Hamlet Comparison of Movies and Text

Hamlet William Shakespeare 's Hamlet has been filmed and performed on stage numerous times. Often, when a movie is adapted from a play, there are several aspects which are adjusted or completely lost. This often depends on the director’s point of view as well as the casting director, the 1948 Laurence Olivier 's black-and-white version of Hamlet starting Laurence Olivier and Eileen Herlie, is a classic film that is generally considered to be one of the greatest movies of all time. The Olivier version is a story as merely the centerpiece in front of a roving camera. It has been accorded numerous honors, including four 1948 Academy Awards: Best Picture, Actor, Art Direction-Set Direction, and Costume Design. In the year 2000, directed by Michael Almereyda, the newest version of Hamlet was released in theatres, this time starring popular actors Ethan Hawke and Julia Stiles, and set in the present day. The director takes a modern approach, retelling Shakespeare 's classic 400 year-old play in New York City. Here is the stylish Hamlet, the modern take of a timeless story with a backdrop of high art. Director and screenplay adaptor Almereyda has taken Shakespeare 's great tale of revenge, procrastination and mortality, and placed it in today 's slacker world. Despite critical acclaim, this version of Hamlet is unsuccessful during its brief theatrical run. Even in some very beautifully mannered scenes, there is a note of clumsiness indicating something is missing or doesn’t match about this far-reaching production that borders on sentimental giddiness. The old-style English dialogue and the new visuals do not make for a coherent film. The visuals are spectacular and relevant while the dialogue seems to be from another planet. Almereyda 's slimmed-down, updated version of the Shakespearian tragedy with Hawke in the title role is stylish, funny, and smart but only up to a point. Olivier has complete artistic control over every aspect of his

Cited: Brown, Russell. John. Discovering Shakespeare. New York: Columbia UP, 1981. Prentice-Hall, 1964. Messier, Max. “Hamlet (2000).” Filmcritic.com. Hamlet. 2000 . Spurgeon, Caroline. Shakespeare’s Imagery and what it tells us. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press House, 1987.