Jean Simmons’ girlish Ophelia and Felix Aylmer’s blustery Polonius parse even the densest prose into uncanny whimsy or pompous punchlines. Olivier-directing himself as a venomous, ironic, honorbound hero in the title role-won the Oscar for Best Actor. It was the first time an English-language Hamlet had ever been filmed in sound ( Khoon Ka Khoon, Sohrab Modi’s Hindi/Urdu film, preceded it by 13 years, but never quite made it to Peoria) and the deliveries of Olivier’s players enlivened Shakespeare’s words beyond their static beauty. Wielded by Laurence Olivier, one of Shakespeare’s best performers, and distributed in its most consistent form, that energy ignites us.ħ5 years ago, Olivier’s Hamlet was the first time many had ever heard the play performed. Stuck on celluloid, he is a perpetual motion machine of melancholic madness. Managing and capturing every minute detail, Hamlet on film allows its Dane to mutter and fester forever. But for so many, the potency of live performance was balanced against its scarcity-and overtaken by the wide-release, perfectionist quality control of cinema. For most of its existence, it carried whatever connotation your local troupe (if you had one) gave it. Knowing about it, maybe even having gone through it in school-glassy-eyed classmates popcorn reading its couplets around the room, stumbling o’er the “o’ers”-but never truly feeling the emotional, sensational breadth of its power.
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