Hamlet (1948)

Celebrate Oscar weekend with a Hollywood Classics screening of Laurence Olivier’s unforgettable adaptation of Shakespeare’s HAMLET, winner of four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor!

Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet is one of the most authentic, compelling and brilliantly visualized adaptations of Shakespeare’s much-adored play, earning the Academy Award for Best Picture and marking the first time that a director channeled themselves into a Best Actor Oscar win. Olivier is at his most inspired – both as director and as the melancholy Dane himself – as he breathes new life into the words of one of the world’s greatest dramatists. Long considered a “film noir” version of the play, Olivier consulted with psychoanalyst Ernest Jones, a close associate and biographer of Freud, to bring his vision to the screen.  The contradictions and ambiguities of the title character, who prowls cavernous sets willed with vast ancient corridors and winding staircases, emerge as if from a dream.  The black-and-white imagery wondrously enhances the mood, giving the tragedy the perfect atmosphere of a ghost story, while a cast of renowned British actors, including Oscar-nominated Jean Simmons (as “Ophelia”), John Laurie and Peter Cushing, supply the energy to drive the calamitous plot that has inspired generations of filmmakers.  (Dir. by Laurence Olivier, 1948, UK, 153 mins., Not Rated)