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  • 5/30/2025
Hamlet (Mel Gibson) bemoans the fickle nature of his mother.

FILM DESCRIPTION:
Franco Zeffirelli directs his third Shakespeare adaptation (after Romeo and Juliet and Otello) with this film version of the tragedy Hamlet. The titular prince of Denmark (Mel Gibson), returns home to his family's castle of Elsinore after years of attending school in Germany to find out his father has died and his uncle Claudius (Alan Bates) is the new king. To make matters worse, Claudius has married Hamlet's mother, Queen Gertrude (Glenn Close), whom he has unusually strong feelings for. Hamlet is visited by his father's ghost (Paul Scofield), who asks him to seek revenge for his murder. In order to find out who the real killer is, Hamlet stages a theatrical scene resembling his father's death. Claudius is upset by the production and leaves to arrange for Hamlet's murder. In the ensuing confusion, Hamlet accidentally kills Polonious (Ian Holm) instead of Claudius; Hamlet's lover, Ophelia (Helena Bonham Carter), goes mad and commits suicide; and eventually Hamlet and Claudius both meet their fate.

CREDITS:
TM & © Warner Bros. (1990)
Cast: Alan Bates, Mel Gibson, Glenn Close
Director: Franco Zeffirelli
Producers: Dyson Lovell, Bruce Davey
Screenwriters: Christopher De Vore, William Shakespeare, Franco Zeffirelli

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Transcript
00:00Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew.
00:16Oh, that the everlasting had not fixed his cannon against self-slaughter.
00:21Oh, God, God, how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world.
00:40Thigh unto, thigh, it is an unweeded garden that grows to seed.
00:45Thigh, things rank and gross in nature, possess it merely.
00:56But it should come to this, the two months dead.
01:01Nay, not so much, not two.
01:05So excellent a king that was to this, Hyperion to a Saturn.
01:11So loving to my mother that he might not beteem the winds of heaven, visit her face too roughly.
01:22Heaven and earth, must I remember?
01:26Why, she would hang on him as if increase of appetite had grown by what it fed on.
01:32And yet, within a month, let me not think on.
01:37Frailty, thy name is woman.
01:41Thigh, thigh, thigh.
02:08Thigh, thigh.
02:08Thigh, thigh.

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