< previous page | page_166 | next page > |
Page 166 (Jones 1954:182), as his incestuous longings reside in the unconscious and therefore can only be manifested in a distorted manner. Olivier most likely would have known of Jones’s preferences, as he notes that the analyst clearly emphasized the unconscious nature of Hamlet’s Oedipal complex during their talk (Olivier 1982:102). Nevertheless, Olivier cast twenty-seven-year-old Eileen Herlie as Gertrude and directed Jean Simmons to play Ophelia as a delicate, naive girl. And, contrary to Jones’s advice, Olivier’s Hamlet and Gertrude openly display erotic and loving feelings for one another. Olivier’s film departs from Jones’s interpretation in other ways as well. As Peter Donaldson explains, the Freud/Jones interpretation of Hamlet is a central, structuring presence, the contours of which may be clearly discerned. At the same time, the Oedipus complex, so evident and even intentional in Olivier’s Hamlet, serves partly as a mask or screen for other, perhaps deeper issues. (1990:34–35) Donaldson interprets these issues as Hamlet’s narcissistic tendency, his difficulty in relating to his father, and his fused identification with his mother, which result in his low sense of self-worth. Hence, Olivier’s Hamlet fluctuates between passive and violent behavior, which Donaldson relates to biographical accounts of the actor/ director’s own sexual abuse as a child (35–63). Although I agree with Donaldson on Hamlet’s symptoms, I would argue that they indicate more than an identity conflict. In my view, they relate to melancholia, which permeates the film on multiple levels. Melancholia, the repressed within the Freud/Jones interpretation, thus returns with a vengeance in Olivier’s film text.5 Although perhaps not deliberate on Olivier’s part, melancholia emerges as the underlying impetus of the Oedipal complex, a malady that at once connects to Shakespeare’s own “melancholy Dane” and to the subtext of the Freudian treatment of the unconscious, trauma, and the repression of Oedipal desire.6 In his endeavor to film this psychoanalytic Hamlet, Olivier took on the formidable task of attempting to depict unconscious desire through the cinematic medium. To achieve this effect, he relies on the visual language of film through the use of particular camera shots. As Olivier stares out into the sea and his voice-over reads Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy (Hamlet 3.1.58–90), the camera zooms in from behind and appears to shoot through Olivier’s |
||
< previous page | page_166 | next page > |