Sir Laurence Olivier's Hamlet is a brilliant, difficult, and to a degree, unreasonably dark movie. It's hard to deny that the picture works, but by the end, you wonder if the journey was really worth taking, as this must be one of the most effectively gloomy films ever committed to celluloid.
It's impossible to watch Olivier's film and not compare it to the numerous other screen adaptations of Shakespeare's most famous play, most notably the 1996 masterpiece by Kenneth Branagh. Branagh is not a better actor than Olivier (only Marlon Brando could possibly hold that title), but he made a movie that was brimming with the energy of life, one that fully explored the metaphysical concepts in the original play.
Olivier's goals are more mundane- he's most interested in the psychological and archetypical elements of the play, so the movie is far shorter than Branagh's and its smaller in scope. More than one critic has referred to the settings as claustrophobic. It's as if these characters exist in an entire world unto themselves- an interior world, with a lot of fog and humidity. There is no escape from this dysfunctional family- there is literally no where to go.
Despite the opening narration, Olivier interprets Hamlet's problem as not so much being unable to make up his mind as much his being unable to function as an adult. He has genuine love for his mother Gertrude (Eileen Herle) and late father (significantly, voiced by Olivier). But it's the love of a young child who worships his god-like parents. Hamlet's problem is not that he's poorly negotiated the inevitable separation trauma because he's never separated- at least while his father was still alive.
This is made exceedingly clear by the film's most dominant relationship, between Hamlet and his mother. It's significant that Herle was born thirteen years after than Olivier. The fact that Gertrude is so young and that Hamlet feels such affection for her is made obvious, and this makes his hatred of Claudius (Basil Sydney) even more basic and primitive. This was an interesting approach to take, but it means that Hamlet's relationship with other characters suffer. The quasi-romance between the prince and Ophelia (Jean Simmons) is DOA, and his friendship with Horatio (Norman Wooland) is undeveloped as well.
And although Olivier's performance is of course brilliant (you can bet he deserved the Best Actor Oscar he won), I was ambivalent about many of his directorial choices. The intellectual tone of the picture, combined with the sadness and angst in the movie's atmosphere, make for a movie that is obviously made a genius, but also one that is at times difficult to sit through. The movie is rarely boring, but after spending more than an hour with these super-serious people and their Freudian problems I was ready for it to lighten up a bit and it never did.
This is where Olivier's film suffers the most in comparison to Branagh's. The contemporary film had such an energy to it, that even in the more tragic moments you felt that at least the characters were really alive. In this picture, it's as if they are hypnotized, waiting for their psychologist to wake them up and send them to a more lively world.
Hamlet (1948)