Hamlet at Elsinore

The contrast with Olivier's version was stunning to viewers: a non-bombastic thoughtful Hamlet with none of the perverse undertones of Olivier's Prince of Denmark. Honest indecision oozed from this Hamlet. Further the text was less butchered than in Olivier's movie; here we at least get to see Rozenkrantz and Guildenstern. [Footnote: I am frequently surprised at people who will rave over Olivier's Hamlet and fail to notice the severely edited script.]

I wasn't very old but I was fascinated. Of course Christopher Plummer and Robert Shaw were brilliant, but it was also fascinating to watch a young Michael Caine and Donald Sutherland. Since I'm Danish it was a special thrill that it was actually filmed where Shakespeare let it take place. I would love to watch it again.

I was more fortunate than I knew at the time to catch this version of Hamlet in 1964. I was a teen and newly smitten with Shakespeare tragedies. I taped the audio from our television with my new Wollensak 7" reel-to-reel. I listened to and studied that tape for the rest of my adolescence, watched the Olivier Hamlet and later others, both onstage and on film, and this is the one that stayed with me as the most complete in every dimension. The cast was the best balanced, the setting the most evocative of place and time. Above all, this treatment of character and motivation was the most humanly real, truthful, not pontifical like Olivier's or melodramatic and stagy like others. I have been looking for any kind of reproduction of it ever since, even an audio. What I wouldn't give to have this on CD now!

I saw this "Hamlet", my first, on television about 35 years ago. It helped hook me on Shakespeare, so I cannot really be objective, but scenes from it have seemed to linger, seemed to stand up to other Hamlets.

I prepared for this review by re-watching Olivier's and Branagh's Hamlet films, and was fascinated to find I prefer this TV production from 1964, filmed under what must have been somewhat difficult conditions (the electrical work had to be done by the BBC, as one reviewer notes). I found Christopher Plummer's performance to be more convincing, more felt than those of Olivier and Branagh. Olivier seems to be fascinated with his own athleticism--that trim body that can do anything he demands of it--just see how he leaps off the platform in Act V to stab Claudius. Plummer on the other hand hasn't got the athleticism but he is better able to unite intelligence with feeling. I was more moved by his 'Now might I do it pat' after Claudius starts praying than by the other versions because of Plummer's occasional clumsiness.

The other actors are fine: Alec Clunes really plays Polonius as a prating old fool (just as Hamlet describes him) and Robert Shaw is tremendous as Claudius, virile and crafty and sexy. You see why Gertrude has to fall for him. Michael Caine is ardent in a part that calls for just that quality and little else. He handles the accent fairly well.

Only two actors don't do well: June Tobin is stiff and shallow as Gertrude; her range doesn't allow her to really play the bedroom scene effectively. Donald Sutherland seems to play Fortinbras as a foreigner whose English is shaky.