''Hamlet' and World Cinema is a remarkable book. In fact, there's nothing quite like it in the literature of Shakespeare on film. Burnett provides detailed cultural readings of thirty Hamlet films, each revealing something rich and strange about the country of origin and the moment of creation. His scholarship is astonishing as his analyses incorporate knowledge of each culture's history, politics, myths, film and stage traditions, language, as well as its appropriation of Shakespeare. He has a profound understanding of the myriad purposes Hamlet serves in these films as aesthetic object, political critique, cultural icon, or colonial intruder. The volume is not just a homage to Shakespeare's enduring impact on world cultures, but to the art of film itself.' Samuel Crowl, Ohio University