Laurence Olivier in the ‘Yorick scene’ (Act V, Scene 1) (1948)

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Over fifty films have been adapted from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet since 1900, including a cult 1900 five-minute film of the illustrious French actress Sarah Bernhardt, who had played the eponymous prince in a popular production staged in London the year before, a short clip of which you may watch below.

The most interesting post-war adaptations have included films directed by:

– Laurence Olivier (1948), in which he plays Hamlet (see picture above), and which won Academy Awards for Best Actor and Best Picture: Olivier’s film remains famous, among other things, for emphasizing the Oedipal theme in the play, for instance by making the bold decision of casting Eileen Herlie, who was only 28 years old at the time, as Gertrude, while Olivier himself was 41.

– Tony Richardson (1969), which was the first adaptation in color, and starred a young Anthony Hopkins as Claudius and 60s&70s rock icon Marianne Faithfull as Ophelia.

– Franco Zeffirelli (1990), who had already gained recognition for his adaptation of other Shakespeare classics (The Taming of the Shrew, with Richard Burton and Liz Taylor in 1967, Romeo and Juliet in 1968, and Verdi’s opera version of Othello, with Placido Domingo, in 1986): the film stars the unlikely and ultimately intriguing duo of Mel Gibson and Glenn Close as Hamlet and Gertrude.

– Kenneth Branagh (1996), which was adapted from a Royal Shakespeare Company  production of the play, in which Branagh already played the title role: the film has an A-list cast (including cameos by Charlton Heston, Robin Williams, Judi Dench and Gérard Depardieu) and happens to be the only major motion picture using the full text of the play.

– Michael Almereyda (2000), a modernized version of the play taking place in today’s New York City starring Ethan Hawke as Hamlet.

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