10.0/10

Hamlet (1964)

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.

Genre: Foreign | Drama

Country: Russian Federation  

themoviedb.org: http://www.themoviedb.org/movie/71317

IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058126/

Director(s) / Writer(s):

Grigori Kozintsev

Cast:

Innokenti Smoktunovsky

Гамлет

Anastasiya Vertinskaya

Офелия

Mikhail Nazvanov

Elza Radzina

Yuri Tolubeyev

Vadim Medvedev

Vladimir Erenberg

Stepan Oleksenko

Igor Dmitriyev

Grigori Gaj

Rein Aren

Yuri Berkun

Ants Lauter

Viktor Kolpakov

Also Known As:

Hamlet