The time period in which Branagh sets his version of Hamlet is familiar but indeterminate, vague yet also precise. While impossible to pinpoint an exact decade, much less an exact year, enough can be gleaned for a useful ballpark figure: somewhere between the end of the Victorian Era and the outbreak of World War I.
And that is where the choice becomes less ambiguous and more precise: the setting appears to be intended as a commentary on the collapse of the old European aristocracy with the implication that royalty like Prince Hamlet may be viewed either as the engineers of this decline…or the agency of that decline of which must be stopped.
Even the previous film versions of Hamlet shot in color tend to be bleak and gloomy affairs, combining film noir shadows with horror movie night scenes. If there is a version of Hamlet that is more colorful and a vision of court life at Elsinore Castle that is more festive, it must be moldering alongside the Ark of the Covenant in warehouse The sorrows come line "O Gertrude, Gertrude, when sorrows come they come not as single spies, but in battalions" becomes simply "When sorrows come they come not as single spies, but in battalions," probably because Claudius delivers them in a voice-over, and we do not know to whom he is speaking.
It is the only line in the movie that is changed because of the way the scene is filmed. For more than a year, Sir Kenneth Branagh had tried shopping the project around major studios in Hollywood, but no studio was willing to finance a four-hour production, citing skepticism of the commercial viability of a William Shakespeare adaptation to a late twentieth century audience. Also, most studios were aware of the negative reviews and the commercial failure of Branagh's previously-directed movie, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein , and some of them would only finance this movie if the content and the budget is cut to half.
However, Castle Rock Entertainment agreed to finance the movie and to Branagh's demands filming in 65mm, complete control over the movie, et cetera under two conditions: a star-studded cast for the movie, and a 35mm, abridged two and a half hour version of this movie for a wider release.
Cruttwell was on the set all the time. He came as a request by Branagh to give an objective critique for the performance of each take. Sir Richard Attenborough appeared in Elizabeth as William Cecil, 1st Lord Burghley, who is believed by some scholars to have inspired the character Polonius.
None of the palatial interiors are really the inside of Blenheim Palace. They are actually studio-built interiors. All that is actually shown of the Palace are the exterior of it, and the gardens. Choreographing the numerous intricate dolly shots in this movie required a high degree of coordination between the actors, actresses, and the crew. They sometimes rehearsed as much as three hours for a single set up.
Adding to the difficulty were the numerous mirrors lining the set of the great hall. Each shot was carefully scrutinized in playback to make sure that no crew or equipment were reflected in the mirrors. At one point during rehearsals for the "To be or not to be" monologue, one of the dolly grips gave Kenneth Branagh a note about his pacing, to insure he completed his line before the dolly became visible. This was the director Kenneth Branagh 's first 70mm shot movie.
He used it again for Murder on the Orient Express The wintry exterior scenes were achieved with a combination of real snow and artificial snow made from a detergent solution. There was much debate between production designer Tim Harvey and the groundskeeper of Blenheim Palace as to whether the artificial snow would harm the hedges and other greenery on the palace grounds.
Fortunately when the production was finished, the hedges were unharmed. Before the start of principal photography, the entire cast did a complete run through of the play, what writer and director Sir Kenneth Branagh described as a sort of studio performance.
In , he directed his second successful Shakespeare adaptation, Much Ado About Nothing, again to both critical and popular acclaim. Then disaster hit. He decided to make an adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein , and he decided to make it very macabre. His marriage to actress Emma Thompson was already strained, even though they had done a number of projects together. But with Frankenstein , they were apart a good bit of the time, and that seemed to be all that was needed to push them over the top and Branagh over the edge.
They say there is a thin line between genius and madness, and I think Branagh crossed over that line during the production of Frankenstein.
If you look at a list of his work, it is very dichotic, with noble, uplifting pieces like Henry V and Much Ado on one side, and darker, sinister ones like Dead Again and Frankenstein on the other. It is almost as if there were two Kenneth Branaghs. Frankenstein was a disaster critically, financially, and personally for Branagh.
The following year, , he and Emma divorced. That same year he produced Othello to decent reviews. The pendulum was trying to swing back.
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