Kozintsev on the elements(in his 1964 filmed Hamlet.)It seems that the basic elements of the plastic arts are formed against a background of nature. In decisive places, they should oust period stylization (of the Tudor era, and of English affectation) and express the essentials. I have in mind stone, iron, fire, earth, and sea. Stone: the walls of Elsinore, the firmly built government rison, on which armorial bearings and sinister bas-reliefs had been carved centuries ago. Iron: weapons, the inhuman forces of oppression, the ugly stell faces of war. Fire: anxiety, revolt, movement, the trembling flame of the candles at Claudius's celebrations; raging fiery tongues (Horatio's narrative about the ghostly apparition); the wind-blown lamps on the stage erected for "The Mousetrap." Sea: waves, crashing against the bastions, ceaseless movement, the change of the tides, the boiling of chaos, and again the sileent, endless surface of glass. Earth: the world beyond Elsinore, amid stones -- a bit of field tilled by a ploughman, the sand pouring out of Yorick's skull, and the handful of dust in the palm of the wanderer-heir to the throne of Denmark. --- Gregori Kozintsev, Shakespeare: Time and Conscience. Trans Joyce Vining. New York: Hill & Wang, 1966. |