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.
Grigori Kozintsev
Director, Writer
Innokentiy Smoktunovskiy
Hamlet
Anastasiya Vertinskaya
Ophelia
Mikhail Nazvanov
Claudius
Elza Radziņa
Gertrude
Yuriy Tolubeev
Polonius
Igor Dmitriev
Rosencrantz
Vadim Medvedev
Guildenstern
Vladimir Erenberg
Horatio
Stepan Oleksenko
Laertes
National Theatre Live: Hamlet75%
Eleanor the Great68%
Skater Girl72%
The Truth About Emanuel60%
Vanya on 42nd Street66%
Hamlet73%
Where Hope Grows76%
Hungry Hearts65%
The Book of Daniel70%
Where the Red Fern Grows63%
Герой59%
The Last Rifleman66%
Seeds of Yesterday64%
Here65%
The Last Bus64%
I Believe in Unicorns64%
All Together Now67%
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner71%
Where the Red Fern Grows69%
Flowers in the Attic67%
