Hamlet (1954 film)

Plot

After seeing his father's ghost the film follows the play focusing on Hamlet's revenge on his Uncle Claudius, who has married his mother Gertrude after murdering Hamlet's father. He pretends to be insane and is in the process of staging a play where he plans to denounce his mother and Uncle.

Cast

Production

There were several plot changes, with Ophelia telling her part in flashback and singing songs with friends, while the gravediggers were "used for comic effect", thus giving in to Indian film-goers sensibilities. The film had its inspiration from the Parsi theatre days, with Sahu's monologue inculcating couplets from famous Indian poets and using parts of dialogues from Ahsan's Khoon-Nahak (1928). Ophelia sang Bahadur Shah Zafar's "Na Kisi Ki Ankh Ka Noor Hoon", and a dying Hamlet quoted Zauq's "Layee Hayaat Aaye, Qaza Le Chali Chale".

The "Parsi theatre tradition", which gave rise to several freely adapted Hindi films from Shakespeare, like Modi's Khoon Ka Khoon (1935), Akhtar Hussain's Romeo and Juliet (1947) and Cleopatra (1950), came to an end with Hamlet.

Reception

The film did "reasonably well" at the box office. Acclaimed by the Filmfare critic, it was panned harshly by Filmindia, which called it a "slander" to Shakespeare. As stated by Manju Jain, Sybil Thorndyke who was present at the premiere of the film in Bombay thought that Gertrude was "magnificent".

Adaptations

Soundtrack

Ramesh Naidu was the debutant music director. He went on to score music for Telugu films in the 1970s, the most popular being Meghasandesam (1983), for which he won the National Film Award for Best Music Direction. The lyrics were written by Hasrat Jaipuri, while the playback singing was provided by Asha Bhosle, Mohammed Rafi and Jagmohan Bakshi.