And, because he is at pains to include among the properties a candle flame of greater or lesser brilliance, we have the notion of "idea" or, more accurately, an emblem for "idea," as a metaphor for the play.However, the production only succeeds in making it look as if all of "Hamlet" took place at night. He thus provides a foreground, but very little background. Richardson has photographed his film against total blackness except for a few dark brick walls and passage-ways to represent the battlements), with only the most essential properties, often in front of his actors' faces. "Hamlet" from the neck up (with an occasional Ophelia from the neck down, to acknowledge Miss Faithfull's charming cleavage) offers less, even to the mind's eye, than you might imagine.The production is full of ideas. As a result, Hamlet's presence is magnified out of all proper relationship to the world around him.And since the film is shot perhaps 95 per cent in fairly extreme close-up, it is not so much his presence as his head that continually dominates the screen. Although Nicol Williamson talks very fast, this version, running 114 minutes-as against 153 minutes for the 1948 Laurence Olivier film of "Hamlet"-eliminates some of his role, much of everybody else's role, and almost all of what serves to locate physically and to amplify the action. But the movie upon which it is based is a traditional and bowdlerized version of Shakespeare's play.The text has been cut to ribbons. The ad wins my vote for the most tasteless of the year in its field (always a very hot competition). And despite the illustration for the same ad, showing Hamlet (Nicol Williamson) about to nibble the up-slung shoulder of Ophelia (Marianne Faithfull), it isn't a sexy "Hamlet," either.
," the Tony Richardson "Hamlet," which opened yesterday at the Cinema Rendezvous, makes no particular claims to modernity or to contemporary relevance. Introduction is 'Criterion Creeps Theme' by petite petite, and musical interludes are The Bands' 'Ophelia' and Elton John 'The King Must Die'.DESPITE the text in the newspaper ad, "To thine own thing be true.
Then, Jarrett talks about some newish movies he's caught up on, like ALPS, ROOM, PATERSON, DUKE OF BURGUNDY, and a bunch of Louis Theroux documentaries. But first, RJ talks about STRANGER THINGS Season 2, the secret strangeness of the movie FOREVER YOUNG starring RJ's main man Mel Gibson. In our sixty-ninth episode we're talking spine #82: Laurence Olivier's HAMLET from 1946.
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