SparkNotes Hamlet Study Guide ~ First performed around 1600 Hamlet tells the story of a prince whose duty to revenge his fatherвЂ™s death entangles him in philosophical problems he canвЂ™t eareвЂ™s bestknown play is widely regarded as the most influential literary work ever written Read a character analysis of Hamlet plot summary and important quotes Hamlet Summary Plot Characters Britannica ~ Hamlet tragedy in five acts by William Shakespeare written about 1599вЂ“1601 and published in a quarto edition in 1603 from an unauthorized text Often considered the greatest drama of all time the play tells the story of the troubled titular prince of Denmark This fact makes him a kind of super-auteur in that he is putting his mark on almost every level of the adaptation.Hamlet Wikipedia ~ Hamlet is one of the most quoted works in the English language and is often included on lists of the worlds greatest literature o As such it reverberates through the writing of later centuries Branagh is not only the director but is also the adapter and the star. Of the many filmed versions of Shakespeare's Hamlet and the many printed versions of the text, the chosen are Kenneth Branagh's 1996 version and the Signet Classic version edited by Sylvan Barnet, respectively. This is where the director takes his place as the auteur. Hamlet critic Neil Taylor is quoted as saying, 'In order to be marketable, it had to conform to cinematic conventions.' Many actions or ideas that are possible in movies are not possible in a stage setting and vice versa, and the text being adapted is often void of direction for how the actors should be looking, feeling, moving, etcetera. Because of this fact, each director of each of these filmed versions has a different idea of how the play should be recreated for the camera, both because of their cultural background and taboos and also because of the difference of genre. Filmed versions of Hamlet have been made all over the world, including such places as Italy, India, Ghana, Brazil, Poland, and Japan. Hamlet, speaking in terms of the text, is not only the most performed of Shakespeare's works but is also the most filmed. Auteur theorists are interested in how a director spins what he is given into a work of his own. Thus, the auteur theory holds that the director is the primary person responsible for the creation of a motion picture and infuses it with his own distinctive, recognizable style.

In film criticism, an 'auteur', which is French for 'author', is a director who so dominates the filmmaking process, especially in adaptations, that it is appropriate to call the director the auteur of the motion picture.

Kenneth Branagh, as the director of the 1996 film version of Shakespeare's Hamlet, takes on not only the role of Hamlet and of director of the film, but also of auteur.

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