I, Hamlet

The BBC in the 1970's made the decision to tape performances of all of Shakespeare's plays, and when they came to Hamlet (first broadcast in 1980), they chose the most versatile actor of his generation to play the title role, Derek Jacobi. Jacobi has been appearing in Shakespearean films since 1965, when he played Cassio in Olivier's Othello; in 1996, he played Claudius in Branagh's Hamlet. Even though many British actors have played different roles in Hamlet at various points in their careers, I don't think that many could achieve the combined quality of these performances of Jacobi's . He is directly in the line of British transformative actors I've written about before, such as Charles Laughton and Laurence Olivier, but is subtler in his use of make-up and facial putty to change his appearance. He even tackled a role that took Charles Laughton so long to get ready for that it imploded the movie he was to star in: that of the stammering C-C-Claudius in Josef von Sternberg's adaptation of Robert Graves's I, Claudius, of which Jacobi later did the TV version.

All that said, Jacobi's performance, while supremely intelligent, is not moving enough for me. I find myself more admiring of it than becoming involved in it. His line readings are full of wit, passion, and beauty, and I would like to like his portrayal more than I do. Frankly, I think his Claudius for Branagh is better: subtler, more revealing of the character's constant need to remain under steely control, the level of his apprehension only betrayed by his eyes. You, however, might find his Hamlet more moving than I do.



This production also has the strongest Claudius and Gertrude of any version in Patrick Stewart and Claire Bloom. Students always get a kick out of recognizing Picard under the curly wig and beard; his Claudius is full of bravura and chutzpah. The rest of the cast, though, is very weak, until you get to Ian Charleson's Fortinbras, who is a right cold bastard. Unfortunately, he comes in at the end of the play.

The production is videotaped, in color, with early seventeenth-century costumes and an eminently forgettable set design. The real joke of this version is its price: the BBC licensed these performances to a company who demands around $30 per DVD, probably because they assume that libraries will foot the bill. But even libraries get hit by budgetary constraints (and often are the first to suffer when they have to be applied). Charging so much for workmanlike and sporadically brilliant versions of the plays is no way to make Shakespeare palatable--or even available--to the masses.