As they peer towards the castle, they aren’t so much looking towards civilisation as rock more formed, given shape and focus in a citadel that provides shelter but also, as we will soon find out, harbours false emotion, hubris and manifold scheming. While Shakespeare’s play immediately introduces us to Kent and Gloucester, and then Gloucester’s bastard son Edmund, before introducing us to Lear, the film suggests that what we need to attend to first is the harsh environment and the poor who look like they can only make the most modest of livings off the hard land. One need only think of the scene at the beginning where the peasants pass through the hard, rock-landscape and look on at the castle in the distance. It rests more on the mineral quality that is apparent in both of Kozintsev's films but most especially 1971’s King Lear. We needn’t use the term to mean a statue that someone is created out of (as Wajda does), nor to indicate metaphorically that some people are made of firmer stuff than others. His attention to detail behind the camera enables the adept cast to portray all the anguish through both their deliverance of the script as well as their interaction with their surroundings.It may have been the Polish director Andrej Wajda who made a film called Man of Marble but there is in Grigori Kozintsev’s adaptations of both Hamlet and King Lear the idea of men of stone, as though we aren’t descended from apes but from granite. The screen adaptation packs a punch with grand performances on both sides of the camera and it is clear that Kozintsev has taken painstaking care to stay as true to the original as possible. Anastasiya Vertinskaya shines as Ophelia whose descent into madness and longing for Hamlet’s affections is marginally more poignantly and convincingly delivered than Smoktunovsky’s. Mikhail Nazvanov is outstanding as the ruthlessly ambitious Claudius, however one of the most crucial scenes is cut to just Claudius’s well delivered and agonising soliloquy with no mention of Hamlet’s opportunity to slay Claudius during a time of self reflection. Smoktunovsky is surrounded by a more than able supporting cast. His inner turmoil is well portrayed with the balance of melancholia and delirium leaning only slightly too far on the depressive side. Their casting is just as effective with Smoktunovsky excelling as the young Prince. Kozintsev and co-director Iosif Shapiro excel in using the beautiful landscapes to great effect. The tragic tale is exquisitely shot with many scenes using their physical manifestations to portray Prince Hamlet’s metaphorical jailing within his façade of insanity as well as his actual imprisonment within the confines of his royal abode, stifled by the incestuous new union. Determined to expose his uncle and avenge his father’s death, Hamlet descends into what appears to be lunacy with the audience privy to the fact it is all part of his rouse to uncover the truth behind his father’s death.Īs Hamlet and Claudius silently plot each other’s downfall, casualties pile up, culminating in a climactic battle finale. Innokenty Smoktunovsky stars as the eponymous Danish Prince, battling with the harsh reality that not only has his uncle, Claudius, murdered his father but is also now married to the widowed Queen. However, the necessary reduction has been carefully selected, enabling the final feature to retain most of the emotive punch of Prince Hamlet’s original struggle. In order to constrain Shakespeare’s lengthiest play into a standard running time, Grigori Kozintsev was required to wield the axe and leave several scenes on the cutting room floor.