Female characters in Hamlet across two film productions

Hamlet

Frailty thy name is woman.": a contrast of the female characters in "Hamlet" as portrayed in two 20th century film productions

Oh rose of May." The address of Laertes to his mad sister Ophelia in Act 4, Scene 5 of Shakespeare's tragedy of "Hamlet" seems fitting in the decorous, controlled, and beautiful madness of the girl in Lawrence Oliver's 1948 dramatization of the play. However, Kenneth Branagh's 1996 film version attempts to make Ophelia's insanity realistic and in keeping with the Victorian setting. Winslet's straightjacket makes Laertes' comment seems desperate and ironic. Ophelia's raving is particularly gripping, given Kate Winslet's previously controlled and intelligent presentation of the young woman. This stark contrast of demeanor of both Ophelias during their pinnacle moments of emotional descent highlights the different ways that Oliver and Branagh view the roles of females in the play. Oliver takes a Freudian reading, viewing Hamlet as obsessed with Gertrude, and Ophelia is only a minor, pretty sideshow in relationship to the real love affair between the Prince of Denmark and his mother. Ophelia is merely a repository for Hamlet's obsessional regard for Gertrude. Instead of resorting to Freudian readings of the relationship, Branagh gives both of the main female characters equal psychological depth, rather than limiting his directorial interest to only how they relate to the central character. Both characters have their own unique journeys, one of an older woman who has fallen in love with a new man, the other of a young woman torn between allegiance to her father and brother and to the man she loves.

The fact that Oliver's version is only concerned with the central character is demonstrated almost immediately. "This is the story of a man who could not make up his mind," begins the film. (Oliver, 1948) This bit of inserted voice-over explicitly makes Hamlet's unique psychology, rather than the larger drama of the court the focus of the film. From the beginning of the Oliver film, Ophelia's perceived betrayal of Hamlet parallels Hamlet's sense of betrayal with his mother. In the Oliver film, even before the arrival of the ghost, "Ophelia and her father cross the gallery outsider her room, Polonius looks out, stands slightly, and then strides into the room; Ophelia...sees Hamlet...He gestures to her feebly...She is about to respond when her father calls her...Hamlet's hand falls...He never realizes that she is obeying her father against her will."(Dawson 178)

Shortly after this sequence, Hamlet bursts into his first soliloquy, and through this "textual transposition," placing the Ophelia scene immediately after the first soliloquy...a direct link is created between Hamlet's sense of sexual betrayal in Gertrude's "dexterous posting" between "incestuous sheets" with his uncle Claudius and Ophelia's refusal of him as a chaste or sexual lover. (Dawson 178; "Hamlet" I.2) The former seems likely, given that the actress who plays Ophelia seems so innocent, blond and docile to her father and brother's wishes, in contrast to the young, sensual brunette Gertrude. Oliver's Gertrude hardly seems old enough to have a mature son, although she also seems anything but innocent in the caressing way she behaves towards Oliver, even at the outset of the film.

Branagh's Gertrude is an older woman in love with Claudius, not with her son. As Derek Jacobi's Claudius first addresses the court, she gazes with confidence and affection upon him. Julie Christie is beautiful, but a mature woman, skilled in administration in the way that she moves confidently about the room, in public. She confirms one textual analysis of the queen: "She is more experienced than Claudius, with a greater natural authority. She...handles Rosencrantz and Guildenstern with skill and diplomacy...has the accent of command with her son...witty and perceptive about Polonius...she is not stupid at her job: there she gives out and reserves herself in good proportion." (Pennington 160) Gertrude's performance in the court shows Branagh makes a commitment as a director to giving the female characters of the play individualistic integrity beyond their ability to mirror different Oedipal aspects of the central protagonist's development. "There isn't an iota of sexual energy or tension in Hamlet's confrontation with his mother," unlike Oliver's version, where a bed is featured in the confrontation scene between Hamlet and his mother in Act IV, Scene 3. (Rosenberg, 1996) Julie Christie's Gertrude is morally conflicted about what she has done, and increasingly aware that she might have married a murderer after the confrontation of the closet scene. But Oliver's Gertrude is simply infatuated with her son. She is more physically demonstrative towards him than she ever is towards Claudius, even before the confrontation of Act IV.

Moreover, the guilt Gertrude expresses during Oliver version, when she says "Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul;/And there I see such black and grained spots/As will not leave their tinct," results in a complete reversal of her sympathies towards Claudius. (IV.3) Julie Christie's Gertrude breaks from Claudius after Ophelia's death, and defiantly but innocently drinks the poisoned beverage. But in the Oliver version, Gertrude's love for her son is so overwhelming she is driven to suicide out of guilt. In Act V "Olivier also introduces what I believe is an innovation at the end -- the implication that Gertrude (the marvelous Eileen Herlie) realizes the wine is poisoned and purposely drinks it to rescue Hamlet," instead of merely pouring it to the side by accident. (Dashille, 1999) Out of guilt for what she has done, Gertrude, not Ophelia wishes to die -- yet another validation of Hamlet's perspective upon the world of the court in the Oliver version.