Do you hate the Olivier Hamlet film as much as I do?

[ralfyman]

Well, regarding throwing things at the screen (stage) you need to come to one of those cult showings of Rocky Horror. And yes, they're still doing that.

Of course there's authenticity and slavish adherence to Elizabethan theater convention, as you know.

I suppose that I tend to get on a high horse and become irritated if a particular version of something isn't up to what I consider correct, and I'm often wrong, as usual. For example I get miffed if we're shown Arthur's Excalibur as the "sword in the stone" when in "fact" it came from the Lady of the Lake.

And yes, I freely admit to having a serious grudge at Olivier for leading so many Shakespeare fans down the garden path with his smarmy Hamlet. That's just my opinion and regardless, I find it fun to debate these things. I'm likely to go off on a tangent about other things, such as how badly Josef II is misrepresented in the film Amadeus, how much Stephen Hawking is admired without strong questions regarding his statements, and other scattered concepts here and there. Oh, well...

I do not think Rocky Horror is seen the same way as Hamlet. If it is, though, then that probably supports the point that there is no "authentic" way of reading or performing the latter.

Also, I'd like to think that "slavish" also describes attempts at "authenticity," especially when the latter cannot be explained or shown to be true, as shown in the first paragraph of my post.

Given that, I think Hamlet can be seen in many ways, including "smarmy."

[NickBrown]

Personally, I don't think anything is as bad as Branagh...

[Patrick Walker]

The BBC Jacobi version, for all I disagree with in it, is far and away the best Hamlet on "film".

[Miss Plum]

The glories of the internet. Lounging into a conversation after about a year.

Well, I can't stand that noisy, crammed, overproduced Branagh version. And Basil Sydney (Olivier's Claudius) is just about my favorite Claudius.

My favorite film version -- brace yourselves -- is the one with Ethan Hawke.