HAMLET

Olivier's HAMLET is one of the most authentic, genuine and enthusiastically visualized adaptations of Shakespeare’s much-adored play, earning the Academy Award for Best Picture and marking the first time that a director channeled themselves into a Best Actor win. This is definitely a “film noir” version of the play; before production, Olivier consulted with psychoanalyst Ernest Jones, a close associate and biographer of Freud.

The contradictions and ambiguities of the title character, who prowls cavernous sets filled with vast ancient corridors and winding staircases, emerge as if from a dream. The black-and-white imagery wondrously enhances the mood, giving the tragedy the perfect atmosphere of a ghost story, while a cast of renowned British actors with the energy and seriousness necessary to appropriately convey the calamitous plot brilliantly delivers the dialogue.