore and the frightening apparition of the King’s ghost.

Shakespeare’s tragedy is reinterpreted as a magnificent Russian epic as translated back in 1941 by Boris Pasternak, with a screenplay by Grigori Kozintsev.

The film is illuminated by a commanding central performance as Hamlet by Innokenti Smoktunovsky. He won the Best Actor award at the Venice Film Festival in 1964 and the film won the Special Jury Prize (tied with The Gospel According to St Matthew).

With some dialogue cut in favour of memorably visual images, this might not be Shakespeare as we know it, but it is a clear, fast moving and exciting film rather than a filmed stage play. It is shot in black and white and runs 140 minutes.

The life-size imitation of a medieval castle took six months to build for the film. The castle was built in the village of Keila-Joa, Estonia, out of logs and veneer, then painted and decorated.

Also in the cast are Mikhail Nazvanov as King Claudius, Elza Radzina as Queen Gertrude, Anastasia Vertinskaya as Ophelia, Vladimir Erenberg as Horatio and Stepan Oleksenko as Laertes.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 9602

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