Hamlet

An adaptation of Hamlet built out of the director’s own stage production. The film was shot entirely inside the Roundhouse in London, a disused railway shed. It is almost all in close up, so the attention goes not to the action but to faces and to language. That choice takes the play out of being a story about a swordfight and turns it into a space for thinking and talking. There are no crowd scenes and almost no changes of place. The familiar big scenes of the play never turn into spectacle here; everything is brought down to two people talking face to face. Nicol Williamson and Anthony Hopkins appear in Tony Richardson’s hundred and seventeen minute British film, completed in 1969.