Shostakovich in Soviet Cinema: Hamlet
Before the screening, join us for a lecture from Harlow Robinson, Professor of History at Northeastern University. The lecture will begin at 6:30pm, followed by Hamlet (1964) at 7:00pm.
One of Dmitri Shostakovich’s favorite literary characters was Shakespeare's Hamlet, the indecisive prince, paralyzed by the vexing sort of moral choices—to collaborate or not to collaborate—that Soviet artists were constantly forced to make. Shostakovich wrote his most highly regarded film score for this 1964 Lenfilm adaptation of Hamlet, directed by his lifelong friend Grigori Kozintsev and starring Innokenty Smoktunovsky in a harrowing performance praised by Laurence Olivier.
For Soviet artists and intellectuals, Shakespeare's plays and poems became a language of code signifying resistance to the totalitarian regime. For them, as for Hamlet, said Kozintsev, "the ultimate prison was not made up of stone or iron, but of people.” As Professor Harlow Robinson will discuss before the screening, Shostakovich's seething score centers on the swirling image of the ghost of Hamlet's father, calling for revenge against injustice, hypocrisy, arrests, and executions.
About Harlow Robinson
Dr. Harlow Robinson is an author, lecturer, and Matthews Distinguished University Professor of History, Emeritus, at Northeastern University. His books include Russians in Hollywood, Hollywood’s Russians; Sergei Prokofiev: A Biography; Selected Letters of Sergei Prokofiev; The Last Impresario: The Life, Times and Legacy of Sol Hurok; and Lewis Milestone: Life and Films. His articles, essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, The Nation, Opera News, Musical America, Cineaste, San Francisco Chronicle, Stagebill, and other publications. As a lecturer, he has appeared at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Metropolitan Opera Guild, Boston Symphony, Lincoln Center, New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Aspen Music Festival, Bard Festival, Carnegie Hall, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Guggenheim Museum, Boston Lyric Opera, and Los Angeles Music Center Opera, among others. He has provided commentary and programming for NPR, PBS, the BBC, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He has received fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation, American Council of Learned Societies, IREX, National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Whiting Foundation, and has made 27 trips to Russia and the former USSR since 1970. In 2010, he was named an Academy Film Scholar by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He received his B.A. in Russian from Yale University, and M.A. and Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from the University of California, Berkeley.
