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.
Genres:
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
Grigori Gaj as Ghost of Hamlet's Father
Ants Lauter as Priest
Viktor Kolpakov as Gravedigger
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