That's an incredible feat, to bring this off. It's never been done before. Branagh's clocks in at 238 minutes and grants audiences a midpoint intermission. I think it's quicker that way. It was a much more comfortable playing experience and all the acting was quicker.
People are prepared to sort of throw things away a little more.
There was a healthy, casual quality to some of the dialogue. Photo by Rolf Konow Kenneth Branagh directs John Gielgud in William Shakespeare's Hamlet . The small but vital role of the Player King went to Charlton Heston, no stranger to period films. His pantsless film roles have included Marc Antony in both Antony and Cleopatra and two versions of Julius Caesar , Moses in The Ten Commandments , the title roles in Ben-Hur and El Cid , John the Baptist in The Greatest Story Ever Told , Michelangelo in The Agony and the Ecstasy , King Henry VIII in Crossed Swords , Cardinal Richelieu in The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers , Sir Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons, and of course the scantily clad George Taylor in Planet of the Apes and Beneath the Planet of the Apes . Macbeths wore trousers either.