Hamlet

Shakespeare's 17th century masterpiece about the "Melancholy Dane" was given one of its best screen treatments by Soviet director Grigori Kozintsev. Kozintsev's Elsinore was a real castle in Estonia, utilized metaphorically as the "stone prison" of the mind wherein Hamlet must confine himself in order to avenge his father's death. Hamlet himself is portrayed (by Innokenti Smoktunovsky) as the sole sensitive intellectual in a world made up of debauchers and revellers. Several of Kozintsev directorial choices seem deliberately calculated to inflame the purists: Hamlet's delivers his "To be or not to be" soliloquy with his back to the camera, allowing the audience to fill in its own interpretations.

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Art

Evgeny Eney

Production Design

Georgi Kropachyov

Set Decoration

Yevgeni Gukov

Set Decoration

Camera

Jonas Gricius

Director of Photography

Costume & Make-Up

Simon Virsaladze

Costume Design

Directing

Valentina Kuznetsova

Assistant Director

Editing

Sound

Dmitri Shostakovich

Original Music Composer

Writing

William Shakespeare

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