One Hamlet Less (1973)

 

Director: Carmelo Bene

Screenplay: Carmelo Bene

Based on a play by William Shakespeare

Cast: Carmelo Bene as Hamlet; Luciana Cante as Gertrude; Sergio Di Giulio as William; Franco Leo as Horatio; Lydia Mancinelli as Kate; Luigi Mezzanotte as Laertes; Isabella Russo as Ophelia; Giuseppe Tuminelli as Polonius; Alfiero Vincenti as Claudius

An Abstract Candidate

 

For his last theatrical film, Carmelo Bene after the likes of Oscar Wilde and Jules-Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly came to William Shakespeare. Starting as he means to go on, the Italian theatrical director/actor and filmmaker begins with father's ghost floating by at the moment a murder transpires, during a scene of sex on the beach at night for the first scene, with poison poured into the ear of the soon slain king post coitus as Claudius takes the crown in grainy black-and-white photography. Bene is sadly a figure whose work has not been as well known outside his homeland of Italy. As much of this, with One Hamlet Less a prime example, because his films are alien beyond the late sixties and seventies period of world cinema where experimentalism was rife and their types of experiment, to be frank, are from the period. However in terms of grandstanding, distinct and unique voices, Bene's should be more readily heard as, already audible if you can catch him, his is a compelling one as he completely dissects and breaks the Danish tragedy into pieces of his own. 

The world he depicts is over the top. It is of multicoloured costumes with big shoulders, big hats and cornettes on women, glasses which cause one actress to have eyes which are big and bug out, and where the sets, excluding the use of an actual beach, are usually white theatrical spaces with giant walls of stacked books usually the main set decoration. All his films have unique aesthetic looks, given them all character. The one aspect which may put people off, openly admitting this now, is that most of the female cast are nude, with the camera emphasising this at times, and this is the one thing which, for a film I am going to lavish praise on, is going to cause me to roll my eyes too. He has had nudity in other films, but the others have had their distinctions, whilst here it does come off as ridiculous, mainly because it does come off as emphasised rather than for the purposes in his other workl. Aside from this, the world of a Carmelo Bene film is something spectacular. He is not really the same as Ken Russell, nor Federico Fellini, and even his acting for Pier Paolo Pasolini contrasts two very different filmmakers. Even his films have unique looks to each other though they all embrace the artificial and theatrical, as this world's white sets contrasts the proto-neon hues of Salome (1972), a film even with its female nudity was more profoundly classical as it was almost eighties no wave homoerotic camp in hindsight.

Whether you need to have read Hamlet or get the basics will help, but suffice to say, the key is that this follows the basics and deviates considerably after which. That Hamlet is a Danish prince whose father was slain by Claudius, the uncle taking the throne and remarrying his mother. Hamlet, becoming mentally unstable or acting it out, bides his time in the court until he can progress in his plans, but here the film drops a lot beyond this, including the eventual plan for revenge. The result, then, is Hamlet if you know the text but not even then as you would know it, going as far as having Sigmund Freud, the famous psychologist, in a role as an unseen narrator who whispers his theories on the Oedipus complex (the son murdering the father, sleeping with the mother) over scenes. Or at least his stand-in, as it is actually Polonius as Freud who torments Hamlet so, as much here Hamlet is a man just wishing to stage plays as he is the Danish prince of the Shakespearean narrative. Hamlet has to play the part of the origin figure too, go insane and have his erotic desires blurred between Ophelia, his potential love interest, and his mother Gertrude.  As much of this version is a joke, a parody, as it is taken seriously, even with the conclusion for Hamlet himself an anti-climax in a graveyard.

Ridiculously gaudy, One Hamlet Less however has a deliberate gaudiness, theatrical costuming which is as much artificial with over pronounced shoulders on costumes and, for female cast members, not even anything barring headdresses and skirts as it is the heightened acting. There is a noticeable homo-eroticism, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in their cameo very youthful and attractive men with pronounced red lips and make-up, to the point it comes apparent they have been actresses in fact or swapped mid-film on purpose¹. Moments of this eroticism at least showing more than the moments where the camera pans on the bodies of women which causes you to cringe, particularly as in the era of codpieces this is more internalized through the fabric.

There are scenes in the real world, particularly a beach where a graveyard has been dug into the sand, where the skeletons are brought up by the sea waves, but it is mostly staged bound sets with economic but vividly distinct sets, a huge factor to Bene's style. It is, like the other films, a dense kaleidoscope work that with patience grows in weight, Bene liking dialogue which is not natural, heavy in intellectualism, and at times shouted or practically belted out of actors like mad people. Alongside the frantic editing, his work is as much to cut and match between shots, to blind the viewer in the madness of his kitsch take on the Kingdom of Denmark, where even origin source text in this particular film in his career fits his world.

Kitsch it not an insult as, far from a surface irony, Bene's take is serious and sincere, appropriate that in Shakespeare's tale, of a nobleman who plans to take vengeance of the betrayal and murder of his father, a chaotic mass of backstabbing and politics is depicted with this hyper-coloured delirium. Hamlet whilst set in a location became its own realm outside of reality to place various meanings on, so as Hamlet here pretending to be mad wanders sets that vary between late sixties pop art and a medieval film about to kick into disco. It befits the depth of darkness is portrayed here in bright illustrious colour, and in terms of the many adaptations of Hamlet, stranger exist even in mainstream pop culture when Arnold Schwarzenegger played a version of the Danish prince for a one scene joke². The abrupt tangent to Arthurian legend, whilst the most difficult thing to grasp, even fits the tone and Bene for me as an actor is exceptional, the centre piece who keeps this working. He can go for the fence with his delirium but, as his first film Our Lady of the Turks (1968) attest too, even that is a fine art. It is telling, in the most sobering scene, he acts out one of Hamlet's most famous sequences and dialogue, the "alas poor Yorick" lines with the court jester's skull, with utmost quiet sadness and then escalates his voice louder when his Hamlet laments his place and death.

Just screenshots would be enough to show how interesting the film it. Women, laid on a white seat with dresses who hoop skirts make them look this living Christmas tree decorations, or with giant balls as improvised skirts to sit behind; anachronistic luggage cases everywhere; night scenes full of rows of candles (touches?) burning in the open air; a happy, cheery brawl to the death with a morning star spilling blood, played out like a game of tag over and around multi-coloured spheres in a white set; and enough textures to saturate the eyes, mind and thoughts. Naturally like Bene himself, it is beautiful and at times insane looking, striding through scenes agonizing on their existential existence as the film itself darts between the various figures of this weird world. Contextually, even as the shortest and in many ways least erratic of the films I have seen, this is arguably the one you try afterwards when you are accustomed to Carmelo Bene's work. It is still a brilliant piece of the whole body of work.

Abstract Spectrum: Heightened/Kitsch/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium

 

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1) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern also go with a bang, liberally changing the source text, before you ask.

2) Last Action Hero (1993).