Hamlet at Elsinore

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Hamlet at Elsinore is a 1964 television version of

Elsinore Castle. This programme was recorded and edited on video tape (2" quadruplex) and not 'filmed'. The director was Philip Saville. It was the longest version of the play telecast in one evening up to that time, running nearly three hours.[1] A 1947 telecast of the play had split it up into two ninety-minute halves over two weeks.[2]

The Canadian actor

Horatio. In supporting roles were Roy Kinnear as the Gravedigger, Steven Berkoff as Lucianus and Donald Sutherland as Fortinbras. The music was composed by Richard Rodney Bennett
.

Clips of the programme are very rarely shown on television, and Plummer himself expressed a wish for it to be commercially available. It was released on Region 1 DVD by the BBC and Warner on 25 October 2011. The full play was shown in the UK on BBC Four on 5 November 2023 along with a 15 minute programme with Berkoff relating his experiences working on the production.

Cast

Steven Berkoff writes about his time as a junior cast member in his autobiography Free Association. Horatio is the only classical role played by Michael Caine, who had never received dramatic training. According to his 2011 autobiography The Elephant to Hollywood, Caine had been released from his contract with producer Joseph E. Levine after the making of Zulu as Levine had told him, "I know you're not, but you gotta face the fact that you look like a queer on screen."[3]

Caine wrote, "I decided that if my on-screen appearance was going to be an issue, then I would use it to bring out all Horatio's ambiguous sexuality."[4]

Production

The production was originated by Danish television, which lacked the financial resources to realize the project and turned to the BBC for help. Videotaped at Kronborg Castle in Elsinore, Denmark, in September 1963 by a Danish crew with the director and actors supplied by the BBC, it represents a technical milestone for the BBC as a full-length play had never been videotaped on-location before.

The producer,

MASH. Jo Maxwell Muller, who was only 18 years old, was cast as Ophelia
on the insistence of Plummer.

Hamlet at Elsinore was broadcast in Canada on April 15, 1964, and in the United Kingdom on April 19, exactly one week before Shakespeare's 400th birthday. It was intended by the BBC to be its major commemoration of the Shakespeare quatercentenary. It was broadcast in the United States on November 15, 1964.[5]

Awards

At the 18th Emmy Awards (1966), Christopher Plummer was nominated in the category of Outstanding Single Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Drama for his performance as Hamlet.

See also

References

  1. ^ "Hamlet at Elsinore (1964). IMDb. Retrieved 16 April 2021.
  2. ^ "Hamlet Part 1 (1947). IMDb. Retrieved 16 April 2021.
  3. ISBN 978-0-8050-9390-2
    .
  4. ^ Caine 2011, p. 63
  5. ^ Brooke, Michael. "Hamlet at Elsinore". BFI Onscreen. Retrieved 4 February 2012.

External links

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