Hamlet (1948) on Netflix
On the battlements of Elsinore, sentries see the ghost of the dead king. They bring word to Prince Hamlet, whose mother has married his uncle within a month of the death.
- Watch on NetflixThis title is not on Netflix right now. Please check back later for updates.
- Watch on Prime
- Watch on NordVPN
- Netflix4.3/5
- IMDb7.5/1020,130 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes96%
Trailer
Plot summary
Inside the castle at Elsinore, the court celebrates the marriage of Queen Gertrude to King Claudius, brother of her late husband, who died of an apparent snakebite; the wedding came within a month of the death. Prince Hamlet sits alone and refuses to join in. On the battlements, the sentry Francisco is relieved by Bernardo, who with Marcellus has twice seen an apparition. Horatio, Prince Hamlet's friend, doubts the story until the figure appears and vanishes without speaking. Horatio and the sentries then tell Hamlet of the apparition of his father, and Hamlet goes to the battlements, where the figure beckons him onward.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Hamlet (1948)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Laurence Olivier voiced the Ghost himself, recording the dialogue as an amplified whisper and playing it back at reduced speed for a deep, otherworldly quality. For years, film reference books wrongly assumed John Gielgud had recorded the voice.
- For the Ghost's three appearances, Olivier built the eerie noise from as many as fourteen separate tracks: one of fifty women shrieking, another of as many men groaning, and a third of a dozen violinists scraping their bows across the strings on a single screeching note.
- Hamlet was the first British film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, and the first sound film of Shakespeare's play in English.
- Laurence Olivier's Hamlet was the only film in which the leading actor directed himself to an Oscar-winning performance until Roberto Benigni did it with Life Is Beautiful in 1998, and Olivier remains the only actor to win an Oscar for a Shakespearean role.
- Olivier excised the play's "political" elements entirely, Fortinbras, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, partly to save time, saying "one great whacking cut had to be made", and chose Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as that cut.
- The pulsing heart-beat that heralded each Ghost entrance was a trick Olivier took from Jean-Louis Barrault's Paris stage production. He wrote to Barrault for permission and insisted on paying for the idea, and racked the camera in and out of focus to make it work on screen.
- Stanley Holloway was cast as the Gravedigger in place of Irish actor F. J. McCormick, who died prematurely before he could film any of his scenes.
- Eileen Herlie was 29 when she played Hamlet's mother, Gertrude, while Laurence Olivier, playing her son, was 40 when the film was shot in 1947.
