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Hamlet (1907 film)
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Wikipedia article
'Hamlet', released in the United States as 'Hamlet, Prince of Denmark', was a 1907 French short silent film directed by Georges Mlis, based on William Shakespeare's tragedy 'Hamlet'.
Production
The pioneering Parisian filmmaker Georges Mlis had multiple cinematic encounters with the plays of William Shakespeare. The first, his 1901 film 'The Devil and the Statue', had alluded to 'Romeo and Juliet' by including a balcony scene and Venetian lovers called Romo and Juliette. (An earlier Mlis work, the 1899 film 'Robbing Cleopatra's Tomb', is sometimes called simply 'Clopatre', but it is not connected to Shakespeare's 'Antony and Cleopatra'.) Mlis also dabbled in Shakespeare in his 1905 film 'The Venetian Looking-Glass', which incorporates the character of Shylock from 'The Merchant of Venice'. However, these earlier films had merely borrowed elements from Shakespearean works; by contrast, Mlis's 1907 version of 'Hamlet' was a true Shakespearean adaptation.
Mlis himself played Hamlet. Special effects used in the film included multiple exposures.
The film was the first multi-scene cinematic adaptation of any work by Shakespeare.
Later in 1907, Mlis made his last Shakespearean film, 'Shakespeare Writing "Julius Caesar"', in which Mlis played Shakespeare himself.
Release and reception
'Hamlet' was released by Mlis's Star Film Company, and is numbered 980987 in its catalogues. It was registered for American copyright at the Library of Congress on 15 October 1907.
The film scholar Robert Hamilton Ball, in his study of Shakespearean silent films, highlights the ways in which Mlis adapted the story in order to tell it in truly cinematic language, a historically unprecedented achievement. (Earlier Shakespeare films by others had stuck to purely theatrical techniques, seeking merely to film scenes from the plays as they were performed onstage.) Ball comments: "It is easy to brand this ten-minute film an absurd simplification but it was nevertheless a distinct advance over anything which had heretofore been achieved in Shakespeare film."
In his book 'Shakespeare, Cinema, and Society', John Collick compares Mlis's film to the Expressionist theatrical productions of Adolphe Appia and Edward Gordon Craig, saying that Mlis's use of "multiple exposures and dream-like Expressionist imagery unconsciously recreat[ed] the spirit, if not the intention, of Appia's and Craig's ideas." Collick also highlights that by condensing the play into a brief succession of fragmentary scenes, Mlis was able to concentrate on the theme of madness in an artistically expressive way.
All told, an estimated forty-one film adaptations of 'Hamlet' were made during the silent era. Like many of these, Mlis's version is currently presumed lost.
References
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