Over fifty films of
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
's ''
Hamlet
''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a Shakespearean tragedy, tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play. Set in Denmark, the play (the ...
'' have been made since 1900. Seven post-war ''Hamlet'' films have had a theatrical release:
Laurence Olivier's ''
Hamlet
''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a Shakespearean tragedy, tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play. Set in Denmark, the play (the ...
'' of 1948;
Grigori Kozintsev's 1964
Russian adaptation; a film of the
John Gielgud-directed 1964
Broadway production, ''
Richard Burton's Hamlet'', which played limited engagements that same year;
Tony Richardson
Cecil Antonio Richardson (5 June 1928 – 14 November 1991) was an English theatre and film director, producer and screenwriter, whose career spanned five decades. He was identified with the "angry young men" group of British directors and play ...
's 1969 version (the first in colour) featuring
Nicol Williamson as Hamlet and
Anthony Hopkins
Sir Philip Anthony Hopkins (born 31 December 1937) is a Welsh actor. Considered one of Britain's most recognisable and prolific actors, he is known for List of Anthony Hopkins performances, his performances on the screen and stage. Hopkins ha ...
as Claudius;
Franco Zeffirelli's
1990 version starring
Mel Gibson;
Kenneth Branagh
Sir Kenneth Charles Branagh ( ; born 10 December 1960) is a British actor and filmmaker. Born in Belfast and raised primarily in Reading, Berkshire, Branagh trained at RADA in London and served as its president from 2015 to 2024. List of award ...
's full-text
1996 version; and
Michael Almereyda's
2000 modernisation, starring
Ethan Hawke
Ethan Green Hawke (born November 6, 1970) is an American actor, author, and film director. He made his film debut in ''Explorers (film), Explorers'' (1985), before making a breakthrough performance in ''Dead Poets Society'' (1989). Hawke starr ...
.
Because of the play's length, most films of ''Hamlet'' are heavily cut, although Branagh's 1996 version used the full text.
Approaches
The full
conflated text of ''Hamlet'' can run to four hours in performance, so most film adaptations are heavily cut, sometimes by removing entire characters. Fortinbras can be excised with minimal textual difficulty, and so a major decision for the director of ''Hamlet'', on stage or on screen, is whether or not to include him. Excluding Fortinbras removes much of the play's
political
Politics () is the set of activities that are associated with decision-making, making decisions in social group, groups, or other forms of power (social and political), power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of Social sta ...
dimension, resulting in a more personal performance than those in which he is retained. Fortinbras makes no appearance in Olivier's and Zeffirelli's versions, while in Kozintsev's and Branagh's films he is a major presence.
Another significant decision for a director is whether to play up or play down the
incest
Incest ( ) is sexual intercourse, sex between kinship, close relatives, for example a brother, sister, or parent. This typically includes sexual activity between people in consanguinity (blood relations), and sometimes those related by lineag ...
uous feelings that
Freudian critics believe Hamlet harbours for his mother. Olivier and Zeffirelli highlight this interpretation of the plot (especially through casting decisions) while Kozintsev and Branagh avoid this interpretation.
Harry Keyishan has suggested that directors of ''Hamlet'' on screen invariably place it within one of the established
film genre
A film genre is a Genre, stylistic or thematic category for Film, motion pictures based on similarities either in the narrative , narrative elements, aesthetic approach, or the emotional response to the film.
Drawing heavily from the theories ...
s:
Olivier's ''Hamlet'', he claims, is a
film noir
Film noir (; ) is a style of Cinema of the United States, Hollywood Crime film, crime dramas that emphasizes cynicism (contemporary), cynical attitudes and motivations. The 1940s and 1950s are generally regarded as the "classic period" of Ameri ...
;
Zeffirelli's version is an
action adventure and
Branagh's is an
epic. Keyishan adds that ''Hamlet'' films can also be classified by the
auteur theory: Olivier's and Zeffirelli's ''Hamlet''s, for example, can be viewed among the body of their directorial work.
Significant theatrical releases
Laurence Olivier, 1948
This
black and white
Black-and-white (B&W or B/W) images combine black and white to produce a range of achromatic brightnesses of grey. It is also known as greyscale in technical settings.
Media
The history of various visual media began with black and white, ...
British film of ''Hamlet'' was directed by and starred
Laurence Olivier. As in Olivier's previous Shakespeare adaptation, ''
Henry V'' (1944), the film's score was composed by
William Walton. It has received the most prestigious accolades of any Shakespeare film, winning the
Academy Awards
The Academy Awards, commonly known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit in film. They are presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) in the United States in recognition of excellence in ...
for
Best Picture and
Best Actor.
The film opens with Olivier's voiceover of his own interpretation of the play, which has been criticised as reductive: "This is the tragedy of a man who could not make up his mind." Olivier excised the "political" elements of the play (entirely cutting Fortinbras, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern) in favour of an intensely psychological performance. He played up the
Oedipal overtones of the play, to the extent of casting the 28-year-old
Eileen Herlie as Hamlet's mother, opposite himself (aged 41) as Hamlet. Film scholar Jack Jorgens has commented that "Hamlet's scenes with the Queen in her low-cut gowns are virtually love scenes." In contrast,
Jean Simmons' Ophelia is destroyed by Hamlet's treatment of her in the nunnery scene: ending with her collapsing on the staircase in what Deborah Cartmell calls the position of a rape victim. According to J. Lawrence Guntner, the style of the film owes much to
German Expressionism and to ''
film noir
Film noir (; ) is a style of Cinema of the United States, Hollywood Crime film, crime dramas that emphasizes cynicism (contemporary), cynical attitudes and motivations. The 1940s and 1950s are generally regarded as the "classic period" of Ameri ...
'': the cavernous sets featuring narrow winding stairwells correspond to the labyrinths of Hamlet's psyche.
Grigori Kozintsev, 1964
''Hamlet'' () is a 1964 film adaptation in
Russian, based on a translation by
Boris Pasternak
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (30 May 1960) was a Russian and Soviet poet, novelist, composer, and literary translator.
Composed in 1917, Pasternak's first book of poems, ''My Sister, Life'', was published in Berlin in 1922 and soon became an imp ...
and directed by
Grigori Kozintsev, with a score by
Dmitri Shostakovich. The film is heavily informed by the post-
Stalinist era in which it was made, Pasternak and lead actor
Innokenty Smoktunovsky having suffered under Stalin. In contrast to Olivier's film, Kozintsev's is political and public. Where Olivier had narrow winding stairwells, Kozintsev had broad avenues, populated with ambassadors and courtiers. The camera frequently looks through bars and grates, and J. Lawrence Guntner has suggested that the image of Ophelia in an iron
farthingale symbolises the fate of the sensitive and intelligent in the film's tough political environment.
Kozintsev consistently cast actors whose first language was not Russian, so as to bring shades of other traditions into his film. Smoktunovsky's individual manner of acting distinguished the film from other versions, and his explosive behaviour in the recorder scene is viewed by many critics, as the film's climax. Douglas Brode has criticised the film for presenting a Hamlet who barely pauses for reflection: with most of the soliloquies cut, it is circumstances, not an inner conflict, that delay his revenge.
Tony Richardson, 1969
The first ''Hamlet'' filmed in colour, this film stars
Nicol Williamson as
Prince Hamlet
Prince Hamlet is the title character and protagonist of William Shakespeare's tragedy ''Hamlet'' (1599–1601). He is the Prince of Denmark, nephew of the usurping King Claudius, Claudius, and son of King Hamlet, the previous King of Denmark. At ...
. It was directed by
Tony Richardson
Cecil Antonio Richardson (5 June 1928 – 14 November 1991) was an English theatre and film director, producer and screenwriter, whose career spanned five decades. He was identified with the "angry young men" group of British directors and play ...
and based on his own stage production at the
Roundhouse theatre in
London
London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
. The film, a departure from big-budget Hollywood renditions of classics, was made with a small budget and a very minimalist set, consisting of
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...
fixtures and costumes in a dark, shadowed space. A brick tunnel is used for the scenes on the battlements. The Ghost of Hamlet's father is represented only by a light shining on the observers. The version proved to be a critical and commercial failure: partly due to the decision to market the film as a tragic love story to teenage audiences who were still flocking to
Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 ''
Romeo and Juliet
''The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet'', often shortened to ''Romeo and Juliet'', is a Shakespearean tragedy, tragedy written by William Shakespeare about the romance between two young Italians from feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's ...
'', and yet to cast opposite
Marianne Faithfull's Ophelia the "balding, paunchy Williamson, who looked more like her father than her lover."
Franco Zeffirelli, 1990
Franco Zeffirelli's 1990 film of ''Hamlet'' stars
Mel Gibson as the title character, with
Glenn Close as
Gertrude,
Alan Bates as
Claudius
Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus ( ; ; 1 August 10 BC – 13 October AD 54), or Claudius, was a Roman emperor, ruling from AD 41 to 54. A member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, Claudius was born to Nero Claudius Drusus, Drusus and Ant ...
and
Helena Bonham Carter as
Ophelia.
Film scholar Deborah Cartmell has suggested that Zeffirelli's Shakespeare films are appealing because they are "sensual rather than cerebral", an approach by which he aims to make Shakespeare "even more popular". To this end, he cast the
Hollywood actor
Mel Gibson – then famous for the ''
Mad Max'' and ''
Lethal Weapon
''Lethal Weapon'' is a 1987 American action film directed by Richard Donner and written by Shane Black. It stars Mel Gibson and Danny Glover alongside Gary Busey, Tom Atkins, Darlene Love, and Mitchell Ryan. In ''Lethal Weapon'', a pai ...
'' films – in the title role. Cartmell also notes that the text is drastically cut, with the effect of enhancing the roles of the women.
J. Lawrence Guntner has suggested that Zeffirelli's cinematography borrows heavily from the
action film
The action film is a film genre that predominantly features chase sequences, fights, shootouts, explosions, and stunt work. The specifics of what constitutes an action film has been in scholarly debate since the 1980s. While some scholars such as D ...
genre that made Gibson famous, noting that its average shot length is less than six seconds. In casting Gibson, the director has been said to have made the star's reputation part of the performance, encouraging the audience "to see the Gibson that they have come to expect from his other films". Indeed, Gibson was cast after Zeffirelli watched his character contemplate suicide in the first ''
Lethal Weapon
''Lethal Weapon'' is a 1987 American action film directed by Richard Donner and written by Shane Black. It stars Mel Gibson and Danny Glover alongside Gary Busey, Tom Atkins, Darlene Love, and Mitchell Ryan. In ''Lethal Weapon'', a pai ...
'' film. Harry Keyishan has suggested that ''Hamlet'' is well suited to this treatment, as it provides occasions for "enjoyable violence". J. Lawrence Guntner has written that the casting of Glenn Close as Mel Gibson's mother (only eleven years older than he was, in life, and then famous as the psychotic "other woman" in ''
Fatal Attraction'') highlights the incest theme, leaving "little to our post-Freudian imagination". and Deborah Cartmell notes that Close and Gibson simulate sex in the closet scene, and "she dies after sexually suggestive jerking movements, with Hamlet positioned on top of her, his face covered with sweat".
Kenneth Branagh, 1996
In contrast to Zeffirelli's heavily cut ''Hamlet'' of a few years before,
Kenneth Branagh
Sir Kenneth Charles Branagh ( ; born 10 December 1960) is a British actor and filmmaker. Born in Belfast and raised primarily in Reading, Berkshire, Branagh trained at RADA in London and served as its president from 2015 to 2024. List of award ...
adapted, directed, and starred in a version containing every word of Shakespeare's play, running for around four hours. He based aspects of the staging on
Adrian Noble's recent
Royal Shakespeare Company
The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs over 1,000 staff and opens around 20 productions a year. The RSC plays regularly in London, Stratf ...
production of the play, in which he had played the title role.
In a radical departure from previous ''Hamlet'' films, Branagh set the internal scenes in a vibrantly colourful setting, featuring a throne room dominated by mirrored doors; film scholar Samuel Crowl calls the setting "''film noir'' with all the lights on." Branagh chose
Victorian era
In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the reign of Queen Victoria, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. Slightly different definitions are sometimes used. The era followed the ...
costuming and furnishings, using
Blenheim Palace, built in the early 18th century, as Elsinore Castle for the external scenes. Harry Keyishan has suggested that the film is structured as an
epic, courting comparison with ''
Ben Hur'', ''
The Ten Commandments'' and ''
Doctor Zhivago''. As J. Lawrence Guntner points out, comparisons with the latter film are heightened by the presence of
Julie Christie (''Zhivago's'' Lara) as Gertrude.
The film makes frequent use of flashbacks to dramatise elements that are not performed in Shakespeare's text, such as Hamlet's sexual relationship with
Kate Winslet
Kate Elizabeth Winslet (; born 5 October 1975) is an English actress. Primarily known for her roles as headstrong and complicated women in independent films, particularly period dramas, she has received numerous accolades, including an Ac ...
's Ophelia. These flashbacks include performances by several famous actors in non-speaking roles: Yorick is played by
Ken Dodd, Old Norway by
John Mills and
John Gielgud as
Priam
In Greek mythology, Priam (; , ) was the legendary and last king of Troy during the Trojan War. He was the son of Laomedon. His many children included notable characters such as Hector, Paris, and Cassandra.
Etymology
Most scholars take the e ...
and
Judi Dench as
Hecuba in a dramatisation of the Player King's speech about the fall of
Troy
Troy (/; ; ) or Ilion (; ) was an ancient city located in present-day Hisarlik, Turkey. It is best known as the setting for the Greek mythology, Greek myth of the Trojan War. The archaeological site is open to the public as a tourist destina ...
.
Michael Almereyda, 2000
Directed by
Michael Almereyda and set in contemporary
Manhattan
Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...
, this film stars
Ethan Hawke
Ethan Green Hawke (born November 6, 1970) is an American actor, author, and film director. He made his film debut in ''Explorers (film), Explorers'' (1985), before making a breakthrough performance in ''Dead Poets Society'' (1989). Hawke starr ...
, who plays Hamlet as a film student. It also features
Julia Stiles as Ophelia,
Liev Schreiber as Laertes, and
Bill Murray
William James Murray (born September 21, 1950) is an American actor and comedian, known for his deadpan delivery in roles ranging from studio comedies to independent dramas. He has received List of awards and nominations received by Bill Murra ...
as Polonius. In this version, Claudius becomes CEO of the "Denmark Corporation", having taken over the firm by killing his brother. The film is notable for its inclusion of modern technology: for example, the
ghost
In folklore, a ghost is the soul or Spirit (supernatural entity), spirit of a dead Human, person or non-human animal that is believed by some people to be able to appear to the living. In ghostlore, descriptions of ghosts vary widely, from a ...
of Hamlet's murdered
father
A father is the male parent of a child. Besides the paternal bonds of a father to his children, the father may have a parental, legal, and social relationship with the child that carries with it certain rights and obligations. A biological fat ...
first appears on
closed-circuit TV. The script is heavily cut, to suit the modern day surroundings. Ethan Hawke is the youngest of the big-screen Hamlets, at 27 when production began.
Other screen performances
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the central character,
Prince Hamlet
Prince Hamlet is the title character and protagonist of William Shakespeare's tragedy ''Hamlet'' (1599–1601). He is the Prince of Denmark, nephew of the usurping King Claudius, Claudius, and son of King Hamlet, the previous King of Denmark. At ...
, was perceived as effeminate; so it is fitting that the earliest screen success as ''Hamlet'' was
Sarah Bernhardt
Sarah Bernhardt (; born Henriette-Rosine Bernard; 22 October 1844 – 26 March 1923) was a French stage actress who starred in some of the most popular French plays of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including by Alexandre Dumas fils, ...
in a one-minute film of the fencing scene, in 1900 for the Phono-Cinema Theater exhibit at the Paris 1900 Exhibition. The film had the novel feature of having the sound effects of swords clashing, which was synchronized from a Pathé cylinder to be played along with the film. Silent versions of the play were directed by
Georges Méliès
Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès ( , ; 8 December 1861 – 21 January 1938) was a French magic (illusion), magician, toymaker, actor, and filmmaker. He led many technical and narrative developments in the early days of film, cinema, primarily in th ...
in 1907 (''
Hamlet
''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a Shakespearean tragedy, tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play. Set in Denmark, the play (the ...
''),
Luca Comerio in 1908,
William George Barker in 1910,
August Blom in 1910,
Cecil Hepworth in 1913 and
Eleuterio Rodolfi in 1917.
In 1920,
Svend Gade directed
Asta Nielsen in a version derived from Edward Vining's 1881 book "The Mystery of Hamlet", in which Hamlet is a woman who spends her life disguised as a man.
In
Maximilian Schell
Maximilian Schell (8 December 1930 – 1 February 2014) was a Swiss actor. Born in First Austrian Republic, Austria, his parents were involved in the arts and he grew up surrounded by performance and literature. While he was still a child, his fa ...
's performance in ''
Hamlet
''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a Shakespearean tragedy, tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play. Set in Denmark, the play (the ...
'', Hamlet is an idealist activist standing up to Claudius' corrupt establishment.
Karl Michael Vogler played Horatio. This version was successfully televised, but technical and dubbing issues caused it to be less successful on the English language big-screen. The English version is best remembered for being mocked on one of the final episodes of
Mystery Science Theater 3000.
John Gielgud directed
Richard Burton
Richard Burton (; born Richard Walter Jenkins Jr.; 10 November 1925 – 5 August 1984) was a Welsh actor.
Noted for his mellifluous baritone voice, Burton established himself as a formidable Shakespearean actor in the 1950s and gave a memor ...
in a successful run of the play at the
Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in 1964-5. A film of the production, ''
Richard Burton's Hamlet'' played limited engagements in 1964. It was made using ''ELECTRONOVISION'', which proved to be an ineffective hybrid of stage and screen methods, although its novelty value made the film a commercial success at the time.
Philip Saville directed
Christopher Plummer in a TV version usually called ''
Hamlet at Elsinore'', filmed in black-and-white at
Kronborg Slot, the castle at Elsinore where the play is set. It featured
Michael Caine
Sir Michael Caine (born Maurice Joseph Micklewhite, 14 March 1933) is a retired English actor. Known for his distinct Cockney accent, he has appeared in more than 160 films over Michael Caine filmography, a career that spanned eight decades an ...
as Horatio (his only Shakespearean role) and
Robert Shaw as Claudius.
Richard Chamberlain was a rarity: an American actor in the central role of a UK Shakespeare production. His critically acclaimed television ''Hamlet'' was, in his words, "pressed into service as part of the student protest, with Hamlet as victim of the generation gap." While in England he took vocal coaching and in 1969 performed the title role in Hamlet for the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, becoming the first American to play the role there since John Barrymore in 1929. He received excellent notices and reprised the role for television, for The Hallmark Hall of Fame, in 1970.
The
BBC Television Shakespeare
The ''BBC Television Shakespeare'' is a series of British television adaptations of Shakespeare's plays, the plays of William Shakespeare, created by Cedric Messina and broadcast by BBC Television. Transmitted in the UK from 3 December 1978 to ...
was a project to televise the entire canon of plays. Their version of ''Hamlet'' starred
Derek Jacobi as the prince and
Patrick Stewart as Claudius.
S4C's ''
Shakespeare: The Animated Tales'' series included a half-hour abridgement of Hamlet, featuring the voice of
Nicholas Farrell as the Dane. The animator,
Natalia Orlova, used an oil-on-glass technique: a scene would be painted and a number of frames would be shot, back-lit; then some paint would be scraped off and the scene partially repainted for the next frame. The effect has been described as "oddly both fluid and static ... capable of
epresentingintense emotion."
Kevin Kline directed and starred in a production of ''Hamlet'' for the
New York Shakespeare Festival which was televised in 1990 as part of the
Great Performances anthology series on
PBS.
Adapted from the successful
Royal Shakespeare Company
The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs over 1,000 staff and opens around 20 productions a year. The RSC plays regularly in London, Stratf ...
production, ''
Hamlet
''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a Shakespearean tragedy, tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play. Set in Denmark, the play (the ...
'', directed by
Greg Doran and starring
David Tennant
David John Tennant (; born 18 April 1971) is a Scottish actor. He is best known for portraying the Tenth Doctor, tenth and Fourteenth Doctor, fourteenth incarnations of The Doctor (Doctor Who), the Doctor in the science fiction series ''Docto ...
as Prince Hamlet, was produced for BBC Two and the RSC by Illuminations Television. In addition to Tennant, the cast also featured
Patrick Stewart as Claudius, as well as most of the cast of the original stage production. It aired on 26 December 2009 and was released on BBC DVD on 4 January 2010. This was the first Shakespeare work to be filmed on the pioneering
RED camera system.
Adaptations
Edgar G. Ulmer's ''
Strange Illusion'' was the first post-war film to adapt the ''Hamlet'' story, and was one of the earliest films to focus its attentions on a young character's psychology.
''Hamlet'' has been adapted into stories which deal with civil corruption by the West German director
Helmut Käutner in ''
Der Rest ist Schweigen'' (''The Rest is Silence'') and by the Japanese director
Akira Kurosawa
was a Japanese filmmaker who List of works by Akira Kurosawa, directed 30 feature films in a career spanning six decades. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers in the History of film, history of cinema ...
in ''Warui Yatsu Hodo Yoku Nemuru'' (''
The Bad Sleep Well''). In
Claude Chabrol
Claude Henri Jean Chabrol (; 24 June 1930 – 12 September 2010) was a French film director and a member of the French New Wave (''nouvelle vague'') group of filmmakers who first came to prominence at the end of the 1950s. Like his colleagues an ...
's ''
Ophélia'' (France, 1962) the central character, Yvan, watches Olivier's ''Hamlet'' and convinces himself - wrongly, and with tragic results - that he is in Hamlet's situation. A
Spaghetti Western
The spaghetti Western is a broad subgenre of Western films produced in Europe. It emerged in the mid-1960s in the wake of Sergio Leone's filmmaking style and international box-office success. The term was used by foreign critics because most o ...
version has been made: ''
Johnny Hamlet'' directed by
Enzo Castellari in 1968. ''
Strange Brew'' (1983) is a movie featuring the comic fictional Canadians
Bob and Doug MacKenzie (played by
Rick Moranis and
Dave Thomas). As stand-ins for the characters of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, they investigate the manufacture of poisonous beer at the Elsinore Brewery where the prior owner has mysteriously died, and is now run by his brother Claude.
Aki Kaurismäki's ''Hamlet Liikemaailmassa'' (''
Hamlet Goes Business'') (Finland, 1987) piles on the irony: a sawmill owner is poisoned, and his brother plans to sell the mills to invest in rubber ducks.
Tom Stoppard directed a
1990 film version of his own play ''
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead'', with
Gary Oldman and
Tim Roth in the title roles, which incorporates scenes from ''Hamlet'' starring
Iain Glen as the Dane; Douglas Brode regards it as less successful on screen than it had been on stage, due to the preponderance of talk over action.
Tardid تردید (
The Doubt) is a 2009 Iranian film directed and written by
Varuzh Karim Masihi. It is an adaptation of Hamlet, and is set in Modern Tehran .The film stars
Bahram Radan,
Taraneh Alidoosti and
Hamed Komeili.
''
Haider'' is a 2014
Bollywood
Hindi cinema, popularly known as Bollywood and formerly as Bombay cinema, is primarily produced in Mumbai. The popular term Bollywood is a portmanteau of "Bombay" (former name of Mumbai) and "Cinema of the United States, Hollywood". The in ...
film directed by
Vishal Bhardwaj, and written by
Basharat Peer and Bhardwaj. It is an adaptation of Hamlet, and is set in
Kashmir
Kashmir ( or ) is the Northwestern Indian subcontinent, northernmost geographical region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term ''Kashmir'' denoted only the Kashmir Valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir P ...
. The film stars
Tabu,
Shahid Kapoor as the eponymous protagonist,
Shraddha Kapoor, and
Kay Kay Menon.
The 2018 film ''
Ophelia'', directed by
Claire McCarthy, follows the story of ''Hamlet'' from Ophelia's perspective. Based on the novel by Lisa Klein, it stars
Daisy Ridley as Ophelia,
George MacKay as Hamlet,
Naomi Watts as Gertrude, and
Clive Owen
Clive Owen (born 3 October 1964) is an English actor. He first gained recognition in the United Kingdom for playing the lead role in the ITV series '' Chancer'' from 1990 to 1991. He received critical acclaim for his work in the film '' Close ...
as Claudius.
''
Grand Theft Hamlet'', directed by
Sam Crane and Pinny Grylls, was filmed during the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...
in 2020. It follows the two directors as they stage a production of ''Hamlet'' within the video game ''
Grand Theft Auto Online'', with characters represented by virtual avatars.
Theatrical performances within films
Another way in which film-makers use Shakespearean texts is to feature characters who are actors performing those texts, within a wider non-Shakespearean story. ''
Hamlet
''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a Shakespearean tragedy, tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play. Set in Denmark, the play (the ...
'' and ''
Romeo and Juliet
''The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet'', often shortened to ''Romeo and Juliet'', is a Shakespearean tragedy, tragedy written by William Shakespeare about the romance between two young Italians from feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's ...
'' are the two plays which have most often been used in this way. Usually, Shakespeare's story has some parallel or resonance with the main plot. In the 1933
Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Houghton Hepburn (May 12, 1907 – June 29, 2003) was an American actress whose Katharine Hepburn on screen and stage, career as a Golden Age of Hollywood, Hollywood leading lady spanned six decades. She was known for her headstrong ...
film ''
Morning Glory
Morning glory (also written as morning-glory) is the common name for over 1,000 species of flowering plants in the family Convolvulaceae, whose taxonomy and systematics remain in flux. These species are distributed across numerous genus, gene ...
'', for which she won her first Best Actress
Academy Award
The Academy Awards, commonly known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit in film. They are presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) in the United States in recognition of excellence ...
, Hepburn's character Eva Lovelace becomes slightly drunk at a party and very effectively begins to recite ''To be or not to be'', when she is rudely interrupted. In
James Whale's 1937 fictional biopic ''The Great Garrick'',
Brian Aherne, as
David Garrick, performs part of the final scene of ''Hamlet'', in full eighteenth-century garb. In
Ernst Lubitsch's 1942 ''
To Be or Not to Be'', the title soliloquy becomes a subtle
running gag: whenever
Jack Benny's character—the pompous actor Joseph Tura—begins the speech, a member of the audience loudly walks out: usually to make love to Tura's wife, played by
Carole Lombard. In the 1955 film ''
Prince of Players'', a biography of
Edwin Booth
Edwin Thomas Booth (November 13, 1833 – June 7, 1893) was an American stage actor and theatrical manager who toured throughout the United States and the major capitals of Europe, performing Shakespearean plays. In 1869, he founded Booth's Th ...
, Richard Burton appears in the title role and performs several scenes from ''Hamlet''. The 1969
Robert Bresson
Robert Bresson (; 25 September 1901 – 18 December 1999) was a French film director. Known for his ascetic approach, Bresson made a notable contribution to the art of cinema; his non-professional actors, Ellipsis (narrative device), ellipses, an ...
film
A Gentle Woman has the wife and husband attending a performance; in which we see the character Elle engrossed in the final scene of the play.
Shelley Long's character plays Hamlet in the 1987 film ''
Outrageous Fortune''. Kenneth Branagh wrote and directed the low-budget ''
In The Bleak Midwinter'' (released in the USA as ''A Midwinter's Tale'') immediately before shooting his famous ''Hamlet''. Shot in just 21 days, and telling the story of a group of actors performing ''Hamlet'' on a shoestring to save a village church, the film is a tribute to
Ealing Comedies, and to the foibles of the acting profession, shot in black and white. The PBS documentary ''Discovering Hamlet'' is about the stage production that Branagh appeared in years before making the film, and includes scenes from that production. The film ''
Hamlet 2'' centers around a high school drama class and their teacher, played by
Steve Coogan, attempting to stage a very experimental and controversial musical sequel to ''Hamlet''.
The
BFI National Archive contains at least twenty films featuring characters performing (sometimes brief) excerpts from ''Hamlet'', including ''
When Hungry Hamlet Fled'' (USA, 1915), ''
Das Alte Gesetz'' (Germany, 1923), ''
The Immortal Gentleman'' (GB, 1935), ''
The Arizonian'' (USA, 1935), ''
South Riding'' (GB, 1937), ''
My Darling Clementine'' (USA, 1946), ''
Hancock's 43 Minutes'' (GB, 1957), ''
Danger Within'' (GB, 1958), ''
The Pure Hell of St Trinian's'' (GB, 1960), ''
Shakespeare Wallah'' (India, 1965), ''
The Magic Christian'' (GB, 1969), ''
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, But Were Afraid to Ask'' (USA, 1972), ''
Theatre of Blood'' (GB, 1973), ''
Mephisto'' (Hungary, 1981), ''
An Englishman Abroad'' (GB, 1983), ''
Withnail and I'' (GB, 1986), ''
Comic Relief 2'' (GB, 1989), ''
Great Expectations'' (GB/USA, 1989), ''
Hysteria 2'' (GB, 1989), ''
The Voice Over Queen'' (USA, 1990) and ''
Tectonic Plates'' (GB, 1992).
List of screen performances
Silent Era
Sound films
List of screen adaptations
This list includes adaptations of the Hamlet story, and films in which the characters are involved in acting or studying Hamlet.
* ''Oh'Phelia'' (UK, 1919) animated burlesque of the ''Hamlet'' story.
:
Anson Dyer director
* ''
To Be or Not To Be'' (USA, 1942) is the story of an acting company in 1939 Poland.
:
Ernst Lubitsch director
:
Jack Benny as Joseph Tura
:
Carole Lombard as Maria Tura
* ''
The Bad Sleep Well'' (aka ''Warui yatsu hodo yoku nemuru'') (Japan, 1960) is an adaptation of the Hamlet story set in corporate Japan.
:
Akira Kurosawa
was a Japanese filmmaker who List of works by Akira Kurosawa, directed 30 feature films in a career spanning six decades. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers in the History of film, history of cinema ...
director
:
Toshiro Mifune as Koichi Nishi
* ''
A Performance of Hamlet in the Village of Mrdusa Donja
A, or a, is the first letter and the first vowel letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, and others worldwide. Its name in English is '' a'' (pronounced ), plural ''aes''.
It is similar in shape to the Ancient ...
'' (Yugoslavia, 1974) Entered into the
24th Berlin International Film Festival.
:
Krsto Papić director
:
Rade Šerbedžija as Joco / Hamlet
* ''
Angel of Revenge/Female Hamlet'' (Turkey, 1977)
:
Metin Erksan, director
:
Fatma Girik as a female Hamlet
* ''
To Be or Not To Be'' (USA, 1983) is a remake of the Ernst Lubitsch film.
:
Mel Brooks
Melvin James Brooks (né Kaminsky; born June 28, 1926) is an American actor, comedian, filmmaker, and songwriter. With a career spanning over seven decades, he is known as a writer and director of a variety of successful broad farces and parodie ...
director and as Frederick Bronski
:
Anne Bancroft as Anna Bronski
* ''
Strange Brew'' (Canada, 1983), a comedy. Something is rotten in the Elsinore Brewery.
:
Dave Thomas co-director and as Doug McKenzie
:
Rick Moranis co-director and as Bob McKenzie
* ''
Hamlet Goes Business'' (''Hamlet liikemaailmassa'') (Finland, 1987).
:
Aki Kaurismäki director
:
Pirkka-Pekka Petelius as Hamlet
* ''
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead'' (USA, 1990) film based on
Tom Stoppard’s stage play.
:
Tom Stoppard director
:
Gary Oldman as Rozencrantz (or Guildenstern)
:
Tim Roth as Guildenstern (or Rozencrantz)
:
Richard Dreyfuss as the Player King
* ''
Renaissance Man'' (USA, 1994) is the story of an unemployed advertising executive teaching ''Hamlet'' to a group of underachieving trainee soldiers.
:
Penny Marshall director
:
Danny DeVito
Daniel Michael DeVito Jr. (born November 17, 1944) is an American actor and filmmaker. He gained prominence for his portrayal of the taxi dispatcher Louie De Palma in the television series ''Taxi (TV series), Taxi'' (1978–1983), which won him ...
as Bill
* ''
The Lion King'' (USA, 1994)
Disney
The Walt Disney Company, commonly referred to as simply Disney, is an American multinational mass media and entertainment industry, entertainment conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios (Burbank), Walt Di ...
’s animated adaptation of the Hamlet story.
:
Roger Allers and
Rob Minkoff directors
:
Matthew Broderick as the voice of Simba (the Hamlet character)
:
James Earl Jones as the voice of Mufasa (the Old Hamlet character)
:
Jeremy Irons as the voice of Scar (the Claudius character)
:
Moira Kelly as the voice of Nala (the Ophelia character)
:
Madge Sinclair as the voice of Sarabi (the Gertrude character)
* ''
In The Bleak Midwinter'' (aka “A Midwinter’s Tale”) (UK, 1996) tells the story of a group of actors performing ''Hamlet''.
:
Kenneth Branagh
Sir Kenneth Charles Branagh ( ; born 10 December 1960) is a British actor and filmmaker. Born in Belfast and raised primarily in Reading, Berkshire, Branagh trained at RADA in London and served as its president from 2015 to 2024. List of award ...
director
:
Michael Maloney as Joe (Hamlet)
:
Julia Sawalha as Nina (Ophelia)
* ''
Let the Devil Wear Black'' (USA, 1999)
:
Stacy Title director
:
Jonathan Penner as Jack Lyne (Hamlet)
:
Jamey Sheridan as Carl Lyne (Claudius)
:
Mary-Louise Parker as Julia Hirsch (Ophelia)
* ''
The Banquet'' (China, 2006)
:
Feng Xiaogang, director
:
Zhang Ziyi as Empress Wan (Gertrude)
:
Daniel Wu as Prince Wu Luan (Hamlet)
:
Zhou Xun as Qing Nu (Ophelia)
:
Ge You as Emperor Li (Claudius)
*''
Karmayogi'' (2012)
:
V. K. Prakash, director
:
Indrajith Sukumaran as Rudran Gurukkal (Hamlet)
:
Nithya Menon (Ophelia)
:
Padmini Kolhapure as Mankamma (Gertrude)
:
Saiju Kurup (Claudius)
* ''
Haider'' (India, 2014) Hindi adaptation set in
Kashmir
Kashmir ( or ) is the Northwestern Indian subcontinent, northernmost geographical region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term ''Kashmir'' denoted only the Kashmir Valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir P ...
.
:
Vishal Bhardwaj, director
:
Shahid Kapoor as Haider Mir (based on Hamlet)
:
Tabu as Ghazala Mir- Haider's mother (based on Gertrude)
:
Shraddha Kapoor as Arshia (based on Ophelia)
:
Kay Kay Menon as Khurram Mir-Haider's Uncle (based on Claudius)
*''
Hemanta'' (2016)
:
Anjan Dutt, director
:
Parambrata Chatterjee as Hemanta Sen (Hamlet)
:
Payel Sarkar as Olipriya (Ophelia)
:
Gargi Roychowdhury as Gayatri Sen (Gertrude)
:
Saswata Chatterjee as Kalyan Sen (Claudius)
* ''
Ophelia'' (UK/USA, 2018) tells the story from Ophelia's perspective.
:
Claire McCarthy director
:
Daisy Ridley as Ophelia
:
George MacKay as Hamlet
:
Naomi Watts as Gertrude
:
Clive Owen
Clive Owen (born 3 October 1964) is an English actor. He first gained recognition in the United Kingdom for playing the lead role in the ITV series '' Chancer'' from 1990 to 1991. He received critical acclaim for his work in the film '' Close ...
as Claudius
* ''
The Lion King'' (USA, 2019)
Disney
The Walt Disney Company, commonly referred to as simply Disney, is an American multinational mass media and entertainment industry, entertainment conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios (Burbank), Walt Di ...
’s remake of the animated adaptation of the Hamlet story.
:
Jon Favreau
Jonathan Kolia Favreau ( ; born October 19, 1966) is an American actor and filmmaker. As an actor, Favreau has appeared in films such as ''Rudy (film), Rudy'' (1993), ''PCU (film), PCU'' (1994), ''Swingers (1996 film), Swingers'' (1996), ''Very ...
director
:
Donald Glover as the voice of Simba (the Hamlet character)
:
James Earl Jones (reprising his role) as the voice of Mufasa (the Old Hamlet character)
:
Chiwetel Ejiofor as the voice of Scar (the Claudius character)
:
Beyoncé
Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter ( ; born September 4, 1981) is an American singer, songwriter, actress, and businesswoman. With a career spanning over three decades, she has established herself as one of the most Cultural impact of Beyoncé, ...
as the voice of Nala (the Ophelia character)
:
Alfre Woodard as the voice of Sarabi (the Gertrude character)
* ''
Sang-e-Mah'' (Pakistan, 2022) Urdu adaptation
:
Saife Hassan, director
:
Atif Aslam
Atif Aslam (; born 12 March 1983) is a Pakistani playback singer, songwriter, composer, and actor. He has recorded many songs in both Pakistan and India, and is known for his Belting (music), vocal belting technique.
Born in Wazirabad, Waziraba ...
as Hilmand Khan (Hamlet)
:
Samiya Mumtaz as Zarsanga - Hilmand's mother (Gertrude)
:
Naumaan Ijaz as Haji Marjaan Khan-Hilmamd's stepfather (Claudius)
* ''
The Northman'' (USA, 2022) tells the original story of Amleth that Hamlet is based on
:
Robert Eggers, director
:
Alexander Skarsgård as Amleth (Hamlet)
:
Nicole Kidman as Queen Gudrún (Gertrude)
:
Claes Bang as Fjölnir (Claudius)
:
Anya Taylor-Joy
Anya-Josephine Marie Taylor-Joy (; born 16 April 1996) is an actress. Born in Miami and raised in Buenos Aires and London, she left school at the age of 16 to pursue an acting career. After a series of small television roles, her Breakthrough ...
as Olga (Ophelia)
See also
*
Shakespeare on screen
*
Cultural references to ''Hamlet''
Notes
References
Bibliography
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Hamlet on Screen
Lists of films by source
Films based on Hamlet
Television shows based on Hamlet