Get it below three hours, and you don’t really have Hamlet any more. There’s so much texture, so much incidental richness, to Hamlet that a “tight” version that “plays well,” as people like to say, loses more than it gains. In part because we’re likely to know the plot, Hamlet can be cut by half an hour with virtually no real losses, and some very real improvements.
The full play stretches for close to four hours, almost twice the length of Macbeth. Looking at all nine, one can only conclude that the best course is to let Hamlet speak for himself, within reason. A 2002 televised performance directed by Peter Brook and starring Adrian Lester, a minimalist, multi-cultural version featuring a largely non-Western cast that has its moments but is too reduced in length to have much impact.A 2000 film starring Ethan Hawke and directed by Michael Almereyda, a serious, and seriously unsuccessful, attempt to re-imagine the play.
(Extensive use of the dreaded “tinkly piano” on the soundtrack was a second dealbreaker for me.) Scott’s film is further handicapped by the use of Blair Brown as Gertrude, so old she looks like Hamlet’s grandmother rather than his mother, and Jamey Sheridan as Claudius, whose laid-back, TV voice simply doesn’t project in the way necessary to create a Shakespearean personality. A 2000 version filmed for television, directed by and starring Campbell Scott, set, for some reason in post-Civil War America (sort of), that holds up well for the first three acts but struggles awkwardly during the last two.A 1996 film directed by and starring Kenneth Branagh, a lavish, all-star, full-text version that survives director Branagh’s cleverness and an intrusive, unsubtle score that is equal parts Masterpiece Theatre, Merchant-Ivory, and M-G-M - all glorious trumpets and soaring violins.This is definitely the most cinematic of the three Hamlet “movies,” and well worth seeing, even though it’s too short, and even if, like me, you’re not happy about spending your money on Mel Gibson. The Zeffirelli version is more cinematic than Olivier’s but makes many of the same cuts. Directed by Franco Zeffirelli, who made a splash twenty years before with a very sixties Romeo and Juliet. A 1990 film version, starring Mel Gibson, with Glenn Close as Gertrude and Alan Bates as Claudius.A 1990 televised performance of the Joseph Papp Shakespeare Festival production, directed by and starring Kevin Kline, a “ Hamlet for Americans,” with a slightly trimmed text and mostly American accents.A 1981 televised performance from the BBC starring Derek Jacobi, giving nearly all the text and a slightly post-modern production.(Oddly, the play was filmed without costumes or sets, but with a live audience, making it look rather like a cross between Hamletand Waiting for Godot.) A 1964 live performance, directed by Sir John Gielgud and starring Richard Burton ( right), giving us the full play in a crudely shot and miked black and white version.The film, which features music by William Walton, is self-consciously dark, primitive, and austere, reflecting the “high church” aesthetic of the time, largely established by T. The 1948 version by Olivier, drastically cut, almost in half, worth seeing as “Olivier’s Hamlet” rather than Hamlet.Since 1980, Hamlet has been done a number of times, both on television and as a film, and nine different versions are currently available on home video. In 1964 a Broadway production starring Richard Burton was filmed, giving viewers a near-complete version of the play on film for the first time. Remarkably, it was not until 1948 that the first Hamlet of the sound era appeared -Laurence Olivier’s cut-down noir version. And draped over the whole is the figure of Hamlet, that petulant, sulking, brooding prince who seems to have been born with no purpose but to die. The play’s language makes a near-fetish of self-indulgence, discarding the plot at the drop of a hat to pursue both poetic flights and linguistic quibbles as ends in themselves. Worse, what we are told often contradicts what we know about them from their actions. We are told a great deal about the characters. The most basic principle of narrative - “show, don’t tell” - is constantly violated. The elaborate plot is redundant, inconsistent, and full of holes. Hamlet, it must be said, is not a well-made play. “Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar?”