As the first foreign movie to win the Best Motion Picture Academy Award, Laurence Olivier's Hamlet is one of the most celebrated Shakespearean screen adaptations ever produced. Built around a script by Olivier, who co-wrote the movie with Alan Dent, the film is also one of very few movie titles before its time or since that was produced, directed, written and starred a single personality of such magnitude as to truly stamp the film with an auteur's imprint.

Thus the Pilgrim Pictures and Two Cities Films Ltd. production of Hamlet is, in every way, an Olivier movie. It was released to wide acclaim and earned the noble Englishman two Academy Awards for best production and acting, an Oscar nomination for direction but, curiously enough, no recognition whatsoever in the writing category despite the legendary language of Shakespeare's work.

Endowed then with the unique creative fervor of its writer/director/producer/star, Hamlet is the adaptation of the Bard's most widely produced tragedy. Set in the play's historic moment and ensconced in the cliff top castle of Elsinore as seat of Denmark's throne, the story concerns a young man trapped in circumstances that threaten to undo him.

Opening with a brief overlay to explain how it's really the story of a man, "who just couldn't make up his mind," Hamlet quickly moves through the major set pieces of the work. It opens with the introduction of Danish prince Hamlet (Olivier) who's troubled following his father's death that's left his mother, Gertrude (Eileen Herlie), to marry his uncle, Claudius (Basil Sydney). Not believing the death to be entirely natural, and everywhere mourning his father, Hamlet hears about a ghost lingering along the ramparts of the castle. Learning that the ghost is none other than the incarnation of his father (voiced by Sir John Gielgud) the young man is told how Claudius killed his brother in order to seize the throne.

Swearing vengeance and fixing the devotion of his men-in-waiting, Hamlet starts down a violent path of retribution though he lacks a plan to fulfill his destiny. Partially this is because he's young but it's also because of his affection for Ophelia (Jean Simmons), the daughter of Polonius (Felix Aylmer), an adviser to Claudius and Gertrude, and the younger sister of his close friend, Laertes (Terence Morgan).

Realizing that Hamlet seems crazed, Polonius sets about an intrigue to disrupt the prince's courtship of his daughter or else determine its completion. To this end he shadows the younger man only to end up believing him troubled by problems that seem related to his deep mourning.

Eventually the prince approaches his mother to thrown suspicion on Claudius. She receives him with a mixed feeling somewhere between maternal devotion and incestuous desire but he accidentally kills Polonius as he eavesdropped on their conversation. With blood on his hands Hamlet quickly leaves for England just as Laertes returns to Elsinore from studies abroad to learn of his father's death. He also finds Ophelia swooning in her very sadness that ultimately drowns her in a stream near the imposing stone castle.

Upon his return home to uncover his uncle's plot, Hamlet happens upon Ophelia's funeral and confronts Laertes to learn of their unfortunate ill will. The two fix upon each other with a sense of coming justice and Claudius takes Laertes under his wing to dispatch his rebellious nephew with further deceit.

Meeting for a swordplay exhibition, Hamlet and Laertes fight with poisoned blades while a flagon of poisoned wine awaits the prince's thirst. Unfortunately Gertrude drinks from the goblet first just as Laertes cuts Hamlet's shoulder and is then cut in retaliation. Learning of his pending doom the prince unveils his regicidal uncle and falls upon him with his sword before dying a noble death. So ends the film, drawn to a close like hundreds, if not thousands, of productions of the original play performed before it.

Quickly elevated as a classic of its type and firmly fixing Olivier as one of the great screen actors of his generation, Hamlet was a revelation to many during its first release. At once an approachable length for a tragedy that can easily run four hours if produced without adjustments to the script, Olivier's film is also a clinic on screen performance not to mention black and white cinematography.

Nominated for the Best Motion Picture award against Johnny Belinda, The Red Shoes, The Snake Pit and Treasure of the Sierra Madre, all four of them fine films, it won the top Oscar with a combination of literary pedigree and artistic excellence. Never mind the celebrated movies Red River and The Lady from Shanghai, each of them having been stamped as warrants of the year 1948 despite being snubbed by the Academy, Olivier's movie was uniquely suited to its moment.

Based on a classic text and starring a British cast of up-and-comers but most notably the film's star and chief creative force, it's a play lovingly translated for the silver screen without the stuffiness often associated with stage work winding its way into movies. Everywhere the camera work is a mobile instrument framing dramatic action and narrowing the use of the play's numerous soliloquies as voiceover monologues. The symphonic score is a mood-setting device but doesn't detract from the dramatic action while the scenery is malleable in creating the tensions of Hamlet's world wherein he's an heir to the throne and chattel in the various plans of his corrupt and fratricidal uncle.

Most remarkably the film's production design elements closely approximate standards more typically associated with full color, or even Technicolor, work. Depth of field is charted with a rich range of colors between black and white with varied grays supplying the demands of texture and appearing as a dichromatic spectrum. Interiors are limited to a set number of locations yet each of them is lovingly rendered and photographed from a variety of angles to give them a sense of being vast, Danish spaces filled with mystery, cold and intrigues aplenty.

Aside from a recording of Olivier delivering one of Shakespeare's greatest protagonists alongside such a luminary figure as John Gielgud, Hamlet is also memorable because of its moving camera work with long tracking shots to delineate dramatic spaces. Characters ascend Elsinore's ramparts and stairwells and the camera moves up or down according to their actions, all the while seamlessly exchanging spatial position within the castle as a technical marvel in the days before digital effects. So too does the moving camera move within long shots to rebalance sequences according to the movement of characters and the requirements of the dialogue thereby encouraging certain kinds of identification and limiting others.

Perhaps most importantly Olivier's Hamlet demonstrated the path to presenting Shakespeare on film other than simply turning on sound and image recording equipment and letting actors recite lines of dialogue long studied by scholars of English literature. Instead Olivier's production substituted an aesthetic standard very closely associated with the more expressive movies of the post-War moment that weren't confined to the stage and its necessary limitations. In this way Shakespeare's tragedy was famously allowed to come alive without the artificial reminders of stagecraft that includes proscenium arches, emoting to the back row of an auditorium and an excess of emotional activity to communicate from a distance.

Olivier's Hamlet is not the first Shakespearean screen adaptation to tease out the specificity of cinema while also shading the expression of a classic piece of theater. Yet it's equally an achievement for its rendering of the noble Dane's tragic story as a movie marked with considerable dramatic interest and aesthetic beauty. It's a worthy Academy Award winner and legacy to Laurence Olivier who is, as often as not, closely associated with this, his most audacious role and production.

Were it not for our own laxity about rendering finely wrought scripts on screen in a modern preference for explosions and kinetic action, Hamlet might seem like more than relic from Hollywood's past. Regardless, it is an inscription of old standards but its lasting significance is in pointing out ways the theatrical tradition continues to hold sway over newer art forms, the cinema perhaps being foremost among them.