V.ii. Duel and Deaths - Olivier '48

The duel Olivier offers us is framed in two traditions. The first is stagecraft, as these are extremely well choreographed set pieces of stage fighting, done in camera by the actors, fierce and dangerous-looking exchanges. The second is the Danish tradition of the world of the play, with highly ritualistic posing before the fight begins, the cannons sounding as Claudius beckons them to, and the courtiers repeating the King's lines during the toast. The weapons are, just as the text indicates, both rapier and dagger, and it's not until the camera zooms in on the sword points, one of them unbaited, that we truly leave the framework of what's expected to enter the more dangerous and unpredictable world of the fight. Almost certainly, if the courtiers could see what we see, they wouldn't be standing so close.

It's unfortunate then that Olivier cuts out so much of Laertes' character, reducing Hamlet's opponent to a near non-entity. During Hamlet's just-as-ritualistic apology, the camera doesn't care to look at Laertes' reaction, nor does he have lines with which to respond. He and Osric look sinister as they shuffle the swords, but that is the whole of it. The speech does make his mother happy, but Claudius and Laertes are presumably so invested in their murder plot, they cannot have an honest reaction to it themselves. Fair enough. If we're talking cuts and changes, note the translation of "union" to "jewel", even though we see what Claudius drops into the cup.

Though each exchange is well done, the second fight is mostly played off camera. There is ANOTHER duel, you see, between Gertrude and Claudius, or perhaps inside Gertrude herself, between self-preservation and a mother's love. It's made clear that she figures out the cup is poisoned, her eyes (and the camera) keep going to the cup, and a sadness overwhelms her. A decision is made. She takes the cup herself, exchanging it for a handkerchief so Hamlet can wipe his brow, and drinks deep. When told not to, she smiles a fatalistic smile. The courtiers cluelessly laugh at her small act of disobedience. She has sacrificed herself for him quite consciously (small cuts allow this to happen more believably).

Before the last exchange, Laertes scratches Hamlet, which shocks everyone, and he immediately starts to back away, as if shocked himself. He is caught cheating, and judged by the assembly, and is suddenly afraid of Hamlet's reaction. Playing up the tension, Hamlet's slow dawning realization gives way to a quick disarming maneuver. No more games, no toying with the opponent, the show is over. The disarm means he can look at the tip of the sword and confirm Laertes' cheating, and when Osric calls out that the two duelists are incensed, it's all in their eyes because nothing has happened yet. The line is like a starter's pistol, and they go at it - again, a strong fight.

Laertes is defeated, the Queen dies and Claudius is revealed as the villain. At this point, the guard and Court, a fickle lot, rally behind Hamlet. Claudius has lost all power, a situation that has been growing since Hamlet went into exile, and is surrounded, trapped. Hamlet stabs him fiercely, and in his last moments, he reaches for the crown he lost in the scuffle, as if that badge of office could protect him. He dies, and the assembly is strangely frozen in space. The shock, but also a sort of fixed moment in time, speaking to the power of History, perhaps, or a skip of the clock as "time out of joint" resets to its proper rhythm. Hamlet uses that short time to sit on the throne, and the Court offers him the crown. He'll be king, finally, for all of three minutes.

His last speech is spoken from that throne, Horatio attending him. Like Laertes, the latter's part has also been shredded. This Horatio doesn't try to commit suicide and follow Hamlet. In fact, for a second, it looks like he won't even get to eulogize Hamlet properly. What actually happens is that he first gives Fortinbras' command to put the bodies on a stage, etc. - there is no Fortinbras in the film - and then comes his eulogy, and a kiss. The ever-mobile camera tracks into blackness, then follows the guards bringing Hamlet up to the top of Elsinore, lingering in each room as it does. Cannons fire, we see one or two smoking. The chapel. The Queen's closet. And finally, silhouettes going up the tower, Hamlet's final stage. Ending as it does outside Elsinore, we may understand the Ghost to be finally exorcised, if indeed it was the camera's point of view, as it often seemed.

V.ii. The Readiness Is All - Olivier '48

In this staging, Claudius and Laertes have just worked out their murder plot, the camera moves away from them, pans up, and Hamlet and Horatio come into view, coming down stairs and stopping by a window. Cut from this conversation is Hamlet's sea voyage, since Rosencrantz & Guildenstern don't exist in the adaptation. We lose the "sea change" that would make Hamlet appear a changed man to Horatio, one able to take lethal action. It's replaced with the "passion' slave" exchange from Act III, commending Horatio's stability, but at this point perhaps also taking on those qualities, "wearing" them in his "heart of hearts". Hamlet himself will seem more at peace and "stable" than ever, while Horatio will be the one panicking and trying to delay the action. It does connect the line with recent events in which Hamlet forgot himself to Laertes, but that's a different type of passion than the one from the text.

Enter Osric. Olivier presents him as a clown, certainly not sinister or even overtly opportunistic. As soon as he arrives, Hamlet and Horatio start walking away, and they will keep walking, with this fop in tow. Osric fans himself constantly with his feathered hat, something that irritates Hamlet by its proximity, motivating the hot/cold on/off exchanges. Osric never does put the hat on his head, even if he accepts Hamlet's reality in principle, so Hamlet has to put it on him at some point. Cue slapstick walking around with the feather in Osric's face. The character will leave with a bow for every "yours" Hamlet utters, and fall down the stairs in a final act of buffoonery.

At the end of the sequence, Hamlet has walked right to the hall where the duel will be staged, and overlooks it. Again we're motivating the text. Hamlet finally tells Osric he'll be walking in this hall, essentially waiting for the duel to come to him. He stops Horatio from calling the whole thing off, and with a smile, comforts his friend with "the readiness is all". Olivier doesn't push on these lines as, say, Branagh does. They're really for Horatio's sake, telling him not to worry, and in "let be", simply telling his friend not to stop whatever gears have started turning already (as opposed to answering some crucial question in the previous few lines).

But Horatio couldn't have stopped it even if he had tried. Within seconds, the Royals arrive with Laertes and a host of trumpeters, and the trial is already under way. In the world of this film, there are barely 6 minutes between Claudius hatching his plan and setting them into motion. Osric was sent less than 2 minutes after his conversation with Laertes. This is more urgency than the play as written musters; Shakespeare put the Hamlet's arrival and Ophelia's death and funeral in between events.

V.i. Ophelia's Funeral - Olivier '48

Olivier's version of the cemetery is an impressive space, essentially a multi-tiered quarry so tombstones are visible in every shot, whatever the height of the camera. It also creates a pit that best describes the hell to which the characters are in danger of falling. Interestingly, Horatio is given the line about suicide, and even as he says it, shock and realization flash on his face and he becomes desperate for Hamlet not to investigate further. He is aware of Ophelia's madness, recognizes no doubt the members of the burial party, and puts two and two together. There are things he hasn't told his friend, but things have gotten a lot worse since he left Elsinore to meet Hamlet at the sea port.

Terence Morgan's Laertes, with his fresh face, is more hurt than angry at the priest, and even when he flings an insult, you can't really hate this grieving boy. Morgan eventually gives in to melodrama, with the kind of gestures Hamlet explicitly condemns in actors earlier in the play (but cut in this adaptation), but then the scene almost calls for it. Is there greater melodrama than leaping into someone's grave? Should we see a condemnation of Laertes in this? Shakespeare, Hamlet and/or Olivier may find the boy's action less than sincere by contrasting them with the Prince's description of bad acting. By making Laertes saw the air with his hands, the idea that he is somehow insincere sets in, and Hamlet is better justified in his outrage. The absentee brother's grief is perhaps just a circus replacing the normal obsequies denied Ophelia.

But Hamlet isn't himself innocent of melodrama. He comes "onstage" arms out, like a Christ figure, a monument, one of these tombstones come alive. The irony of Laertes asking the Devil to take him is palpable. He may be "resurrected", but he's not Savior. He is their doom, and his own. In his anger, he rattles his lines off quickly. His last lines are spoken as he walks away, throwing them at specific characters insultingly. Laertes is the mewing cat, a suckling, or if you'll excuse the modern parlance, a "pussy". Claudius is the dog who will have his day, a not-so-veiled threat. Throughout, Gertrude is the loving mother, interceding on behalf of her son and seeing the best in him, excusing his behavior. This prompts a cold reaction from Claudius who is left alone with the grieving Laertes, where he, in this adaptation's restructuring of the play, then seduces the younger man into conspiring to kill Hamlet. This meeker version of Laertes is now primed to do something despicable, where before it might not have been justified.

V.i. The Gravedigger Scene - Olivier '48

Olivier mercilessly cuts lines, but he also adds to the play through visuals. He dissolves straight from Ophelia's watery grave to her earthly one. We here singing (just as she was singing). A shovel comes into view. The Gravedigger is hard at work, the top of the scene with the Second Clown is missing. He finds a skull, smiles at it in fond remembrance; this is Yorick. He sets it outside the grave for Hamlet to find. And it's this skull that's in the perfect position to give Hamlet's shadow the terrifying face of a Grim Reaper. Hamlet has returned and he is Death, but he is also already dead, as far as Fortune is concerned.

Stanley Holloway makes a good Gravedigger, a simple man who straddles the line between truthsayer and knave. He is sometimes too literal, sometimes pokes fun and sometimes is serious, but in a way that seems consistent. For example, when he delivers the line about the grave being for one that WAS a woman, he goes from the teasing the gentlemen to earnestness. This is what he really believes, that after death, a person ceases to be one and becomes an object. This is the philosophical distance he puts between himself and the beneficiaries of his work. And yet, he can fondly remember them in life, as he does with Yorick, catching the skull's absent nose with affection more than mockery. It can also be seen as sign of how perverse the Ghost is, how contrary it is to the laws of nature better represented by the literally grounded Gravedigger.

Hamlet may say he's repulsed by his late jester's chopless skull, and a touch of macabre realism is inserted when earth spills out of it at one point, but a smile never leaves his lips. He even animates the skull, bringing it close and reenacting a scene from his childhood by whispering in its missing ear. Again, we're seeing a Hamlet who is so close to death, he is already interacting with the dead. And perhaps, this has been so from the very beginning, and the reason the Ghost could speak to him. Metaphorically, Hamlet died the day his father did (they do have the same name, as revealed in this very scene).

A word on Horatio: He shares some of Hamlet's lines in this, so he too can tease the Gravedigger, and Hamlet gives him a sidelong look through most of the scene as if to make sure he doesn't give away the game and blurt out who Hamlet really is. Otherwise, he's the usual sounding board, though Hamlet has less to say in this version. The funeral party interrupts the scene and Hamlet never talks of Caesar or Alexander. But perhaps the visuals achieve the same effect.

IV.vii. Ophelia's Death - Olivier '48

Olivier opts for a very literal interpretation of the scene, done completely in voice-over, showing Gertrude's story as fact. In the restructuring of the play, we go directly from Ophelia's madness scene to the suicide, though the literalism turns it into an accident. The camera struggles to follow her out of doors, and turning the corner, finds she's gone. But the brook is in the background outside the next doorway. We then cut to a shot of the swampy stream under the weeping willow and, panning left, find Ophelia singing some songs normally in the previous scene. floating on a cushion of vines. She floats out of shot, vines trailing her for a while, and by the time the camera pans to where she would be, she's gone, swallowed up. As painless for the audience as it is for her. Fade to the next scene's tombstones.

A rather efficient and fairly unambiguous scene then, though one could make the claim that we're seeing a product of Gertrude's or Laertes' imagination.

IV.vii. Claudius' Seduction - Olivier '48

Olivier moves this scene to a later position, AFTER Ophelia's burial and Hamlet's return, even conflating it with elements of Scene 5 ("let the great axe fall"), with Claudius capitalizing on Laertes' refreshed grief and anger (this time with Hamlet as the target) to get Laertes on his murderous plan. The front of the sequence moves the characters from the graveyard, up steps into Elsinore. It's there that Laertes is left alone in a way he never is in the play as written, his lines becoming a short soliloquy about what he's lost and the outrages done to his sister, even as he watches the gravedigger shovel dirt into her grave. (It also shows off the set's impressive depth.) But his wish for revenge is overheard by Claudius who recaptures him in that moment.

Through the whole sequence, Laertes seems spent. He's angry at Hamlet, but accepts Claudius' explanations rather easily. Over drinks, the King more or less informs him of the plan. With the cuts to the dialog, Laertes has less to say and when compared to other adaptations, there's less of a sense of a master manipulator making Laertes think it was all his idea to begin with. The Norman cavalier Lamond, for example, is not named (though lovers of the play will find a huge painting of a knight in the room to be in reference to him), only spoken about as a fan of Laertes'. Olivier's cuts weaken the character, and that's a problem for this scene, because Basil Sydney's Claudius is also a weakened character. Weakened more by the two-dimensional, mustache-twirling performance than the cuts, though they of course don't help.

Claudius does get one of his better moments in this scene, however, when he moves over to his throne and fondles it as he speaks his lines about "that we would do". It becomes a confession and justification for his own fratricide (indeed highlighting the idea that Hamlet and Laertes were likely brought up as brothers). It's a testament to Claudius as man of action, the man who acted on a "should", as always in contrast with Hamlet.

Interesting camera movement as the various additions are made to Claudius' plan. It - and we've been trained to think of Olivier's camera as either the Ghost's point-of-view or at least to have some kind of personality and morality - tracks back at the end of each ploy. As pure narration, it wants to leave when the plan is final, but the characters keep drawing it back in to amend it with another lethal element. By the third time, it's almost mocking the complexity of the plan. It feels like a joke. On a moral level, the camera recoils at the murderous instinct, tries to leave though it can't look away. Once done, it moves to another part of the castle and finds Hamlet and Horatio, who will also be making plans and discussing the "would" and the "should", or what Hamlet calls "readiness". Olivier ties the two speeches together by juxtaposing the scenes more closely.

IV.vi. Hamlet's Letter - Olivier '48

The letters' arrival is interwoven into Scene 5, so occurs out of the normal sequence. First, the King and Queen get theirs BEFORE Laertes arrives, using lines from Scene 7, and they walk off reading, each up their own staircase, representing their completely different thoughts on the matter. Gertrude, sad and wanting news from her son; Claudius, surprised and angry Hamlet does not appear to be dead yet.

We then cut Horatio who is watching Ophelia pick flowers. He is approached by two men, the sailors, who give him a letter and step out of shot. As Horatio starts to read, the camera closes in, goes by him to the wall, which dissolves into the tale Hamlet tells, in his own voice. Model ships, some quick swashbuckling action, and Hamlet clasping hands with one one of the very sailors who delivered his message. The effect is very cinematic, and does a good job of clarifying Hamlet's story. It's clearer, for example, that Hamlet has jumped ships on purpose, to escape his English fate. (Of course, without Rosencrantz&Guildenstern, removed from this adaptation, his escort is faceless and he remains guiltless of their "going to it".)

As Horatio gets to the end of the message, the camera tracks back again and we see the sailors have not left outright. Ophelia enters singing, and they appear as haunted by her sadness as Horatio is. They let her pass, silently, and only then rush off to meet Hamlet as we stay with Ophelia, who enters Scene 5, already in progress, as previously discussed.

IV.v. Laertes Returns - Olivier '48

Olivier's treatment of this sequence is highly cinematic and focuses on Ophelia, not her brother, with massive cuts to his lines. Between the first and second parts of Scene 5, Olivier inserted Horatio's receipt of a letter from Hamlet, and it's at the end of that scene that Ophelia crosses his path, singing one of her songs. It increases the irony of her coming suicide because she almost learns her lover is coming back, or she might have heard, and his return is part of her nihilistic motivation. In any case, the camera follows her to the great hall where Laertes' sequence is already in progress. It removes the rabble at the gates and makes unclear the wronged son's ire towards the King. It's all on her, and the argument her brother is having with the Royals is just background noise, noise she interrupts with her entrance. We don't see her face until she speaks (singing excluded), which turns her into a ghost, with a function similar to the capital "G" Ghost of the play in the closet scene. She dispels the rage and violence in the scene, possibly prevents a misunderstanding from leading to murder. Laertes is haunted, and Ophelia is a sort of spirit, not truly connecting with the world around her.

After Laertes' initial reaction, we stay with Ophelia, she walks out of the room, speaks lines to herself, leaves rosemary on Hamlet's chair (asking him to remember), returns to the hall. And they don't follow her. They're stunned. She might as well be walking through walls. Ophelia is isolated - by choice, in a sense - and impossible to communicate with. The three onlookers don't even try. She gives them flowers (appropriate to their sins), and Gertrude is made to break down and cry, but they don't respond verbally. Even Laertes' running commentary is mostly removed. In the end, Ophelia walks away, crumples by an archway, crosses herself, looks back (though we never do), and seems to make her decision to commit suicide. What she imagines or reasons at that moment is a mystery. Does she imagine her brother will now avenge her father, and that her work is done? Does she realize she's lost any connection she might have had to the people behind her? We don't know. But Olivier certainly shows us that crucial moment of decision. The camera hangs back (and still no reaction shots), watches her leave the room, then follows her, but she's gone. And the image dissolves into that of the brook as Gertrude's telling of Ophelia's final moments begins. It's obvious Olivier draws a straight line from this moment to that fatal one, and in a way that could only really be done on film.

IV.v. Ophelia's Madness - Olivier '48

The scene starts with foreshadowing of Ophelia's suicide as we see her reflection in the famous brook, taking a flower floating upon the water. As she plucks it, her image is naturally distorted, a metaphor for her broken mind. She screams, we see her on the river bank, her hair undone and tangled with bits and pieces of plants. She runs off, over a long that acts as a bridge over the brook, to and through the castle, only stopping after she crosses Horatio and the Queen, walking the halls.

There is something defiant about Jean Simmons' performance as Ophelia that gives a rebellious edge to some of her lines (she is, after all, a rebel's sister). Her back is turned when she asks where the "beauteous majesty of Denmark", but she's already seen the Queen. Is this mark of disrespect intentional? She is clearly not feigning madness, as Hamlet was, but that madness has dispelled her native inhibitions and given her permission to be insolent. The line could be read to mean she does not see the the Queen as "majesty", and indeed, her exit asking for her coach and giving her farewells to invisible attendants could be a fantasy in which SHE is Queen. Like Hamlet, her ambition has been aborted by the Royals' meddling and ultimately, Claudius' fratricide. Ophelia's ambitions are those of a child, aspiring to marriage in a naive way, but she still knows she's lost something, not just a father and a husband, but the future she believed was hers.

More insolence: She won't endure the Queen's consoling. Every time Gertrude attempts it, Ophelia starts on a song (and Simmons has a beautiful singing voice), even moves away. This is even more true once Claudius happens on the scene. She won't let him touch her. There's a sense that, consciously or not, she knows who's responsible for all their sorrows. She moves between smiles and tears, silliness and wisdom, girl and woman, and though the dirtiest song isn't used, there is a moment of sexuality as yet unseen in the character when she lets Horatio help her up. She notices him as a young woman would a handsome gallant, flushed by his touch.

Gertrude flees Claudius' touch too, mind. Hamlet's parting words have had an effect on her, though she hides it in distracted sadness. Claudius, sensing she's slipping out of his control, embraces her from behind and visibly frustrated, lays a manipulative speech on her. He talks about OUR son and threats to OUR own person, physically showing they are, as Hamlet had said, "one flesh". In other words, "we're in this together, baby". If his regime falls, she falls with it, and better behave like the Queen he needs her to be, obedient at his side. It's not often discussed, but one of the great evils perpetrated by this corrupt Denmark is how it uses women for its own ends. It has broken Ophelia and will undo Gertrude, the puppet queen as well.

Act IV, Scenes 1-3 - Olivier '48

Olivier cuts scenes 1, 2 and indeed, 4, from Act IV, which does have a considerable impact on the play. By omitting Scene 1, Claudius' character is impoverished (the King is rather flat throughout the adaptation), and we can't evaluate whether Gertrude sides with her son or her husband (though the previous Act definitely leans towards the former). Scene 2's omission is unsurprising, given that Rosencrantz & Guildenstern have been excised from the play completely. So we start with Scene 3, a much calmer moment for lacking the chase through Elsinore. In fact, the King's sealing letters with Hamlet standing right there. Claudius' tone is restrained and ever the politician, he makes it sound like Hamlet's exile is for his own good, to avoid prosecution. The Prince is insolent, but Claudius' lack of reaction turns the words into curious/profound observation rather than insult.

Much more interesting is Hamlet's moment of madness when he calls Claudius his mother. He gets that far-away look in his eyes and his hands clench as if around someone's throat. By transforming his stepfather into his mother, or merging the two concepts, is he in a way giving Claudius a stay of execution? Olivier plays it as a realization. It's as if having decided not to harm his mother, he can now no longer harm her husband. Olivier is answering the question as to why Hamlet allows himself to go into exile rather than give in to his murderous impulse and kill the King instead. The exile saves all their lives, at least temporarily (aside from Ophelia, of course). With Scene 4 missing, THIS becomes the mid-play epiphany, the dramatic turning point. Not "my thoughts be bloody", quite the contrary. Hamlet apparently gives up his revenge, and we'll have to wonder why he returns to Denmark later. He can't even kill his two false friends on the voyage to England since they don't exist. Does Claudius' treachery (the letters requesting his death) reignite his desires? That's an analysis for another day.

As for Claudius, the staging has him go to the window to give his closing speech, speaking to England across the sea. A cool, collected delivery that speaks less to rage than it does to acceptance of one's situation. The role is underplayed here, but one might still praise it as an ideal form of Hamlet himself, i.e. a character who has already come to terms with "the readiness is all".

III.iv. The Closet Scene - Olivier '48

Although I think Eileen Herlie does a wonderful job with Gertrude in this scene, she is still playing a weaker version of the character than Julie Christie's. As the scene begins, Polonius is very stern with her, treating her like he does Ophelia, despite the difference in rank. This, more than anything, weakens her, though how quiet she is with Hamlet at first, more sad and exasperated than angry (making her "wicked tongue" an odd accusation to make), does too. While we might question her power as Queen, it does strengthen her connection to Ophelia, likewise a victim of all these men. Even Polonius exercises power over her, though to be fair, he's never been as much a representative of the King as he is here. Even the arras behind which he hides has the picture of a King, and it's King's death he suffers. Though this interpretation of Polonius seems rather benign, a more overtly ambitious Polonius is entirely possible, living - and dying - vicariously through the King.

As Hamlet comes in, he holds his sword threateningly, and quite close to his mother's throat too, but her question isn't as fearful as other performances have made it. She's calm enough to try and convince her son not to do something rash. Which he does by stabbing the arras, joyful and happy at the idea that he might just have killed the King, Olivier taking just enough of a beat to make the murder deliberate rather than an act of pure passion, though surely, he must realize he just left Claudius downstairs in the chapel. The staging is rather great, with Gertrude in the foreground (we'll come back to this), and Hamlet letting the sword stick in the arras, keeping its victim upright, for the longest time. It makes sense thematically. Though he's killed Polonius, the text has him only notice a few lines later as he first discusses the Queen's alleged sins. He literally "puts a pin in it", and creates tension while we wait for the inevitable reveal that he has killed the wrong man.

Now the Queen gets afraid and angry, but Hamlet responds with a strange disconnectedness to his own words. His verbal attacks are made with the hint of a smile, and his cool accusations contrast heavily with his mother's tears. He's almost having fun and does not engage emotionally with her. Lack of empathy as madness? Where he IS engaged emotionally is with his father. When he compares Gertrude's husbands, we see they both have lockets, Hamlet's containing Hamlet Sr.'s, and Gertrude's, Claudius'. As he describes his father, Gertrude looks at HIM, not the picture, seeing Senior's features in Junior. Here the adaptation starts to flirt with Oedipal themes, and seem to justify a couple of kisses between them later, one chaste, the other a little more passionate (I'll have cause to discuss Freud's influence on the play at a later date, using a more overtly Freudian adaptation to do so). Perhaps because of movie standards of the time, Olivier, while presenting a hint of incest in this scene, did cut or change lines that had a son discuss his mother's sexual activities. For example, her "enseamed bed" becomes the cleaner "lascivious bed". The film maker thus puts some distance between a potential perversion in the plot, and perverse language, leaving the relationship in cleaner, but just as ambiguous, waters.

As an angry Hamlet starts to choke the life out of his mother, the Ghost intervenes. Drum beats signal its presence, distracts Hamlet and makes him swoon. We only see it in one shot, as a slightly glowing shadow in the doorway, something Gertrude does not herself see. Otherwise, we're squarely in the Ghost's point of view, as Hamlet looks straight into the camera and points at us, the audience. This certainly reinforces the idea that the camera in the film is so often motivated by the Ghost's gaze. In the early part of the scene, the camera is, in fact, more often close to Gertrude than it is to Hamlet, and the Ghost loves HER. It is her plight, more than Hamlet's tardiness, that calls the Ghost to action (after all, Hamlet's been goofing around for a long time by now). Not seeing the Ghost doesn't make it less creepy. Olivier makes his own performance do that work, squirming on his side as he does when the Ghost leaves. After it's left, we hear church bells chiming, a possible call-back to the Ghost's first departure at the cock's crow. Is it morning already? Has "witching hour" ended and sent the poor soul back to Hell? Or was this all an artifact of Hamlet's madness brought on by the cognitive dissonance surely inherent to (almost) murdering a loved one?

From there, he grows kinder to his mother (inappropriately so, you might say), but what's really interesting about the end of the scene is the way Hamlet talks about having to leave for England. As so often happens in Shakespeare, there are so many words that some will often go by unnoticed, until a slightly different emphasis in a performance somehow makes it shine. Here it's "This man [Polonius] shall set me packing". Though the trip to England is "concluded on", Polonius' murder makes the exile unavoidable now. And Hamlet, who does not trust his travel companions, may realize that he's actually being sent to his death (thus his quick action to turn the trick back on his fellows). But turnabout is fair play, as Hamlet has ALSO sent Polonius on a one-way trip, to the undiscovered country from the "To be or not to be" speech. This is where Shakespeare's traveler metaphor achieves its apogee (though a travel metaphor continues to be used in later scenes, like the one through the guts of a beggar).

III.iii. The Confessional - Olivier '48

As usual, Olivier tells us more with his staging than he does with his actors' performances, which makes up for his large cuts to Shakespeare's lines. Obviously, the largest cut where this sequence is concerned is the elimination of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern, but their scene here is easy to excise. Instead, Polonius runs to Claudius directly with his plan. He has to seek him out because the King has been sitting alone in darkness since the Mouse-Trap, and strangely for him, crownless. As we discover him, his face is completely in darkness, an image of his sin, yes, but also of a man devoured by guilt. He does not face us out of shame. This Claudius seems more repentant than others, in tears, kneeling without his words prompting him to do so. The camera focuses on his hand for a long time, another clue that it is very much the Ghost's eye-view in this adaptation. A Ghost fixating on the hand that murdered it in life.

Hamlet stumbles upon this scene, walking behind Claudius and only barely noticing him there. His speech is in voice-over to avoid the theatricality of words spoken and unheard. In many adaptations, Hamlet's presence in this room feels deliberate. A crime of opportunity to be sure, but it ties into his last speech. He is ready to do anything, and welcomes this chance (until he thinks about it some more). In the way Olivier stages it, Hamlet is taken by surprise by this opportunity, and feels a sudden rush to avenge his father, but it's all going too fast. It makes his decision not to go through with it more realistic, where a slow or thoughtful approach would infer more time to think about acting to counter the time to think about NOT acting.
The statue of Jesus in this scene is no casual set dressing. Olivier uses it in his staging to give Hamlet pause. It's in seeing it that Hamlet makes the realization that Claudius should not be killed a-praying, and Jesus becomes a character in the room, silently looking at the characters, his eye line able to meet theirs, and a voiceless conversation does occur! In this praying scene, prayers are answered, not by some divine mechanic, but by characters hearing themselves speak and reacting to it (Shakespeare's great gift to literary characters, according to critic Harold Bloom). Divine inspiration and wisdom coming from inside the characters. As Claudius' words "don't rise up", the imagery and this more secular reading tell us different, and that - a double irony - Christ does forgive him, but he cannot forgive himself. The last line sees the camera drop down, obscuring Jesus' face and moving down a dark slab towards a sobbing Claudius.

III.ii. Critical Reception - Olivier '48

As the Court leaves the "theater", Hamlet sings his lines, throwing his torch in the air jubilantly. He becomes so manic, in fact, that Horatio can hardly keep up and isn't given enough time to confirm or deny the King's reaction (although it was pretty dramatic and clear). Olivier compressed a lot of the action, so there are a number of cuts, including (sadly) the pipe metaphor. This is, after all, a version of the play without Rosencrantz & Guildenstern. A few of their lines are given to Polonius instead, which tends to make him less scatterbrained for the start of the sequence and then seems to make him press the issue as he repeats the summons in his own voice.

Instead of focusing on Hamlet's madness in this moment, Olivier makes lines like "My wit's diseased" as level-headed as any. There's a solid confidence in his treatment of Polonius, and when he points to clouds out in a dark corner of the castle, never even looking in that direction, he is serious and cruel. He's not acting crazy, not seeing things, or even feigning hallucinations. He is testing how far Polonius' sycophancy goes. He never takes his eyes off the old man, implicitly telling him that he owns him: "I am the master here and you'd do well to know your place, you who would command me to go to my mother's closet." A brilliant representation of what is going on under the surface of the cloud exchange.

"By and by is easily said" isn't spoken to Polonius, but as a thoughtful aside. Olivier takes a verbal dagger and points it at Hamlet himself. "By and by" means "in a moment", and implies a delay, so of course we're reminded of his forever-delayed revenge. Easily sworn, but the deadline is something that lacks definition, and the doing is much more difficult. It is somewhat moving that the camera lingers on Horatio after he is dismissed. He wasn't really consulted and sees that he cannot truly help his friend, especially since he strikes me as someone who would never counsel going through with a murder.
The following soliloquy starts with Hamlet his back to us, so that you can't initially tell if he's speaking the words or using voice-over. He is facing utter darkness. When he turns, we see he was indeed speaking the lines, but the original confusion has put you in the right frame of mind - we are hearing a man's inner thoughts. He then starts to go up some stairs towards his mother's closet, looking up at a god-like beam of light. Olivier has crafted an image here that shows Hamlet going from dark to light, from doubt to decision, and at the same time, relates to the King's own dilemma, as in the next scene we will see his words going up, but his thoughts remaining below. Hamlet's own pledge here will be as empty as the King's own prayers.

III.ii. The Mouse-Trap - Olivier '48

Trumpets sound, everyone enters, Hamlet in darkness in the center. First, courtiers and players, showing deference, and only then do the Royals come down the stairs. Hamlet goes up to help his mother come down. Is he lulling her into a false sense of security? That would be coherent with the whole idea of putting on a show (the play and his high spirits). His first shot at her, choosing to sit by Ophelia instead of her, seems even more mercurial from her point of view, and calculated cruelty from ours. The courtiers gasp at this slight. The idea that this sequence scandalously upends Denmark's hierarchy is something today's audiences might not at first get. Not that Ophelia is kindly treated. Hamlet grabs her by the wrist and pushes her down into a chair. Though this is a violent gesture, her father Polonius is rather pleased that it seems to confirm his still-held theory. The poor man is completely oblivious in this version, the only one to laugh when Hamlet publicly humiliates him. Ophelia's own humiliation in this scene is more private. Gertrude and Claudius don't even hear Hamlet's loud accusations before the play starts, so as if we were watching it as a play, the actors are projecting their voices, but intimacy is nevertheless retained. This Ophelia is an innocent, naive girl, so the references to her lap do shock her.
Of The Mouse-Trap, only the Prologue and mime show are in the film. The Prologue seems almost embarrassed at how short the text is, though he may just be intimidated by the royal audience. Did Hamlet write this? Since there's no dialog, where are the lines he inserted? If he did write the prologue, we might believe he set himself up for his "As woman's love" line. The "mischief" is definitely Hamlet's. On stage, the orchard is represented by a sickly-looking cactus-like tree and the camera stays mobile as if to show a shared point of view. With no words spoken, we're allowed to focus on the audience's reactions. Ophelia catches Hamlet looking at the King. Horatio is also looking in that direction. And there's something to look at. Even Polonius notices the King having difficulty, though he assumed Claudius to have taken ill. The play continues regardless, with the Player Queen finding her dead husband and being comforted by the murderer. There's a lot of gossip in the crowd, but it looks strange without Hamlet's more public accusations, as is the fact the King is moved in such a fashion.
Though he melodramatically asks for light, he acts as if blinded by the images in his mind. Hamlet brings a torch much too close to his face and he flinches and runs off. Olivier follows this up with utter chaos. The Queen looks at Hamlet with a "what have you done" kind of look, while everyone else runs in every possible direction, as in a scene from a monster movie. The natural order has been completely destroyed. As the King loses all control, so does the populace, and though Olivier doesn't explore every aspect of that idea, in the text it does thematically lead to, first, the peasants proclaiming Laertes potential king, and second, the invasion of Denmark by Norway. In a sense, Olivier covers the cut of those plot elements with this scene which does something similar through visuals.

III.ii. Instructing the Players - Olivier '48

As the camera moves around the stage, from the props, to the troupe, wider, then back to the the props, the point of view also changes from Hamlet's to third person when he walks into frame. It's part of the film's camera strategy, flitting from POV to POV, apparently free to roam, drop and fly. The Ghost's POV, perhaps, able to enter (and even possess?) other characters. In this version, Hamlet is actively correcting the Player's performance, a true director. For example, the Player saw the air with his hands before Hamlet gives him a direction not to. The Players have a variety of reactions to Hamlet. Some stand afeared, others relax and read their scripts, not really distracted by the princely director. Horatio is also present, and much of the speech might be directed to him, like his musings about the state of theater, replacing the conversation with Rosencrantz & Guildenstern in the text, but not this film. There's a poignant moment when Hamlet puts a wig on a boy, and we're instantly reminded of Ophelia's hair. A look of regret fleetingly crosses Hamlet's face, an awkward silence results. When Polonius enters, the Players grab every available prop and run backstage.
Hamlet lingers center stage, this is his big moment. Others will play the roles, but he wrote it. That's him on stage. And in crafting that meaning to the moment, the loss is Horatio's. He doesn't get the praise he deserves in the text, nor even the task of watching Claudius like a hawk. One might wonder why he's even included as Hamlet's lieutenant in this scene.

III.i. The Nunnery Scene - Olivier '48

When considering Olivier's adaptation, we must contend with the unusual placement of this sequence. It comes after the Fishmonger scene through a time lapse transition and a the set-up from before To be or not to be, and is followed by To be or not to be (which becomes a guilty reaction to it). Jean Simmons' Ophelia is probably the most innocent of them all, almost a child really, and as such, can hardly lie convincingly. Throughout the scene, she keeps glancing at the arras behind which her father and the King are hiding, usually before her cue to speak, leading Hamlet to do the same. He was suspicious when he came in, but Ophelia's jumpy disposition inflames his paranoia. Not that Hamlet doesn't give her cause to be jumpy. He throws her book away to stop her from reading, and his blasé, monotone "well, well, well" doesn't let on that he cares for her. When he doesn't receive the tokens she hands him, she uncomfortably puts them on the table, his cue to grab her hand violently.

By violent, I realize I merely mean sudden. All the violence in this scene is psychological. There are a few moments where Ophelia throws herself at Hamlet and he tears her away and watches her fall, but that's about it. The performances however add a lot of sting to the words themselves. When Hamlet tells her she should not have believed his love, she rubs her cheek, as if she'd been slapped. And in slight change to the accepted text, Ophelia cries out "Help me you sweet heavens" (instead of "Help him"). She's the one in distress, and who emotionally explodes, not Hamlet. His only violence is rejecting her, or refusing to show kindness, and it's what sets off her hysterics. Polonius' claims of madness-for-love aren't so much wrong as they are badly targeted. If the mirroring effects of the play go in a "like parent, like child" direction, we must then recall how Polonius earlier claimed he suffered much for love. It's behavior genetically imposed on Ophelia, but we can't say the same for Hamlet or his absentee father.

Hamlet's lack of interest in Ophelia is counterpointed by his over-interest in the arras and what might wait beyond it. In moments, he is talking not to Ophelia, but directly to the arras. The word "ambitious" in particular is directed at Polonius and the King. Should we infer that the litany of sins Hamlet accuses himself of are actually leveled at them? Or is it an implicit threat to the throne? If it is, it's one that consciously confuses the issue of his motivation. The spies could understandably, if mistakenly(?), believe his motives to be political. By the end of the sequence, Ophelia is on the floor and Hamlet is conversing only with the two people who are ignoring her cries for help. He leaves her with a last kindness, kissing her hand and advising her to get out of Elsinore.

Ophelia's speech is replaced by loud sobbing as the spies completely ignore her. Polonius follows the King around and only spares her a look very late in the game. And even then, he leaves her on the steps alone and walks out.
As we leave the scene, Ophelia is reaching for Hamlet, or for her sanity, or in a more meta-textual way, for the camera's point of view which may or may not be the Ghost's. What does she see going up those steps? Is her mind breaking already? If it is the Ghost and not a proper hallucination, does she recognize Hamlet in it? In any case, the pitiable image stresses how the entire scene has been about violating Ophelia.

III.i. To Be or Not to Be - Olivier '48

Having placed this speech between the Nunnery scene and "The play's the thing", far from prying eyes, Olivier gives Hamlet a reason to sincerely deliver the speech. Hamlet has just hurt Ophelia deeply and learned he can trust no one. Without the Players in the mix, he hasn't had the opportunity to think the Mouse-Trap either. As we leave the previous sequence in one of those vertiginous camera moves, we move away from Ophelia's reaching hand (is she seeing the Ghost whose point-of-view Olivier's camera evokes? is this the onset of her madness?) and up, up, up, through walls and dizzying staircases until we land on the back of Hamlet's head, looking down from the highest parapet into the crashing waves below. The camera moves further in, zooming into his head itself - we even see his brain - until we're looking out through his eyes. Whatever spirit the camera represents and whose point of view we share, it can even go into a person's thoughts. It is a four-dimensional experience, with shifting perspectives and superimposed images. Hamlet's forehead with the foaming sea laid on top of it. Shifting back and forth between interior (voice-over) and exterior monologue. His "sea of troubles" in made manifest in the ocean itself, or indeed suggests the metaphor, and becomes a means to achieve the suicide he longs for. The cadence of internal/external monologue moves as the waves do, there is an ebb and flow to it. Say what you will of Olivier's choices (especially regarding some important cuts and restructuring), but he has a visual flair that adds meaning to the words.
He takes out a dagger, reclining on the castle spire, closes his eyes, and almost falls asleep. The camera slowly creeps towards him until a musical sting brings him out of his reverie, pushing the camera back to a more objective POV as he cries "perchance to dream!". Hamlet's lassitude makes him accidentally drop his dagger into the sea, an image of the very inaction the soliloquy uncovers. Not only could that dagger be used to commit suicide, but also to commit murder. Hamlet loses his resolve for either, and again, Olivier visually enhances the idea.

He does so again at the end of the speech. When Hamlet talks about "enterprises of great pith and moment", he stands on the platform, facing outward to his country, its past, his father's deeds, the missing Fortinbras. When they "turn awry" in the speech, he turns back inward, to Elsinore, his problems and his lonely fate. The irony of these lines is revealed. Hamlet's greatness (and Denmark's) is turned awry by his fatal flaw, that of inaction. He leaves with a now complete loss of motivation, his passions waiting to be reignited by the arrival of the Players.

III.i. Briefings - Olivier '48

As Rosencrantz & Guildenstern do not appear in this version of the play, only Ophelia need be briefed. And as "To be or not to be" is uttered in Act II, she need not be subjected to overhearing it. So what are we left with? Quite an interesting piece of staging, actually. The innocent Ophelia's status as a victim is emphasized in this film. She comes down a corridor, unawares, and his ambushed by her father, just as he intends her to ambush Hamlet. His hand holding a book comes out of nowhere, and surprises her - a violent penetration into her interior world. This Ophelia has not been prepared for what is to come, which will add to her confusion and the unfairness of the situation. It's very clever.

Once she gets her instructions, Polonius and the King go behind and arras, though not before Polonius points repeatedly at the spot where he wants her to stand. As ever, he means to control members of his family - something he has in common with Claudius - though once he's hidden, Ophelia is left to mill around, despondent. In Ophelia's every movement, there is discomfort. She is going back and forth in her own mind as to whether she should or even could disobey her father. The decision is taken out of her hands when Hamlet finally enters, startling her.

II.ii. O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I - Olivier '48

As the Players leave, Hamlet looks on and pauses at their theatrical paraphernalia left on the raised throne, a bare stage that evokes the coming drama. Olivier then cuts the entire soliloquy, leaving only the last couplet ("The play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king!"). Not so strange an omission, since he cut the Player's emotional speech in the previous sequence. He looks excited at the prospect of what's to come, runs to the stage, and as the lights dramatically highlight him, shouts out the line with a flourish of both action and music.

Too large a cut? It's true that Hamlet can't compare himself to the Player, but he could still have kept the lines in which Hamlet explains his plan. But as he explains it again to Horatio later AND we see it for ourselves, there remains opportunity enough to make it clear to the audience. What we lose is Hamlet's thought process in coming up with it in the first place. That is played entirely internally instead, though we can't say the idea of Hamlet looking for "grounds more relative" is retained. But in Olivier's restructuring, Hamlet is past inaction (this scene now occurring AFTER "To be or not to be"), so it makes sense not to dwell on that aspect. At this point, Olivier wants his Hamlet to move forward, to finally take action rather than doubt himself, and his energy definitely goes in that direction. It'll be interesting to compare it with Zeffirelli's 1990 and Tennant's 2009 performances which also displace "To be or not to be" this way.

II.ii. The Players - Olivier '48

In Olivier's version, the players only appear after Hamlet has his arranged encounter with Ophelia and "To be or not to be". Though a different moment altogether, it is still a dark one for Hamlet who, in the normal sequence, is meditating on melancholy. Olivier's flights of expressionism thus cast Hamlet in a dark space. Symbolically, Polonius walks in with a torch that illuminates the Prince. And when the players come in (with many torches), the room, which might as well have been the dark of night, fills with light. Polonius' arrival and subsequent announcement of the players gives Hamlet the glimmer of an idea, and that arrival a new sense of purpose, all of it expressed with lighting as much as acting. Polonius reads from a parchment - Felix Aylmer is as amusing as usual - and doesn't know what to make of "He that plays the king shall be welcome."

In the absence of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern, there is a certain irony to Polonius being the bearer of news that will undo him and his corrupt king.
From the Players' entrance, Hamlet enters a manic state, delivering lines at a furious pace, often preventing anyone from interjecting. This will be a much shorter scene, heavily cut and missing the Priam speech. "I am glad to see thee well" is spoken to a dog walking on its hind legs, eliciting some laughs. The "lady" is an historically accurate boy. The bearded player is First Player, which makes the character younger that he appears (a mirror of Hamlet's own, doubtful age?). Of course it could just mean he grew a beard, but the text does mean to refer to an actor getting older. Harcourt Williams who plays the First Player was already in his late 60s however. Olivier plays on expectations when choosing his lines' targets to amusing effect, but doesn't really squeeze extra meaning from the text.

Since there is no recital, Hamlet quickly asks them to follow Polonius, and as they go, so does the light. However, Hamlet is now facing front, a reversal of his initial position. He is ready to take a step forward (the play within a play), moving away from the introspection and back-and-forth that has been the crux of the play since his silent visit of Ophelia. In his reconfigured sequence, Olivier loads Hamlet's inaction in the front end of the play, rather than allow ambivalence between thinking up and enacting his guilt-revealing scheme.