Thursday, September 25, 2008

Strange Derivative of Hamlet

Strange Illusion. Dir. Edgar G. Ulmer. Perf. Jimmy Lydon, Paul Cartwright, Warren William, Sally Eilers, Regis Toomey, and Charles Arnt. 1945. Alpha Video, 2004.

While looking over the extensive range of materials related to Hamlet I've collected over the years, I came across this film. It has been a while since I watched this odd, film noir-esque derivative of Hamlet, and I'd forgotten just how odd it is. Here's the beginning—it's what we see immediately after the opening credits:


Links: The Film at IMDB.

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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