Sarah Bernhardt's Hamlet, the first Hamlet to ever be performed on film, is one that is determined and heroic, despite appearing younger due to Bernhardt's voice and appearance. Her Hamlet has been described as having "more resolution and the heroic about it... she endows Hamlet with a simple motive and so sees a purposeful character" (Woods 182). Bernhardt herself stated that her Hamlet "is brought face to face with a duty, and he determines to carry it out (Woods 182). She rejects the idea of Hamlet being mad and instead focuses on Hamlet's plot to avenge his father's death.
Hamlet, Sarah Bernhardt (1899)
Sarah Bernhardt as Hamlet circa 1899.
Reviews
“But, granting the artistic handicap in this particular undertaking--namely, that Hamlet here is a woman and has not Shakespeare to speak--it is interesting to see what special aptitudes the great Frenchwoman brought to her task. Among the most notable of these is her wonderful mastery of sheer poise, that power she has of standing stock still for an indefinite length of time with perfect ease and grace, never shifting from her ground, and equally never ceasing for a moment to be dramatic. It was when she stood so, her feet firmly planted, making only occasional use of sparing, clean-cut gesture, that she came nearest, I should say, to the effect that the artist in her wanted to produce. Here, again and again, one recognized her faculty of keen observation and paid tribute to the accomplished technique that translated her knowledge into action at times so vivid and yet sober.”
"On Seeing Madame Bernhardt's Hamlet," Elizabeth Robbins, North American Review, 171 (December 1900), 908-919. Click here for full article.