El resto es silencio

Ben Jonson famously described William Shakespeare as 'not for an age but for all time' and 'Hamlet' with its themes of usurped power and revenge would seem ideally suited to the modern, corporate era.

Aki Kaurismaki's customarily deadpan treatment entitled 'Hamlet goes Business' is not everyone's cup of tea whilst Akira Kurosawa's powerful and underrated 'The Bad Sleep Well' is not nearly as derivative of Shakespeare as his 'Throne of Blood' and 'Ran'. Chabrol's darkly humorous 'Ophélia' certainly has its moments but it is probably wiser to draw a discreet veil over Michael Almereyda's 'Hamlet 2000' in which Elizabethan verse is totally unsuited to urban America. That leaves the version by one of Germany's finest directors Helmut Kautner, its title taken from Hamlet's dying words.

This film makes fascinating viewing for those who know the play and this viewer at any rate is impressed as to how well the characters have been adapted to a post WW11 industrial setting. Kautner's directorial style is restrained and as always he gets the best from his players. Especially well handled is the relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia and extremely inventive is the portrayal of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as a gay couple who put on a ballet that fulfils the function of Shakespeare's 'play within a play' and recreates the murder of Hamlet's father, much to the discomfort of the murderer, a perfectly cast Peter van Eyck. Special mention must be made of veteran Rudolph Forster, the definitive Mackie Messer, whose performance here as Polonius is beautifully understated. It must be said that following his character's death the film loses momentum somewhat and becomes less of Shakespeare and more of Agatha Christie, especially as the police inspector is played by Charles Régnier, a familiar face in Krimifilms of the period.

Unsurprisingly the spectre of Hitler haunts the proceedings and a critic of the time remarked that with this film Kautner was coming to terms with the past. He had in fact successfully navigated the perilous waters of National Socialism, gifting us one of the most beautiful films of that era, 'Romanze in Moll' and continued to illumine the wasteland of 1950's German cinema with such films as 'The Devil's General' and 'The Last Bridge'. Although 'The Rest is Silence' may not be up to their standard, it bears the hallmarks of a director of intelligence, sensitivity and humanity.

English speaking Kruger, back from the U.S. to claim the Claudius Steel Works, his dead father made him sole heir to, drives through the back projected post war industrial German landscape to the house where mum has married uncle Van Eyk. Hardy is more willing to take the hand of the Ophelia character's ex-Nazi brother than uncle Peter Van or embrace the mother he hasn't seen for 20yr.

With his U.S. official mate, Hardy watches the wide screen Nazi era coverage and offs 70 year old Forster. His daughter, who compares the death of a cut flower to murder, goes bonkers, while Peter Van recruits her brother but all the plotting is to no avail.

The sterile industrial world, where German industry collaborates with the US on the then new H Bomb, never delivers the significance they want it to have. The psychiatry theme is marginally better. "'Gluck' is not a medical term."

Kaütner, the leading German, if not European, film maker of the forties and fifties, back from Hollywood, is on top of his game with every gesture, edit, element of the decor and choice of angle having purpose. Trouble is his "Hamlet" plot never recovers from the feebleness of Forster's death, with the rapid wind up total anti-climax.

Based on Shakespeare's Hamlet, Hardy Kruger takes center stage as a young, brooding German man who is reunited with his family after WWII. He's spent time in America and is disappointed that his widowed mother has married her brother-in-law. Hardy is pursued by Fee (a takeoff of Ophelia), an emotionally fragile girl, and thwarted by his uncle's cronies when he tries to find out the truth about his father's death. Instead of ghostly visits, he receives phone calls. Instead of staging a prophetic play, Hardy choreographs a modern ballet. Admittedly, it's not a literal adaptation, but it is recognizable.

It's always interesting (and tragic) to see Hardy act in films where he played a Nazi soldier. I struggle to think of a time when he played it as a strict soldier; he always found a way to show the human behind the uniform. Was it deliberate, or was it a subconscious shift as the only way he could stomach taking the role? In The Rest Is Silence, he's a civilian and is able to show his hatred and disgust for the Nazi party. In one scene, he's shown newsreel footage of Adolph Hitler attending his father's funeral and shaking hands with his mother. He's so sickened, he swallows, turns away from the screen, and asks the projectionist to turn it off. In another, he's greeting a young man he hasn't seen boyhood. The friend says, "Before you shake my hand, you should know I was a Nazi." Hardy hesitates, takes a deep breath, and continues to extend his hand. "You must have had your reasons," he responds with a tight smile.

I recently read a fascinating analysis that credited Hardy Kruger with the wave of popular German actors in the post-WWII era. I've watched countless Curd Jurgens, Maximillian Schell, Romy Schneider, and Oskar Werner films, but I never considered the timeline. They all came to prominence (in English-speaking cinema) in the 1960s. In 1957, Curd Jurgens made two English films but played villains; Hardy Kruger starred in The One That Got Away. He was a Nazi soldier in a British POW camp, and the audience was supposed to (and did) hope he could escape and return to Germany! Hardy broke the barrier. Would Schell have won an Academy Award? Would Werner have been cast as the hero in Fahrenheit 451? Would Jurgens have become a sex symbol? We'll never know. But we should give Hardy Kruger the credit he never really received.

If you speak multiple languages, as Hardy did, you'll be able to see a great range of his acting through English, German, and French films. If not, a lot of his films are available with subtitles, including The Rest Is Silence. As Hamlet, he's intense, intellectual, and even talks differently than his usual slow drawl. I wouldn't start with this one if you've never seen him before because he's a little too serious (although he gives Ingrid Andree one of the sexiest onscreen kisses I've ever seen). Rent The One That Got Away first so you can see him the way the rest of the world did.