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.
Made in SU
7.2/10
1964
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Cast
Innokentiy Smoktunovskiy
As Hamlet
Anastasiya Vertinskaya
As Ophelia
Mikhail Nazvanov
As Claudius
Elza Radziņa
As Gertrude
Yuriy Tolubeev
As Polonius
Igor Dmitriev
As Rosencrantz
Vadim Medvedev
As Guildenstern
Vladimir Erenberg
As Horatio
Stepan Oleksenko
As Laertes
Grigoriy Gay
As Ghost of Hamlet's Father
Ants Lauter
As Priest
Viktor Kolpakov
As Gravedigger
Aleksandr Chekayevsky
As First actor
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