He made great use of the innovative deep focus photography that had been recently used to great effect by Orson Welles in Citizen Kane and William Wyler in The Little Foxes. The first is how he successfully cinematized (is that a word?) the play. There are two things that Olivier did very well however. And she shares several decidedly non-mother like kisses with Hamlet while wearing a low cut dress revealing her ample bosom. Eileen Herlie was a mere twenty-eight when she played Gertrude. Laurence Olivier was forty when he made this movie. In his review for Mel Gibson's version Scott brought up the fact that Glenn Close was just nine years older than Gibson while playing Hamlet's mother Gertrude and that the Oedipal angle was played up strongly. Olivier sums up (some would say overly simplifies) the play's theme for the audience by saying, “This is the tragedy of a man who could not make up his mind.” However, subsequent versions that included Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (including the 1990 Franco Zeffirelli/Mel Gibson version) have run shorter than this movie's still quite lengthy two and a half hours.Īnother criticism is directed towards one line of voice-over narration that occurs at the beginning of the movie. He also said he did it to cut down on the running time. He chose to downplay the political angle while focusing more on the psychological aspects of the story (whereas other versions make it clear that Hamlet is playing crazy to fool his uncle, Olivier's interpretation makes him seem truly mad). While other versions have edited Shakespeare's words, Olivier cut two of its most famous characters, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. This version of Hamlet has lost some of its luster over the years chiefly because of Olivier's decision to omit almost half of the four hour play's dialogue. Olivier lost the Best Director Oscar to John Huston for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. In addition, Olivier remains the only actor to win an Oscar for a Shakespearean role and he was the first person to direct themselves to an acting Oscar (Roberto Benigni is, to date, the only other person to achieve this, for Life is Beautiful). It was the first non-American film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture as well as being the first to also win the Golden Lion at the prestigious Venice Film Festival. It was the first English language sound film version of Hamlet. Of the more than fifty filmed versions of Shakespeare's most famous play that have been made since 1900, Laurence Olivier's 1948 adaptation remains the most celebrated.
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