Friday, September 26, 2008

"The rest . . . is . . . Silen[t Hamlet]."

Hamlet: The Drama of Vengeance [Hamlet: Ein Rachedrama]. Dir. Svend Gade. Perf. Asta Neilsen. 1920. Videocassette. Sunland Video, n.d.
A forthcoming post will provide much more about this film—I'm adding English translations of the German title cards to a section of this film, and it's a time-consuming process . . . and it's not that I have a lot of time to consume right now, either!

This silent, German film version of Hamlet starts at the birth of the young prince. Actually, to be more accurate, it starts at the birth of the young princess! In this production, Hamlet is not only played by a woman, he is a woman. For reasons of state, the announcement of Hamlet's birth declares her to be a boy: the male heir to the throne.

Naturally, I'll have more to say later. Consider this a teaser for future posts.
Links: The Film at IMDB. N.B.: IMDB lists the date as 1921, but all the scholarly sources I checked—Rothwell, Sammons, et cetera—list 1920 as the date.
Copyright 2008-2039 by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)
Bardfilm is normally written as one word, though it can also be found under a search for "Bard Film Blog." Bardfilm is a Shakespeare blog (admittedly, one of many Shakespeare blogs), and it is dedicated to commentary on films (Shakespeare movies, The Shakespeare Movie, Shakespeare on television, Shakespeare at the cinema), plays, and other matter related to Shakespeare (allusions to Shakespeare in pop culture, quotes from Shakespeare in popular culture, quotations that come from Shakespeare, et cetera).

Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Shakespeare's works are from the following edition:
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Gen. ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
All material original to this blog is copyrighted: Copyright 2008-2039 (and into perpetuity thereafter) by Keith Jones.

The very instant that I saw you did / My heart fly to your service; there resides, / To make me slave to it; and, for your sake, / Am I this patient [b]log-man.

 —The Tempest