A free adaptation of Shakespeare′s drama. The Danish queen masquerades her daughter as a boy, and thus, the girl lives her life as 'Prince' Hamlet. Her father poisoned by a venomous snake placed by the treacherous Claudius, Hamlet fakes madness to investigate without suspicion.
Hamlet: Ein Rachedrama, 女ハムレット, Гамлет
Germany
Germany
This version of Hamlet rules. Trans dude Hamlet is off at college having a chill time being gay with his bros when his dipshit uncle kills his dad, suddenly forcing Hamlet to live up to the expectations of "masculinity." Good luck dude!
asta nielsen's hamlet was one of the first full scale screen adaptations of a shakespeare play - with some minor alterations. hamlet had long been played by women onstage in 'trouser' roles but this production was the first to feature a female hamlet. a popular theory of the time held that hamlet's indecisive "womanish" nature was a result of his actually being a woman! silent superstar asta nielsen jumped at the chance to play this unique genderbending hamlet, a female raised as a male from birth for secret reasons of state. she even formed her own production company to make the film. asta's signature acting style was considered a naturalistic departure for the time. of course a silent version of…
Cinematic Time Capsule
1921 Marathon - Film #4
Holy role-reversals, Shakespeare, it’s a female Hamlet!
This moody and atmospheric German adaptation features producer and actress Asta Nielsen as the gender bending Hamlet who looks an awful lot like Dr. Caligari’s somnambulist!
The film plays fast and loose with plot points, and there’s a sense of eerie energy that’s highlighted by Asta’s wonderful performance, as well as a gruesome snake pit that’s so squirmy it’d send Indy running for the hills!
Sure, there’s some pacing and momentum issues as it sombers along, but then again, how often do you have the chance to attend a funeral meal and a wedding feast at the same time!
”Don’t worry, uncle. Let’s keep the funeral dinner going!”
OK, to set the record straight... this is not just 'an actress playing Hamlet,' it's a new/20s interpretation of the play in which Hamlet's psychological quandaropalooza is explained by revealing that the character is secretly female. Seems pretty essentialist if you ask me. So... not good Shakespeare, maybe, but not a bad movie.
this is the queerest thing i’ve ever seen and i have in fact looked in the mirror before!
Sarah Bernhardt had already played Hamlet in 1900, in The Duel of Hamlet, a very short silent film.
Here we have Asta Nielsen as the titular character and producer of the movie, in 1921. She is also dubbed the first international movie star, famous all through Europe and from her performance in this one, which she could very well carry on her own shoulders, I can really understand why.
She cuts a very fine, majestic and at times Romantic/Gothic figure, with the black cape, and the pageboy haircut, and actually plays Hamlet as a woman, a story inspired from "the research" of an American writer, claiming that the young princess of Denmark was actually announced to be a boy, at…
even though the premise that "hamlet is so emotional that he must really be a woman!" totally blows, the effect is close enough to "hamlet is trans and gay" which rocks
Can we make it so that all Shakespeare adaptations are playful, irreverent gender-bending affairs starring waify Danish imps from now on, please?
What a weird movie! The basis for this film's twist on Hamlet is from a virtually forgotten book from 1881 by Edward P. Vining that posits that the trick in understanding Hamlet is to understand that the title character is actually a woman. The legend goes that Danish actress Asta Nielsen heard this and thought, "Hell yeah," so she started a production company to produce her own starring vehicle.
I cannot stress enough that this film is based on Vining's book about the play rather than the play itself. If you're coming to this expecting Shakespeare's words on the intertitles, you're going to be disappointed -- from what I could tell, there's not a lick of Shakespeare actually in this…
Maybe not the best Hamlet adaptation, but Asta Nielsen is one of the best Hamlets
