(4 of 8)
Tradition & Invention. Any production of Hamlet stands or falls, in the long run, by the quality of its leading actor. Most productions have little to recommend them except a good Hamlet; few have that. This one, in every piece of casting, in every performance, is about as nearly solid as gold can be. It is hard to imagine better work, along traditional lines, than that of Felix Aylmer, snuffling and badgering about as Polonius; or of Basil Sydney (who once played a memorable Hamlet, in modern dress) as the corrupt, tormented usurper; or of Norman Wooland as a gentle, modest, steadfast and wise Horatio. Stanley Holloway, as the Gravedigger, is blessedly out-of-tradition;* he seemed to have learned his lines from the earth itself, not from "Shakespearean" pseudo-rustics. Terence Morgan, as Laertes, is the quintessence of an old aristocrat's fine, somewhat spoiled son. For once, Queen Gertrude is young enough, and beautiful enough, to explain all the excitement she generates in the Ghost, his murderer and her son. Indeed, Eileen Herlie, who is only 27, has some trouble looking old enough to be the beauteous Majesty of Denmark. But her performance is a profoundly exciting job of tragedy in the grand manner.
Tear-Jerker. Ophelia is not an easy role, nor is it any too clearly written. Most actresses who try it (besides being old enough to spank Polonius) are likely to play the sane scenes like mad scenes and the mad scenes like a little-theater production of Ring Lardner's Clemo Uti, or the Water Lilies.
Jean Simmons was only 18 when she played Ophelia. She plays the sane scenes with a baffled docility, a faint aura of fey, and a tender suggestion of nascent maturity. All this may go a long way toward persuading 20th Century audiences that a young girl really could so sedulously obey a meddlesome old father, and really could lose her mind when her estranged lover killed him. She plays the mad scenes as if she had never heard that Ophelia is one of Shakespeare's most shameless tearjerkers, and as if her lovely language and her cracked, ribald little songs were drifting out of a broken soul for the first time, rather than for the third century.
Young Miss Simmons has an unspoiled talent for speaking with an open voice or, in an old Shakespearean phrase of Robert Benchley's, from the heart rather than the roof of the mouth. She has an oblique, individual beauty and a trained dancer's continuous grace. As a result, she jerks genuine tears during scenes which ordinarily cause Shakespeare's greatest admirers to sneak out for a drink. Compared with most of the members of the cast, she is obviously just a talented beginner. But she is the only person in the picture who gives every one of her lines the bloom of poetry and the immediacy of ordinary life.
Was it an advantage to Miss Simmons to have nothing but movie training before this role? She would doubtless have the same freshness and the same talent for heartfelt speech (if not her useful knowledge of movie acting), if she had never heard of movies. But she has had as her constant mentors J. Arthur Rank's excellent dramatic coach, exActress Molly Terraine, and one of the best imaginable teachers, Laurence Olivier.