Adaptation
Kozintsev's film is faithful to the architecture of the play, but the text (based on Pasternak's translation) is heavily truncated, achieving a total running time of 2 hours 20 minutes (from a play which lasts four hours in full performance). The opening scene of the play is cut entirely, along with scenes 1 and 6 of Act IV, but other scenes are represented in sequence, even though some are drastically shortened. (Hamlet's final speech is reduced simply to "The rest is silence.") There is some resequencing of material in Act IV to illustrate the outwitting of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern on the voyage to England. Kozintsev seeks constantly to represent the content of the play in visual terms, and there are notable sequences which are constructed without the use of dialogue (e.g. the opening scene in which Hamlet arrives at Elsinore to join the court's mourning, and the vigil awaiting the appearance of the ghost).
Unlike Laurence Olivier's 1948 film, which removed most of the play's political dimension to focus on Hamlet's inner turmoil, Kozintsev's Hamlet is as political and public as it is personal. Kozintsev observed of his predecessor: "Olivier cut the theme of government, which I find extremely interesting. I will not yield a single point from this line." Where Olivier had narrow winding stairwells, Kozintsev has broad avenues, peopled with ambassadors and courtiers. The castle's role as a prison is emphasised. The camera frequently looks through bars and grates, and one critic has suggested that the image of Ophelia in an iron farthingale symbolises the fate of the sensitive and intelligent in the film's tough political environment. The film also shows the presence of ordinary people in ragged clothes, who are like the grave digger: good-hearted and only wishing to live peacefully.
Read more about this topic: Hamlet (1964 Film)
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