Freud's Footprints in Films of Hamlet
1997; Salisbury University; Volume: 25; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0090-4260
Autores Tópico(s)Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism
ResumoIn 1910 Ernest Jones published an article, and Oedipus, which was to have a significant influence on performance of Shakespeare's play. Jones said that an complex dwells at heart of Hamlet's mystery. This idea labors under a heavy load of theoretical and practical difficulties, but in films of Hamlet it seems to have become gospel. The idea is at root of performances of closet scene in each of four readily available English-language films: Laurence Olivier's 1948 version, 1969 production directed by Tony Richardson and starring Nicol Williamson, 1980 BBC version with Derek Jacobi as Hamlet, and 1990 production, directed by Franco Zeffirelli and starring Mel Gibson and Glenn Close. Not only have these actors and directors all shown their belief in nature of Hamlet's story, but idea seems to have become fixed in popular understanding of play. For instance, in its 1990 Christmas Eve issue, Maclean's magazine offered its readers a survey of films for holiday viewing, including new Hamlet. The review, generally favorable, offered observation that although Glenn Close looks too young to be Gibson's mother, that serves to heighten of incest (Johnson 50). This casual comment indicates how deeply hint of incest, or Oedipus complex, has been inscribed upon popular understanding of play and character. This unquestioning acceptance of same idea also appears in recent scholarly commentary on film productions of Hamlet. In an article examining Olivier's film version and 1980 BBC television production, June Schlueter and James Lusardi note that it is the premise that provides a coherent sequence of stage images (166), but they do not presume to comment on persuasiveness or emotional effect of that sequence. More recently, Murray Biggs, in a survey of treatment of closet scene in four film versions, deplores Zeffirelli's translation of the into a full-blown, vulgarized, traditional screen romance between coevals (61). Thus Biggs, who certainly knows better, writes as though Oedipal theme were an explicit fact of text, rather than an interpretation. How did this situation develop? And what should we think of it? Jones's idea about play came from Freud, and-in an oddly circular way-Freud's concept about complex may have come from play. Or at least this is how Norman Holland tells story: It is not so much that Freud brought complex to Hamlet as that Hamlet brought complex to Freud. In very letter (dated 15 October 1897) in which Freud first said, I have found love of mother and jealousy of father in my own case, too, and now believe it to be a general phenomenon of early childhood, he immediately went on to apply concept to Rex and Hamlet. It is almost as though two plays guided him in his self-analysis. (59) Freud's key assertion is that Hamlet delays killing of King because King is Hamlet's unconscious self. That is, Claudius has done two things that repressed child inside Hamlet desires: killed Father and married Mother. Hamlet cannot bring himself to kill Claudius because Hamlet's unconscious sees Claudius as Hamlet's own self. This notion was developed into Jones's article, and article eventually became a book which Jones revised several times. More importantly for our story, producer Tyrone Guthrie found Jones's idea interesting, and he passed it on to Laurence Olivier.1 At that time, 1936, Olivier was a rising young star of London's fashionable West End theater district. Guthrie had persuaded him to turn aside-at least for a season-from his increasingly lucrative career, both stage and film, in order to dedicate himself to Shakespeare at Old Vic. The Old Vic was run by Miss Lilian Baylis, who was a kind of nun of theater, dedicated to classics and firmly opposed to liquor, licentiousness, and a living wage for actors. …
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