Shakespeare on Film: Hamlet
How the Bard of Avon made his way to the silver screen
By Daniel Rosenthal
URL: http://www.moviemaker.com/articles/article/shakespeare_on_film_20080530/
All serious moviemakers and thespians know William Shakespeare will never go out of style. His universal tales of love, loss, anger and desperation continue to span time, cultures and mediums. Each theatrical incarnation of a Shakespeare play is different from the next as are all interpretations brought to the big screen. Case in point: Writer-director Andrew Fleming made a splash at Sundance earlier this year with Hamlet 2. Set for an August 27 release, the movie is not quite a direct take on the Bard's tragic story of revenge, but inspired by the legend nonetheless. It is for all these reasons that MM has decided to honor Shakespeare with a full summer of Shakespeare on Film. Visit us each week for a new excerpt from BFI's 100 Shakespeare Films by Daniel Rosenthal. From Charlton Heston's Antony and Cleopatra to Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho, we cover the classic and the bold, beginning with Laurence Olivier's 1948 Academy Award-winning Hamlet.