by Jerry Roberts

July 7, 2002

"Hamlet" was the first of Shakepeare's plays that I studied. The most famous story of Fratricide since Kane and Able captured my imagination as it has countless others for over four-hundred years.

Being so enraptured by the themes and very human questions asked by this play (and being a movie geek) I have yet to miss a single celluloid variation. To my surprise, most of the film versions of "Hamlet" have been pretty good. The best being Kenneth Branaugh hard-working four hour presentation made in 1996 which fleshes out every single syllable. I even liked the Zefferelli's version from 1990 with Mel Gibson and the 2000 modern-day telling with Ethan Hawke.

The lemon, I'm afraid, is a 1960 stage presentation made for German television. Mystery Science Theater 3000 did into mine eyes pour this leperous distilment which means that I only saw 90 minutes of what I am told is a three-hour movie. Nothing that I saw made me want to see more.

Why so dreary? Aye, there's the rub.

Filmed in black and white (mostly black), this ungainly run-through is so dark that one is likely to think that it was filmed during a black-out. The actors move and sound like they are doing a dress rehersal when it is late and everyone is ready to go home. It is also terribly dubbed into English (Claudius is voiced by Ricardo Montaban). Every character is barely audible most of the time and grating on the viewer's patience all of the time.

The title role is occupied by Maximillian Schell just a year before he won a Best Actor Oscar for his supporting role in Stanley Kramer's Judgement at Nuremberg. He, like his fellow actors, drag their lines into the ground, expelling them with only the slightest hint of energy. Every line sounds like their dying words which make their dying words even more agonizing.

Watching the film closely, I now know why. The people dubbing the lines into English are slowing their words so that they match the actions on screen. The actors move with large amount of lethargy which means that the words come out in fits and starts so that the graveyard scene sounds like this:

"Alas . . . poor Yorich . . . I knew him . . . Horatio . . . a fellow . . . of infinant . . . . . . . . . . . . jest . . . . . . . . of most . . . excellent . . . fancy".

I now understand how the movie got to be three hours long.

It's a long haul even at a scant hour and a half. Hard on the eyes, hard on the ears, hard on the patience. When it's all over and Hamlet reminds us that "The rest . . . . . . is . . . . .silence", I couldn't help reminding myself that "The rest . . . . . . is . . . . . . well-deserved".