Laurence Olivier’s famous 1948 interpretation of Shakespeare’s play suffers slightly from his pop-Freud approach to the character and from some excessively flashy, wrongheaded camera work—including the notorious moment when Hamlet begins the soliloquy and the camera begins to track back. It ends up on the opposite side of the soundstage before the speech is over, leaving Olivier a dim glow on the horizon line. With Eileen Herlie, Jean Simmons, and Basil Sydney—and, for the quick of eye, Peter Cushing and Anthony Quayle. 153 min.
