It is counterintuitive, or paradoxical, or ironic—it’s something, anyway—that Franco Zeffirelli can be said to have wielded greater personal influence over the cinematic telling of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet than was wielded by Kenneth Branagh a few years later when he undertook the groundbreaking effort of bringing the Bard’s famous tragedy to the screen uncut, unedited and unabridged for the first time in mainstream Hollywood history. How can it be than Zeffirelli’s version shows the influence of a film director in crafting a vision of the most famous play ever written more than the standard by which all future unedited versions are performed? It must be a paradox or ironic. It’s got to be something that illustrates the fact that something here seems rotten.
Branagh’s epic version of Hamlet presenting every word Shakespeare is a test of the endurance of both devotees of drama and movie fans. Despite its recognized moments of genius and its overall depth of quality that elevates it to a place at least somewhere near the top of Shakespearean film adaptations, even the most exciting, well-acted and perfectly paced movie ever made is likely to lose some viewer interest by the third hour and Branagh still has an hour left in the tank even at that point. To be sure, Zeffirelli’s version is itself equipped with a slightly longer than average running time, but in comparison to the Branagh version, its two-and-a-quarter-hour running time zips past like Mel Gibson action movie. Which, now that we can finally get around to the specifics of the director’s influence, is kinda-sorta what it is.
Branagh’s highly stylized take is truly breathtaking cinema; when he’s working at the top of his game, Branagh is one of the best of his era. But when all is said, Branagh’s film is William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Zeffirelli’s version may not exactly be entirely worthy of being termed “Zeffirelli’s Hamlet” but there is one it is even more surely not: Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
And there is the point at which the mystery of what is going in solved and the proper terminology makes itself manifest. There is a definite paradox at work in adaptation film the cinema a work of literature so ingrained into the modern consciousness that even those who have never read the play, seen it performed on stage or watch a film version know the basic outline of the plot and are capable of quoting at least one line wittingly and several others unwittingly. The more one cuts out of the 30,000-plus words that Shakespeare put into Hamlet, the more influence one has over the final result. The logical extension here, of course, is that the closer one gets to cutting out not one single word, the farther one moves from using wielding significant influence. Which is not to suggest that Branagh did not influence the telling of the story in the film he directed, but the logic of mathematics very strongly suggest that the time-consuming business of directing a four-hour long film simply does not leave one time to put their stamp on every single scene. At half the running time—more or less—Zeffirelli needs only to do have the work of Branagh to double his influence.
Fifth-grade arithmetic will not be enough to compute all the various functions necessary to reach a final analytical conclusion: does Zeffirelli’s quantitative advantage yield a qualitative advantage over Branagh? In other words, did Zeffirelli achieve a net gain in artistic expression in his retelling of the greatest story ever written over Branagh? What, ultimately, is the score on how well Zeffirelli told Shakespeare’s story after cutting out entire subplots and taking the enormously risky gamble of transforming his main character from a centuries-old portrait of a manic depression loner who could not make up his mind into….well, to put it bluntly: an action hero?
Branagh’s vision of Hamlet the character as an actor is of such majestic power based on the traditional image that a comparison of his performance to Mel Gibson completely jettisons the argument that he wielded no influence. But that is performance, not directing, just as Gibson is a performer here and not the director. Zeffirelli obviously wanted Gibson to play Hamlet despite being a Hollywood superstar identified with roles completely unlike that of the Melancholy Dane. But the performance of a more robust, vigorous, decision and challenging Prince of Denmark is still a question of acting, not directing. Where it becomes a question of directory influence is in the editing room. And if the final result is any indication, only one of two possibilities exist: either Zeffirelli did not agree with Gibson’s interpretation, but for some reason failed to shoot enough alternative takes to craft what he wanted in the editing room or he and Gibson were completely simpatico. And if that is the case, then the final qualitative judgment on Zeffirelli’s influence is entirely up to each individual viewer to determine. As for his quantitative judgment on how influential the director was presenting yet another version of a very familiar story to audiences, the proof is there for all to see simply by comparing his version to Branagh. Many will attest to the opinion that is beyond argument that Branagh produced a work of higher quality, but that is not a comparison between Zeffirelli and Branagh. That is a comparison between Zeffirelli and Shakespeare. And that’s just plain unfair.
