P-01 Artistic Anarchy in Gregori Kozintsev’s Hamlet

Gregori Kozintsev produced his film adaptation of Hamlet (1964) in the Soviet Union shortly after Joseph Stalin’s death. Kozintsev utilized the political concerns of Shakespeare’s play to critique Stalin’s regime through the safely distant setting of an English drama. For this purpose he employed two artists who lived through the Russian Revolution and Stalin’s rule. Boris Pasternak—screenplay writer—and Dmitri Shostakovich, score composer, helped embed a critique of oppressive authority into Kozintsev’s film. The film’s portrayal of Hamlet and Ophelia’s suffering at the hands of paternalistic power points to the function of art as a means of resistance to political oppression.