Hamlet (Director: Grigori Kozintsev)
Nominees: I Am Cuba, Charulata, A Hard Days Night, Dr. Strangelove, The Train, Goldfinger, Pale Flower, Nothing But a Man, Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Seven Days in May, Onibaba, Night of the Iguana, Nobody Waved Goodbye, Yearning, Marnie, Woman in the DunesOscars pick: My Fair Lady
Nominees: Becket, Dr. Strangelove, Mary Poppins, Zorba the Greek
Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is a fantastic picture, a witty anti-war satire that shows what happens when the inmates and warmongers and the ineffectual run the asylum. Of the Academy's nominated features, it should have won the Oscar without a second thought. My Fair Lady was the top dog - a decent film, but it wasn't the overall best, or even the best musical... or even the second-best musical for that matter. To riff on Danny Peary's comments on the season: the bittersweet French romance The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Beatles A Hard Days Night showed off a greater imagination, stronger camerawork, and featured superior music to My Fair Lady.
My Picture of the Year, however, is the Russian filming of Hamlet (Gamlet). Director Grigori Kozintsev restores the political aspects that Oliver removed in his version of the play, tightens up, and takes out other scenes. He really gets into Hamlet's interior thoughts. Dialogue that was often spoken out loud in other plays and movies, is interpreted as inner monologues. Hearing these words in Russia was strange, but it didn't take long for me to get used to it. No, it's not as pretty and poetic – but the emotional cadences remain. Some famous lines are lost, but all told it didn't hurt the overall effect.
Visually it's a stunner. Kozintsev said that it was his aim to "make visible the poetic atmosphere of the play." And in this, he succeeds brilliantly. The castle itself is more wide open than in other versions, but it still feels like a prison. The beautifully staged and photographed appearance of Hamlet's ghostly father is marked by shadow, crumbling architecture, and flowing capes.
Performances are all strong, and actress Anastasiya Vertinskaya was an amazing Ophelia. There was a tangible sense of fragility in her that made Ophelia's final scenes heartbreaking.
The rich and noteworthy score was written by the great Russian composer Dmitry Shostakovich.
Despite a few things that are not purely Shakespearean, this was the best filming of Hamlet I've ever seen. There were no lulls, no moments when I wasn't completely enthralled by what was happening on screen.
A close contender to Hamlet was I Am Cuba. This hard-to-find movie is one that I’ve wanted to see for ages. So I was jacked to find it at FilmStruck. It’s pure communist propaganda, but visually impressive: Stunning photography, lighting, and camera movement were seen throughout. It earns its stars for what it achieves at a cinematic level alone.
Acting!
Attenborough showed his range in '64: Reserved in Seance, OTT, and cartoonish in Batasi at the start... but stick with it. He's really quite remarkable.
Actress was tough because I really liked Seberg, but Mukherjee is so, so extra special. And she shows incredible growth as an actress. As wonderful as she was in the Big City (1963), she's much more subtle here. She's not doing the standard expression thing ('I'm concerned, so I'll crinkle my brow'), but giving us the inner struggle - the way she moves, that look in her eyes that shows there's something, some idea or thought going on behind them. In a piece about the actress, Karen Bali wrote... "Madhabi makes the central role of Charu her own. It is without a doubt one of the greatest performances of Indian Cinema. She lives the role. She is Charulata. To date, Madhabi in Charulata remains the benchmark for what an ideal Tagore heroine should be..."
Honorable Mentions:
Jean Seberg, Lilith * Mariko Kaga, Pale Flower * Anne Bancroft, The Pumpkin Eater * Pamela Franklin, The Third Secret * Nobuko Otowa & Jitsuko Yoshimura, Onibaba * Deborah Kerr & Ava Gardner, Night of the Iguana * Ingrid Bergman, The Visit * Sophia Loren, Marriage, Italian Style * Kim Stanley, Seance on a Wet Afternoon * Constance Towers, The Naked Kiss
Honorable Mentions: Tom Courtenay, King & Country * Anthony Quinn, Zorba the Greek, The Visit * Peter Sellers, Dr. Strangelove * Peter O'Toole, Becket * Richard Burton, Becket, Night of the Iguana * Soumitra Chatterjee, Charulata * Peter Ustinov, Topkapi * Ivan Dixon, Nothing but a Man * Christopher Plummer, The Fall of the Roman Empire * Innokentiy Smoktunovskiy, Hamlet
Supporting Actress: Anastasiya Vertinskaya, Hamlet
< Previous * Next >
Home
