Shakespeare's 17th century masterpiece about the "Melancholy Dane" was given one of its best screen treatments by Soviet director Grigori Kozintsev. Kozintsev's Elsinore was a real castle in Estonia, utilized metaphorically as the "stone prison" of the mind wherein Hamlet must confine himself in order to avenge his father's death. Hamlet himself is portrayed (by Innokenti Smoktunovsky) as the sole sensitive intellectual in a world made up of debauchers and revellers. Several of Kozintsev directorial choices seem deliberately calculated to inflame the purists: Hamlet's delivers his "To be or not to be" soliloquy with his back to the camera, allowing the audience to fill in its own interpretations.
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CinemaSerf
6/8/2025
8 / 10
Now not being a Russian speaker I was a bit trepidatious about tackling this with just the subtitles. Well I needn’t have feared as a basic knowledge of the original Shakespearean tragedy is all that is required to underpin this experience as I sat back and savoured this exquisitely dark, brooding and melancholy story of betrayal, duplicity and madness - written as only the bard could and quite possibly delivered as only the Soviets could. We start in the best place, the oppressive and formidable fortress of Elsinore (well, Ivangorod, actually) with it’s thick, high walls and imposing portcullis where we are first introduced to the mourning prince “Hamlet” (Innokentiy Smoktunovskiy) who is returning home upon news of the recent death of his father and the subsequent marriage of his uncle “Claudius” (Mikhail Nazvanov) to his widowed mother “Gertrude” (Ella Radzina). Now the haste of all of this sends shivers down the prince’s spine and his thoughts turn to suspicions of regicide. Those only grow when the darkened skies and gathering storm clouds present him with a conundrum wrapped in a prophesy that will set the scene for the next couple of hours of family intrigue at it’s very best. The lighting does much of the heavy lifting and creates, in concert with some magnificent interiors, costumes and a fine Shostakovich score a gripping, detailed and tense template for the impressive efforts of a cast who positively exude a passion from their pores as the story gathers pace and the emotions run riot. The ebbs and flows of the young man’s adventures, the search for trust and truth and some remarkably identifiable soliloquies, even in Russian, really make this a formidable piece of cinema that is classy and bleak. This is easily as good as any other version of this play committed to celluloid, and even if you are not a fan of this (often quite long-winded and verbose) playwright then you can still enjoy an inspired adaptation of the ultimate in dynastic dramas dripping in blood, fantasy and menace from Grigoriy Kozintsev. It ought to be seen on a big screen to get the best from the aesthetic but even on a decent television, it quivers.
