Laurence Olivier
Hamlet

In the same year that Orson Welles released his Macbeth (1948), another actor/director with immense talent, Laurence Olivier, completed a version of one of Shakespeare's masterpieces, "Hamlet". The film won a total of 4 Oscars, in addition to the prestigious Golden Lion in Venice.

"So often it happens to singular men,
because of a whim, a flaw of nature,
due to an abundance of some of their humor
that fences and defenses of reason overturn
by a habit of which they become slaves.

To these men,
marked by the stain of a defect, it happens
that their other virtues, even if pure like grace,
appear to the judgment of the world spoiled and corrupted.
For that one fault."

With this prologue, penned by himself, Laurence Olivier began his personal interpretation of the English text, profoundly marking the form and content of the work with his talent, but without distorting the plot and setting (why does Ronconi come to mind?). The intrigue and historical context remain those of Shakespeare's original, but the angle from which the director views the characters and locations impacts and changes the meaning of the work. From the prologue alone, one can sense the attention to that inner evil that undermines the human personality and causes it to deviate from reason: despite the sympathy we usually have for Hamlet, it is undeniable how a character who starts pure and clear ends up lost in the same murky sea that envelops the other characters.

The close friendship ten years earlier with Ernest Jones (a pupil of Freud) led to significant changes to the text of Hamlet, which Olivier had been performing on stage for some time in his homeland; the director's psychoanalytic dimension digs into the characters and their inner struggles, tracing the original text but intensifying every introspective reading (in a work like Hamlet, where such introspection was secondary to other works of the English master). Critics have highlighted the Oedipal complex that would concern Hamlet: a more than fair reading, but what is important to emphasize is the ambiguous relationship with his mother Gertrude. The queen provokes the son's indignation and contempt, as she remarried too quickly after the death of her husband and the prince's father, and moreover with the deceased's brother. To this hostile relationship is added one of affection/love, which often spills over into truly excessive manifestations and breaches the normal mother-son relationship.

When the ghost of his father reveals to him that he was killed by his own brother, Hamlet plans revenge and slowly loses his sanity (more or less consciously, as debated): but the director is not so much interested in the irrational side of the protagonist's character (as Branagh would do) while preferring to focus on the relationships between the main characters.
Particularly significant is that between Hamlet and Ophelia (semi-betrothed and daughter of the court chamberlain): the prince oscillates and approaches her with an unpredictably changeable character and a mix of love and hatred that is also found in the bond with his mother. It's as if Olivier wanted to make the viewer understand the intimate relationship between mother and son (whose actors were of almost similar ages) by placing it in contrast with the healthier relationship between lovers.

A special mention to the settings (which won the Oscar): the rooms of Elsinore Castle are bare and gloomy, much like the Prince's murky character, yet at the same time full of steps, staircases, battlemented towers, load-bearing walls, and secondary rooms: the environment contributes to delineating a presence, that of Hamlet, tormented and at the same time complex.

Faithful to the Shakespearean text in many elements (though Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Fortinbras are notably absent), it diverges in many others, favoring a spectacular and majestic psychoanalytic approach, although alien to the original spirit. It remains a beautiful film, probably superior to any other reinterpretation of the text, although "less Hamlet" than Branagh's version, more fitting and faithful.