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Hamlet (1948)
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All reviews for Hamlet
Hamlet (1948, Great Britain, Si ...
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"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 e ... "
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Hamlet (1948, Lawrence Olivier, ...
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"Andre Bazin in his essay “In Defense of Mixed Cinema” claims that screen adaptations cannot damage the source literature- “ It is nonsense to wax wroth about the indignities practiced on literary works on the screen, at least in the name of literature. After all, they cannot harm the original in the eyes of those how know it, however little they approximate to it. As for those who are unacquainted with the original, one of two things may happen; either they will be satisfied with the film which is as good as most, or they will want to know the original, with the resulting gain for literature”. While this is technically correct- no one would say that a repudiated novel is horrible solely because the movie is bad, Bazin fails to realize that cinema offers a false substitution.
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