More than seven decades before Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet landed eight Academy Award noms, Oscar voters were similarly spellbound by Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet. Olivier directed and starred in what was the first sound film in English to adapt William Shakespeare’s classic tragedy about the titular Prince of Denmark, who suspects that his uncle killed his father.
Olivier first played Hamlet onstage at London’s Old Vic in 1937. After making his feature directorial debut with the 1944 adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry V, for which his lead performance earned an honorary Oscar, Olivier set out to “make a film of Hamlet as Shakespeare himself, were he living now, might make it,” as the star wrote in a 1948 New York Times essay. Hamlet debuted in September 1948 and collected $3.3 million domestically ($43 million today) and scored seven Oscar noms and four wins, marking the first British production to nab best picture, while Olivier became the first filmmaker to direct himself to a best actor win. Hamlet costume designer Roger K. Furse won the inaugural best costume trophy, in the black and white category (Joan of Arc prevailed for color). Furse also won for art direction (now known as production design), alongside set decorator Carmen Dillon.
This year, Hamnet is similarly up for best picture, costumes and production design. Zhao’s movie stars Paul Mescal as Shakespeare and Jessie Buckley as wife Agnes in an examination of the couple’s life while the famed playwright wrote Hamlet.
This story first appeared in a February stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
