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Numerous directors have produced movies based on what some consider to be the best work of literature of all time, Hamlet. Both Franco Zeffirelli and Kenneth Branagh have produced their version of the play, Hamlet. After seeing both of the movies and comparing them to the context of the play, Kenneth Branagh’s version was superior to Zeffirelli’s because it is a more accurate representation to Shakespeare’s original version of the play.

Franco Zeffirelli’s film was considerably different from the play that William Shakespeare produced. He trimmed dialogue from various parts of the play and replaced it in a different context. For example, in the first scene Zeffirelli has a wake for Hamlet’s father, which does not exist in Shakespeare’s original Hamlet. Instead of having this wake for Hamlet’s father, Zeffirelli should have focused on enacting the original first scene of Shakespeare’s play. Zeffirelli cut out the part when Old Hamlet is talking to Hamlet about how Claudius killed him and how he must get revenge in the first scene. This is where the whole story develops and what it is primarily about. The revenge Hamlet is ordered to seek is what the rest of the play is about and without this beginning scene in Zeffirelli’s

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Branagh did not cut anything from Shakespeare’s original version, but uses the entire text to capture the full intent of Shakespeare’s most famous tragedy. How would the greatest writer of all time feel if he knew that someone had cut Hamlets dramatic speeches that he produced? Shakespeare produced those physiological speeches so that the audience would understand Hamlet better. version the plot was not as concrete from the beginning. Furthermore, Zeffirelli compressed the dumb-play and play for the king and court.

Kenneth Branagh's version of Hamlet is more superior to Franco Zeffirelli’s version because he uses more vivid imagery and most importantly, an uncut version of Shakespeare’s original play. In Branagh's version scenes are not rearranged and characters are not left out, witch gives a more accurate representation of Shakespeare’s version to the play. It is through Hamlets soliloquies that the audience not only get the nightmarish tale of a young prince who much feign madness, sacrifice love, and commit murder in order to trap his father’s killer; but the audience is also given the chance to experience the mind of genius, from the inside, and wrestle with the world on his unsparing terms. In addition, Zeffirelli completely cut the character of Fortinbras out of the play. Zeffirelli has taken out much of Hamlets essential dialogue, which does not give the audience a chanc!

e to see what Hamlet is really going through and a who he really is. The way Zeffirelli presented it did not have a dramatic affect because of the way the plot was presented,

Moreover, Zeffirelli’s version of Hamlet is almost soliloquy free. In Zeffirelli’s version the audience is unable to do detect Hamlet’s inner thoughts and emotions because Hamlet’s soliloqies were cut. This makes the dramatic background a little more timely and accessible for modern audiences without sacrificing the integrity of the original language or the influential power of Shakespeare’s dramatic scenes. Therefore, one might assume that it would be absolutely appalling to Shakespeare to see what Zeffirelli has done with the greatest tragedy ever written. For instance, the death of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is not meant to be seen and acted out, but is to be told by Hamlet. It should have included that first and still had a whole play, in which special lines inserted by Hamlet were to be read.

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