Hamlet

Film adaptations of Hamlet have tended to fall into two broad categories, psychological character studies of Hamlet that emphasize Oedipal dynamics, and political readings that portray the prince as a rebellious crusader against various forms of systemic sociopolitical corruption. Of the former group, Laurence Olivier’s 1947 Hamlet has been particularly influential, casting a long shadow across film versions by John Gielgud (1964), Tony Richardson (1969), and Franco Zeffirelli (1990). Notable examples of political screen adaptations include the versions by Akira Kurosawa (The Bad Sleep Well, 1960), Gyorgi Kozintsev (1964), Kenneth Branagh (1996), and Michael Almereyda (2000). This article surveys the history and characteristics of these two styles of adapting Hamlet to the screen, focusing on how specific films have reshaped Shakespeare’s play to respond to specific historical and cultural contexts, to the demands of film as a medium, and to previous film adaptations of the tragedy.