Film Adaption of Shakespeare’s Hamlet Summary

Student
Professor
Course
Date
Film Adaption of Shakespeare’s Hamlet
Hamlet is Shakespeare’s one of the most well-read creations, which has been picturized on screen over and over. Whenever a film adaption of the story happens, it poses several changes reinforced through the use of the camera along with the director’s approach to the story. As Hamlet was written in 1600 BC, developing its screenplay becomes challenging to abridge the social, political, cultural and intellectual obstacles. However, various filmmakers have made different tweaks to the text to put forth a unique version of the play. One of the best examples of those critical film productions is Olivier’s Hamlet, which presents a tweaked model of the Shakespearean play. This essay, through the lens of Olivier’s version of Hamlet, discusses what good and bad things happen when we change, adapt, and tweak Shakespeare, as well as what changes a film version makes and why do the theatre directors generally feel the need to change text and traditions of the text.
Before critically looking into a particular cinematic version of Hamlet, it is important to understand what changes generally take place when a text is converted into a screenplay. According to Kliman, the media develops many aspects, and viewers take an interest in directors’ art of interpreting material differently from the same source. Generally, filmmakers eliminate or add little changes modifying the plot, which might result in good or bad. Besides, lighting, music and costumes are usually a choice of the director, which have a great influence on setting the impression of the story, character and dialogues for the audience (Kliman 245). To particularly talk about Shakespeare’s Hamlet, one can find a lot of cinematic interpretations of the play. Prince Hamlet has been the centre of focus among critics and filmmakers right after the first publications of the play. One version makes many differences with the other based on the multiplicity of sentiments and drama, visualization of the scenes and the tools of cinematography (Kliman 245). One of the most popular and controversial film adaptions of Hamlet is by the film director Olivier in 1948. The director made substantial changes in the text to stage the drama with his personal outlook.
Olivier’s film version of Hamlet exposes various significant changes in dialogue, character and setting of the play, which has both good and bad influences on the overall impression Shakespeare intended to convey through the original text. Samuel Crowl, in his famous book over Shakespeare’s film adaption, throws light on how Olivier’s cutting off a few soliloquies, characters, and political dimensions of that age create a tweaked version of Hamlet (Crowl 33). By these changes, Olivier provides the twentieth century’s people with an adaption of Shakespeare which suits their psychological, social and political understanding. The influence of Freudian theories, which were prominent in the age of Olivier, is clearer on plot, characterization and setting by the filmmaker’s tweaks (Crowl 32). Also, the filmmakers put more appeal and magnetism to the story through the current and technological uses of cinematography such as music, lighting and costumes. In contrast, a few critics throw light on the bad things happening through these textual changes when filming a play like Olivier’s Hamlet. In this case, Jim Healy, in his article “Laurence Olivier and the HAMLET Problem”, discusses how this interpretation of a tragedy makes it “the tragedy” (Healy 1). At first, he condemns the director’s extreme attitude toward the play when he brings into line the Shakespearean plays with theories of Freud. Secondly, he denounces his shooting of the action and camera placement by revealing the sub-consciousness of the characters, which makes the drama unsatisfying along with being making it satisfying. Thirdly, he criticizes the director’s deliberate usage of space to picture internal and external skirmishes between characters. Lastly, he strongly criticizes Olivier’s elimination of many characters and the removal of political dimensions from the story to make it social and personal. Healy opines that deduction of political setting from the original text makes the left drama only “a cat and mouse game”, where characters seem to ensnaring other characters and meeting a fatal destiny at the end (Healy 1). However, Healy seems overburdened with Olivier’s experimenting tweaks in the original text, his references to the absence of political background unneglectable. On the other hand, the text loses the original essence and appeal, which was resulting from the drama’s association with the Elizabethan age’s psychological, social and political scenarios in Shakespeare’s writing. Another criticism of Olivier’s Hamlet describes the profoundness of the original text while focusing on the adaption of ‘the ghost’, which the director tuned according to his standards after taking an idea from the original text. Olivier needed to be less conventional in his approach when he delves into the psychological criticism of the characters while staging the play. Besides, he had shown a more traditional outlook regarding setting, themes and different scenes (IvyPanda 1). The portrayal of the ghost in the movie is the central concentration as it constructs the major theme of revenge. The spirit plays an important role in introducing the plot and characterization of the story. However, the filmmaker’s approach to the depiction of the ghost is highly traditional (IvyPanda 1). Overall, Olivier made a lot of changes to the text, characters, speeches, setting and modes of the play. In this attempt, some good things resulted, like the modern approach to the story, which is comprehensible for the twentieth century’s audience. Meanwhile, many critics emerged denouncing her traditional approach and the loss of original essence while making tweaks.
Olivier’s staged Hamlet has multiple modifications for various significant reasons. He excluded two of the most psychologically forceful and harsh speeches based on their failure to stand in coordination with modern literature. The speeches were beginning from “Oh what a rogue…” and “how all occasions”, along with his prose con...