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There is little novel interpretation of character: even that might distract from the great language, or distort it. There is no clear placement in time, no outside world except blind sky, faint landscapes, ruminant surf, a lyrical brook. The camera, prowling and peering about the cavernous castle, creates a kind of continuum of time and space. Such castles were almost as naked of furniture as the Elizabethan stage; Olivier uses both facts to the film's advantage. Not even the costumes are distracting; they are close to the simplest mind's-eye image: a King & Queen like playing cards; Hamlet in black & white, with a princely silver chain; Ophelia, a flowering draught of white. The production is as austere, and as grimly concentrated, as Henry V was profuse and ingratiating. Only the wild, heartfelt, munificent language is left at liberty.
Scissors & Paste. Olivier was determined to make the play clear in every line and every word—even to those who know nothing of Shakespeare. For the most part, he manages to elucidate even the trickiest turns of idiom by pantomime or a pure gift for thought transference. But wherever it has seemed necessary, old words have been changed for new. Recks not his own rede becomes Minds not his own creed. In all, there are 25 such changes. Some are debatable, but the principle is sound. It is equally sound, of course, to cut the text. There are purists who will yell bloody murder at the very idea that Shakespeare can possibly be "improved" on in any way at all. Nonetheless, Olivier has treated him to some shrewd editing.
In the process of cutting a 4½-hour play to 2½ hours' playing time, the editing has also been very drastic in places. The soliloquy 0 what a rogue and peasant slave am I, which is cut in the film, is about as happily dispensed with as half the forebrain, for in it Hamlet tries more desperately than at any other time to come to terms with himself. How all occasions do inform against me is important self-revelation and great poetry as well; but that, too, had to go—along with Fortinbras. Sometimes Olivier and his co-editor, Alan Dent, have gone out of their way to save a small jewel (The bird of dawning singeth all night long). But now & then, apparently for the sake of pace, they needlessly throw something overboard.
Unkindest Cuts. Olivier and Dent are neither vandals, boobs nor megalomaniacs. They knew what they were doing. They felt, mostly with very good reason, that they had to do it. Mostly as a result of cutting, their Hamlet loses much of the depth and complexity which it might have had. Hamlet is a sublime tragedy, but it is also the most delightful and dangerous of tragicomedies. Some of the tragicomedy remains and is the best thing in the film. But some of the best went out with Rosencrantz & Guildenstern.