鈥淭he beached verge鈥� : on filming the unfilmable in Grigori Kozintsev鈥檚 Hamlet

Abstract

While much critical commentary on the filming of Hamlet is explicitly apprehensive of the play鈥檚 cinematic unsuitability, none is perhaps as categorically adamant about its daunting difficulties as J. Blumenthal鈥檚 belief that the tragic protagonist is unfit for film narrative: 鈥淗amlet would be untranslatable because of the verbality of his experience.鈥� Indeed, even a less drastic critic like Barbara Hodgdon who readily admits that Grigori Kozintsev鈥檚 Hamlet (1964) 鈥渄oes achieve some of Shakespeare鈥檚 effects,鈥� likewise emphasises its literary source鈥檚 non-visual qualities: 鈥淗amlet is a 鈥榟ead play鈥�, in that much of the action (or, rather, the questioning about whether to act and when) takes place in the imagination and is expressed primarily in language. Because of this, Hamlet鈥檚 physical role has a commanding stasis.鈥� The echo of G. Wilson Knight鈥檚 remark is unmistakable especially in the final epithet: 鈥淚nstead of being dynamic, the force of Hamlet is, paradoxically, static.鈥� Given this unequivocal consensus on Hamlet having what Robert A. Duffy calls 鈥渦n-filmic tendencies,鈥� one can easily presume that Kozintsev鈥檚 version shares with other filmed Hamlets the inevitable shortcomings of any such doomed attempt to film Shakespeare鈥檚 unfilmable text.