Comparing Hamlet And Franco Zeffirelli's Film Version Of Hamlet

William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Franco Zeffirelli’s film version of Hamlet basically share the same characters and story. However, in Shakespeare’s ghost scenes, Zeffirelli uses narrative and film techniques to create a kind of suspenseful atmosphere and to cause feelings of compassion for Hamlet. In the film, Zeffirelli makes some changes in the narrative techniques, like act 1 of the play for example, by rearranging the plays story line, like adding to the settings of each scene, and not having dialogue. These changes Zeffirelli made I think interpret some of the elements of the play and really intensifying Hamlet’s dilemma for the viewer. Firstly, Zeffirelli changes the plot of the play and rearranges the action of Hamlet so he can get
straight to the main points and characters. In the beginning of the play, it starts with the least important characters, the guards standing guard and talking about having to have seen a ghost of some sort. I think the main purpose of this first scene is to establish the main conflict: There is trouble arising in Denmark. Although in the film, the ghost doesn’t even appear until like twenty or so minutes into the film. Instead, Zeffirelli rebuilds the plot development rearranging Shakespeare’s order of the earlier scenes, and includes scenes not in the play. The films action, having resulted from these changes, rises up to the appearance of the ghost. Zeffirelli’s film begins with a long view of an extremely large castle, immersed in blue light, out on the edge of a rocky cliff. Then, in the first scene of the film is King Hamlet’s funeral. Which is a scene that’s not in the play. In the film, Zeffirelli also switches the time that Hamlet first finds out about the ghost. As in the play, when Horatio and Hamlet first meet up on the battlements, Horatio tells Hamlet about the ghost. However, in the play, Zeffirelli has this exchange moved from act I, scene 2 to the beginning of the films suspenseful ghost scene, allowing the film to build intensely until the moment when the ghost really does appear. Zeffirelli also adds the story’s setting by filming the events outside and in the many rooms of the huge castle and its battlements. In the play, the characters move on and off a fixed stage area, where, in the film, the characters are free to roam around, and the camera is free to follow them to all different locations.