poliphilo

In 1964 The BBC took a company of actors over to Denmark to film Hamlet on location at Elsinore. None of the cast were huge names at the time, but, boy, did they pick some winners: Christopher Plummer (a year before Edelweiss) as Hamlet, Michael Caine (fresh from fighting Zulus) as Horatio, Robert Shaw (immediately after From Russia With Love) as Claudiius and Donald Sutherland (who had not yet made M.A.S.H.) as Fortinbras. It was only the second time the play had beem filmed on site (as it were) and I remember it being a big deal- with a lot of coverage in The Radio Times et al. I was thirteen. "Please can I stay up and watch it," I asked my parents. "No," they said. "But it's Shakespeare," I whined. "Absolutely not," they said.

Sixty years on and I'm finally getting to see it- on YouTube- and liking it a lot. Had I seen it at 13 it would have blown my socks off.

Plummer is one of the last of the romantic, princely Hamlets- handsome, virile and everything Ophelia says he is. In a few years time Nicol Williamson and David Warner will be giving us their sulky, emo, studenty Hamlets- but this is how it used to be done- in a tradition going back, at least, to Edmund Kean. I'm half way through so Caine hasn't had his biggest scenes yet, but Robert Shaw is already established as a great Claudius (how effortlessly dominant an actor he was!) Alec Clunes as Polonius is annoyingly fussy and cloyingly subservient- which is one way of reading the part- June Tobin hasn't made much of an impression yet as Gertrude- perhaps she will later on- and Jo Maxwell Muller (only 18 at the time) is a sweet, breakable, girly Ophelia. I look forward to Roy Kinnear"s gravedigger....

The acting style is pitched (as used to be the regular thing on TV) somewhere between film and theatre. There are plenty of close-ups but when Plummer gets shouty they could probably hear him in Oslo. Clunes (Martin Clunes' dad) is the most theatrical of the gang- and I'm told that when we get to the bedroom scene you can see him blink twice after he's deaded. The director is Philip Saville....