Word: ophelias
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Shostakovich's score swells at all the wrong places. When Hamlet confronts Ophelia "mad," there is a chance for some very sinister stuff: a glaze-eyed Aryan appears, bearing down on her. But up jumps a nervous little Dragnet theme to turn it ludicrous. When Hamlet asks Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, "Am I easier to fret than a pipe?" the scene is played in heavy silence that exaggerates its portent. But presumbaly that's the director's doing, as, unfortunately, is a lot else...
...start, why does he cram the sets so full? Courtiers buzz around by the dozens, trailing phrases of French and German. For Russians their faces are remarkably dull; compare them to the beautiful hordes of extras in a Dovshenko. And they get in the way. When Ophelia comes on singing "Hey, nonny nonny," she has to bull her way through a battalion of military types. One thinks of the brave USO girls visiting the front...
This is not a silent film, but most crises are followed by melodramatic reaction shots. Count the seconds whenever an interlocutor throws hands in air. One of Hamlet's reactions, after he's thrown down his mother in her chamber, lasts even after a cut. When Hamlet asks Ophelia, "Shall I lie in your lap?" we cut to a bevy of damsels cowering in unison like chorines...
...somehow contrived to make is worse. Olde English folk songs ("God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" etc.) are piped over the loudspeaker after every blackout, and stage movement is held to a static minimum. Unfortunately, radiant Rosemary Harris as the dowdy, embittered Queen looks even better than she did as Ophelia two year ago; while cherubic and smooth-skinned Bruce Scott, late of the Merv Griffin Show, fails to convince anybody that he's Prince John, who, as the text repeatedly states, is the victim of massive acne. As for the miscast Mr. Preston, we are reminded with his every movement...
...still smaller chest and her hair cropped as short as a boy's, she managed to convey a blossoming femininity, the seedling woman of passion and perception. She was a sentimental strumpet in I Am a Camera, a queen in Victoria Regina, a madwoman as Hamlet's Ophelia. Her secret is not true versatility-there is never any question that behind the makeup it is Julie Harris. Audiences flock to her performances precisely because she can mimic no one but herself; she simply takes on each challenging role and wraps it around her like soft mink. Judging from...