Film

Hamlet

Other titles called Hamlet: the 1990 film, the 1996 film.

Olivier plays chief mourner and reluctant avenger in a Denmark shot like a noir thriller, all high-contrast shadow and prowling camera. He trims Shakespeare's four hours to a lean two and a half, favouring cinematic momentum over reverent recitation. This is Hamlet as psychological suspense — brooding, handsome, and surprisingly quick on its feet.

TMDb rating3.7

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love Shakespeare's language delivered as sheer stagecraft, and want a famously interior tragedy filmed with theatrical boldness, a spoken-aloud inner life, and a melancholy star at full stretch.

Skip it if you want a brisk modern take, since this is nearly two and a half hours of formal verse, much of it delivered at a stately pace, with heavy stylized staging that can feel stagey.

What it asks of you: Roughly two and a half hours of black-and-white images and long soliloquies you have to sit with rather than skim, so bring patience for the slow, reflective middle stretches.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Henry V1944

Olivier again, directing himself, four years earlier, turning the St Crispin's Day speech into one of cinema's great rallying cries. Where Hamlet broods, this one charges — same command of the verse, entirely different temperature.

But It's wartime propaganda dressed as history, made to stiffen British resolve in 1944 — stirring, but its patriotism can feel dated and unsubtle now.

Henry V poster

Hamlet1996

Branagh restores every line Olivier cut, stages it in a mirrored Victorian palace, and surrounds himself with a starry, occasionally bizarre cast. It's the fullest, most maximalist Hamlet ever filmed, and a sharper, angrier prince.

But Four uncut hours of iambic pentameter is a real commitment, and the starry cameos can occasionally pull you right out of the tragedy.

Hamlet poster

Richard III1955

The final part of Olivier's loose Shakespeare trilogy, and his most purely enjoyable performance — a limping, grinning villain who lets you in on every scheme. Pure theatrical relish after Hamlet's inward misery.

But The Technicolor staginess and deliberately heightened performances feel more like a period piece than Hamlet's moodier black-and-white cinema.

Richard III poster

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Hamlet

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Lion King1994

Both tell the exact same story — a ghost-haunted prince who runs from his duty rather than face his uncle — forty-six years and one wildly different register apart, one in trembling blank verse, the other in songs about hakuna matata.

Same skeleton as Hamlet, played entirely straight for eight-year-olds: a murdered father returning as a spectral vision, a usurping uncle, a prince paralysed by guilt who flees his kingdom before finally reclaiming it. Astonishingly faithful once you notice.

But It's a Disney musical with talking warthogs and zero soliloquies — if what you loved was the language and the poetry, this obviously isn't that.

The Lion King poster

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Recommended by

Richard III, The Northman, Julius Caesar, Oedipus the King, Othello