1948 Hamlet

1948 Hamlet

This movie was better than I expected, though Shakespeare is not my favorite to sit through.  This DVD transfer was particularly difficult because the sound quality was terrible and there were no captions.  Fortunately I had read the play in high school, so I knew what was happening.  My favorite part was when the guards caught sight of the ghost of Hamlet's father in the beginning.  It brought back funny memories of acting out that particular scene in a high school English class -my friends and I wielding yardsticks as swords at another friend wearing a paper bag over his head to portray the ghost.

The plot of the play is as follows: Prince Hamlet's father has died, and his mother has quickly remarried.  The ghost of Hamlet's father appears and tells Hamlet that his new stepfather actually murdered him.  Hamlet sets out to find out the truth, setting into motion a series of events that end with the death of all involved bar one -and here I must give a shout out to Horatio for being the last man standing.

Laurence Olivier, talented as he was, was too old to play Hamlet (he was 40, and Hamlet was not supposed to have been older than 30).  The actress playing his mother was 28, which made things even stranger.

The standout performance was Jean Simmons as Ophelia –a haunting representation of a tragic character, heartbroken and driven to lunacy and suicide by Hamlet's stupid mind games.