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Hamlet

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.

1964 |2h 20m |  Drama

Cast

cast

Innokentiy Smoktunovskiy

Hamlet

cast

Anastasiya Vertinskaya

Ophelia

cast

Mikhail Nazvanov

Claudius

cast

Elza Radziņa

Gertrude

cast

Yuriy Tolubeev

Polonius

cast

Igor Dmitriev

Rosencrantz

cast

Vadim Medvedev

Guildenstern

cast

Vladimir Erenberg

Horatio

cast

Stepan Oleksenko

Laertes

cast

Grigori Gaj

Ghost of Hamlet's Father

cast

Ants Lauter

Priest

cast

Viktor Kolpakov

Gravedigger

More Details

Status

Released

Language

Russian

Budget

-

Revenue

-