Hamlet at Elsinore. 1965. UK. Directed by Philip Saville. Based on the play by William Shakespeare. With Christopher Plummer, Robert Shaw, Michael Caine. Digital. 170 min.
Michael Caine was cast in Hamlet at Elsinore, an excellent BBC television production directed by Philip Saville, shortly before the 1965 premiere of his breakthrough film Zulu. Playing Horatio to Christopher Plummer’s sweet prince (the two would reunite on The Man Who Would Be King), Caine would later observe that “acting in Shakespeare was a very happy experience and also a very valuable one for me since I was after all an actor with no formal, let alone classical training, but I managed to make something of it. My old friend Robert Shaw played the King, and Donald Sutherland, a newcomer, played Fortinbras, a small part that nevertheless required star quality.” Caine would conclude that “I’m too naturalistic an actor for iambic pentameter but I felt safe in playing Horatio, because although it’s a good part, it’s not the lead. Of course now, the world of movies and theater is much more fluid and people go back and forth. In my day the theater was training for the movies; now big movie stars will do theater, because they haven’t done it before.”