With this work, Kozintsev also renewed the tradition in Soviet cinema of combining artistic practice with film theory. Shot on black and white 70mm film in the 2.35:1 “Sovscope” format, the spectacular scenery, striking score and inimitable acting performances of Kozintsev’s Hamlet have led to its reputation as one of the best filmed adaptations of Shakespeare, and attest to the director’s stated intention that the goal of the film was “not to adapt Shakespeare to the cinema, but to adapt the cinema to Shakespeare.” 1 Making use of Boris Pasternak’s translation of the original text into contemporary Russian and the music of Dmitri Shostakovich, Hamlet is the site for an encounter between three of the Soviet Union’s foremost artists. Grigori Kozintsev’s Gamlet ( Hamlet, 1964) forms a diptych with his later film Korol Lir ( King Lear, 1973), but many of its formal techniques also hark back to the director’s earlier collaborations with Leonid Trauberg, such as Shinel ( The Overcoat, 1926) Novyy Vavilon ( The New Babylon, 1929) and the Maxim trilogy (1934-38). It is perhaps a measure of the state of Soviet film culture in the Khrushchev era that the country’s highest grossing film of 1964 was a 140-minute Shakespeare adaptation directed by a filmmaker who had cut his teeth in the experimental workshops of the silent era. Issue 85 Adapting the Cinema to Shakespeare: Hamlet (Grigori Kozintsev, 1964)
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