I remember that in Kaurismaki's Hamlet goes business (1987) Ophelia's flowers speech is absent and in its place, after Polonius' death, there is a scene in which Ophelia returns Hamlet's letters and asks him to give her back her gifts to him. The scene, because it comes in stead of the other, expected one, makes me think of the returned gifts in Ophelia's hands (among them, a small rubber duck) as replacements for her flowers. Also, a continuity is established between this scene and the following moment of her suicide in the bath with the floating rubber duck, which therefore functions just as the flowers in her speech, as they too are a premonition of her death by water while making 'fantastic garlands' of crow-flowers, nettles and daisies.

Anna Maria Cimitile

Anna Maria Cimitile

Dipartimento degli Studi Letterari e Linguistici dell'Europa

Università degli Studi di Napoli 'L'Orientale'

Via Duomo 219

80138 Napoli

Italy

Il giorno 18/nov/10, alle ore 20:17, Diana Henderson ha scritto:

Kaara Peterson’s more recent essay on visual representations of Ophelia might provide some additional material, though it’s been awhile since I read it....
best
dh


On 11/18/10 12:53 PM, "Peter Holland" <[log in to unmask]" target="_blank">[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Extensive annotation about what different Ophelias have done on stage and screen is, of course, available in both Robert Hapgood’s edition for CUP’s Shakespeare in Production series (1999) and Marvin Rosenberg’s The Masks of Hamlet (U of Delaware Press, 1992). The online resource Hamletworks (hamletworks.net) is hugely helpful too.
 
Peter
 
 
 
On Tue, Nov 16, 2010 at 3:34 PM, Burt,Richard <[log in to unmask]" target="_blank">[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Hi lal,

just wondering about what is done with Ophelia's flowers in her mad scene.  I see three kinds of stagings of the flowers as prop and with no prop:

1. No prop:  flowers (or anything else) at all (Zeffirelli)
2. Something in place of flowers (polaroid photos in Almereyda)
3. Flowers (Olivier).

Can anyone thinking of any other way the flowers have been used (o rnot) as a prop?
Any compelling film adaptations that come to mind?





Professor Richard Burt
Department of English and Film and Media Studies Program
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