Who payed the critics

Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

I recommend this to everyone with a taste for dramatic, striking imagery. This is undoubtedly the most beautiful black-and-white picture I've seen so far. The inevitable subtitles are not that distracting if you're familiar with the basic story (I'm not a Shakespeare buff, so I may have missed some finer points, like a political message). The acting is superb, but never upstages the camera - this is a filmmakers vision, not an expanded stage play. The drama is heightened by Dmitri Shostakovich's dark, menacing score over the backdrop of rolling waves. A visual and acoustic treat.

I've never understood those who insist that Shakespeare's plays were written by an aristocrat like the Earl of Oxford. Only a man who lived life on the edge could have written the way Shakespeare did; it's difficult to imagine an upper-class twit writing "Hamlet" or "King Lear." Perhaps it's easier for people in eastern Europe or the former Soviet Union to understand Shakespeare than Americans; in many ways, living conditions there are much closer to Elizabethan England than anything we can imagine. Like Shakespeare, they have had to endure tyrannical governments, social injustice, religious persecutions, and other ordeals the more prosperous West scarcely remembers. Grigori Kozintsev's "Gamlet" illustrates this thesis. Here is a no-frills "Hamlet," in beautiful black-and-white, with a brilliant score by Dmitri Shostakovich and an exceptional cast. It's not surprising that Innokenti Smoktunovsky (Hamlet) was a holocaust survivor: pain is etched on his face, and for once Hamlet's suffering doesn't seem put on. Anastasia Vertinskaya is lovely as a tiny, fragile Ophelia, and Elsa Radzin is stunning as the queen. This is a surprisingly traditional Hamlet, free of trendy modernistic interpretation, almost nineteenth-century in its use of period detail. It's almost the kind of "Hamlet" one might have seen in the days of Edwin Booth or Sir Henry Irving; only Vertinskaya's beehive hairdo gives it away as having been made in the 1960s.

I share the previous reviewer's high estimation of this wonderful film. It is a highly political and imaginative interpretation of Hamlet, making Hamlet a man of action who is nevertheless alienated at court. The opening sequence is a stunning interpretation of Hamlet's view that the time is out of joint--Hamlet rushes back to court on horseback even as the flags of mourning are being unfurled. Claudius's speech is delivered by a herald and then translated by ambassadors. When we get to Claudius giving the rest of it to his court, it's not clear how much time, if any, has passed. nor is it clear who is in command (who is giving the orders that the flags be unfurled, cannons fired, the proclamation read, and so on). When Claudius finally addresses Hamlet aft the camera tracks him moving right down the table of courtiers, Hamlet's chair is empty. the opening sequence also moves from open external spaces ( a shot of the sea, a long shot of the land, and moves to increasingly shut in , interior spaces (the castle gates drop as the music gets ominous) to suggest that Denmark is indeed a prison. Visually and musically the film is very rich. I would rank this as the best of the filmed Hamlets.

I have to marvel at the production values in this wonderful film. Exquisite sets, lighting and costumes. Stunning location. Epic original music score by Dmitri Shostokovitsch -- the music alone is more than enough to recommend this film. Great acting by, among others, Innokenti Smoktunovsky as Hamlet. Every scene an artistically complete poem of light and sound. Oh, and if you wonder what it's like to hear Shakespeare in Russian . . . it's great! The translation is by Boris Pasternak, one of the finest poets in any language. An epic treatment of the epic story.