Better Than the Play?

The Royal Family rolled up to London's Odeon Theatre last week for an event that had been long awaited: the world premiere of Sir Laurence Olivier's Hamlet.

Almost all London's critics agreed that the film was worth everything that had gone into it: more than $2,000,000 (J. Arthur Rank's) and six months of hard work. Said the Evening Standard: "It has moments of rare beauty and feeling such as the cinema has seldom seen . . . Olivier leaves no doubt that he is one of our greatest living actors."

There was also high praise for 19-year-old Jean Simmons' Ophelia. Wrote the New Statesman's thoughtful William Whitebait: "Ophelia comes out with a clarity I have never before known on the stage or, for that matter, the text . . . Miss Simmons' mad scenes (she acts them very simply; her beauty does the rest) are the most affecting I have known; in fact, this is the first time, in my experience, that the shock of Ophelia gone mad has moved and not embarrassed."

Some of the critics objected that Olivier had been too cavalier with the text. He had cut the 4 1/2-hour play to 2 1/2 hours, eliminated such roles as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, transposed speeches or even whole scenes as he found necessary. He called the result an "essay on Hamlet" The Manchester Guardian called it "a film which is much more closely knit and, indeed, much more dramatic than any stage Hamlet . . ."

Londoners took heed; at week's end, the Odeon was sold out for a month in advance. Impresario Rank plans to release the picture in the U.S. late this summer.

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