Othello (1951)

Commenting on Shakespeare films is rather like admiring Easter Eggs.

First the inside: this was never a great play, relative to Shakespeare's other works. His great plays are about ideas, with characters as vectors to prod and activate them. This play is merely about characters, which makes it attractive to actors. That's certainly why Welles selected it.

Welles is the Sinatra of dramatic reading, with phrasing mastered in his radio days. All else is acceptable (at least to my tastes) so far as the play goes.

Now the shell, and here is what makes this film one of the most important. When Welles moved into film, he did so as an architect. He understood that great film constructs a space that includes the audience. So he worked with the most direct tools, buildings themselves. These sets are remarkable. I cannot imagine how he found them, how he could have seen the possibilities.

Selection aside, how he uses the spaces! View this film at least once in silence. I rate Welles as one of the 20th century's great architects and predict that this film will be mined when we get around to really creating cyberbuilding.

Fmovies: Orson Welles' short, low-budget, and in places fairly odd look at Shakespeare's play. It suffers from some stage-bound performances which don't quite work (Micheal MacLiammoir as Iago, Robert Coote as Rodrigo) plus an undefined Desdemona from Suzanne Cloutier.

However, this aside, Welles is marvellous as the Moor driven to jealousy and murder, his voice rolling through the meat of Othello's speeches, his bronze make-up creating a skin for the great general. For this performance alone the film is valuable. And it looks absolutely fantastic, springing off from its financial limitations and adding a new dimension to the often-told story.

Othello, Moor of Venice, loves Desdemonda. Unbeknownst to him, one of his lieutenants, Iago, seething with jealousy, plans to bring him down. Iago slowly builds a web of deceit and lies around Othello that leads him to question the faithfulness of his wife and men, ultimately pushing him to far...

Many a time has a white actor portrayed black Othello. Thankfully, Welles excels in the title role, his hurt palpable. In adapting Shakespeare's play, Welles has done away with subplots he deemed unnecessary. His "Othello" boils down to the title character, his wife, Iago and bit players (and impressive numbers of extras). Fans of the text may regret the absence of a character or the significant reduction of his/her importance. It diminishes the play but enhances the film, giving it a tighter focus and a more fluid structure and running time. But as always, we expect more from an Orson Welles film.

Orson Welles is mostly celebrated for reinventing the look of film. His pictures each possess a unique aesthetic and daring camera work. Othello holds its own even when measured against the impressive Welles oeuvre, a true miracle if you are familiar with the films' history. Shooting it over years and in different locations (Morocco, Spain, etc.) with variations, often within the same scene, Welles managed to create the watertight illusion of a coherent world, leading the viewer to imagine that lavish sets and locations were available. For anyone interested in editing or any other aspect of film-making, this is an indisputable milestone in directorial resourcefulness.

Othello was Welles's second Shakespeare interpretation as star and director, soaring high above his very interesting Macbeth. He would return to the Bard one last time with his apotheosis, Chimes at Midnight. This trilogy is a gift. What a joy it is to see America's greatest director work with the world's greatest playwright...

Othello fmovies. Orson Welles' Othello is certainly not to be counted amongst the director's best films, which are, of course, amongst the very best ever made, but it's good.

The opening is gorgeous: it begins in medias res, with Othello and Desdimona being carried away, corpses, and Iago being suspended from a castle turret in a small cage. Unfortunately, the adaptation falters all the way until the very end. I can't say that I am any kind of expert on the play, but I know that there is a lot missing. The film moves at the speed of sound, when it really shouldn't. Suspense has no time to brood. The play loses a great deal of its power through most of its run. It's simply dry of emotion for about an hour or more of the 93 minute running time. Most likely, this wasn't Welles' fault. There were a lot of problems on the production, and it took many years to complete it (the credits list no fewer than five photographers), and it's probably the case that not everything was completed by the time they edited it all together.

The pace is the biggest problem. The actors, too, are not strong. Welles himself is great, of course. Unfortunately the character of Othello really doesn't have all that big a part in the original play. Well, he begins to come in more nearer the end, but, as far as the "main character," Iago is it. Until the very end, the play is told from the point of view of Iago. The actor who plays him is decent, but decent isn't nearly good enough. Many of the other actors are weak, too. Cassio, heck, I didn't even know which actor was playing him most of the time. Desdimona is played by a truly beautiful young actress, but she isn't worthy of the role, sadly. To tell you the truth, the only character besides Othello who has a worthy actor in the role is Emilia, Iago's wife, who really, like Othello, doesn't have much to do for most of the film.

So for most of the film's run, we're left to sate ourselves on Orson Welles' beautiful visions. They're great, of course. They are better, however, almost everywhere else in Welles' world. It only beats F for Fake, which can hardly count in this contest.

Fortunately, the film pulls itself together by the climactic sequence. Welles is especially good, both as an actor and a director, in the bedroom scene. There is an absolutely stunning moment where Desdimona's white radiance fills most of the screen. Suddenly, Welles (in black face, of course) turns his face and reveals himself - mere centimeters above her head. I jumped.

I've always been an admirer of Welles movies, starting with citizen Kane and the other masterpieces. Considering Othello, I highly admired this movie since the first shot, when the face of the dead Othello appears suddenly in the dark, and then the other details begin to appear, revealing the awesome funeral of both Othello and his murdered wife. In fact the best thing about this movie is the synchronization of the camera movement and angles with the state of mind and moods of characters especially that of Othello. Sometimes we are actually looking at the world through Othello's mind, the images are bizarre and grotesque, this is accompanies by wonderful acting of the cast. For any Welles fan this is a must see, considering the beauty of picture and creativity of interpretation. It's a pity that Welles didn't have a sufficient financial support to surpass some technical problems although the final effect and meaning of this masterpiece is not affected at all!

THE TRAGEDY OF OTHELLO: THE MOOR OF VENICE/ US/France/Italy/Morocco 1952 (3.5 STARS)

The recent restoration of Othello brings to cinematic space the magic of another masterpiece from Orson Welles. To think that a whole master negative of this film (which won the Best film at Cannes in 1952) was lying abandoned in a New Jersey warehouse, was discovered by accident and is the reason for this print that we now have access to, is enough to send shivers down the spine of any Welles-phile. . Mise-en-scene: Like with many of his other works involving especially Shakespeare, be prepared for Welles' licenses and personal interpretation of subject matter pertaining to Othello. Yet at the end, we are left with a feeling of deep tragedy and loss for Othello, played by Welles himself, and though we feel that Othello was quite an idiot, we at least feel that he was a very unfortunate idiot at that! . The problem may have been that the critical scene where Iago poisons Othello's mind and fuels his suspicion is scrappy and left unexplored. This may well have had little to do with Welles' artistic choices, and more with his monetary situation at the time. Welles' penury through his European sojourn is widely known and the passion with which he would invest into his films, every penny earned through moonlighting his booming voice and above-average acting skills is legendary, and should put this in context.

. The figure behavior of Micheál MacLiammóir is utterly convincing as the detestable Iago who is consumed by jealousy and rage at being overlooked as the second-in-command. But the person to steal our hearts is Suzanne Cloutier who portrays the fair-dame Desdemona. She is every bit as dainty as we would have imagined her to be. . The stripped down set design works wonderfully for the film and even though budgets may have been the driving force, Othello's barren palace is preceded only by the barrenness of his blinding jealousy and irrational actions. . Cinematography: As we have come to expect, Orson Welles has a unique cinematic language, through which he creates a Wellesian world of skin-burning close ups, dutched crazy world-frames and low angle shots to create a tense atmosphere of foreboding. But there is no better example of exploring and using frame depth than in Othello. Time and again Welles plays with foreground element to reveal psychologically subjective and meta-diagetic moods while cleverly using the depth in the frame to forward the narrative and plot the next progression. The title shots of the film are harrowing in their effect, with the interplay of high-contrast earth and sky contours that at once establish the mood for an intense cinematic experience. . Sound & Editing: The restored version has a brand-new soundtrack mentored by Welles' daughter, and while it enhances the experience to telling effect, it is irony to note that just the new soundtrack cost much more than what Welles assembled the whole film for. The fact that parts of the film were shot MOS and other parts used ADR is distracting due to the obvious lack of lip-sync, but in the final analysis, we watch Welles with reverence almost as if on a visit to Sunday Mass, paying homage, never once forgetting that were are witness to a filmmaker stripped of resources, devoid of many essential tools, but one with indomitable spirit who refused to be cowed-down. Othello is magical in its story telling and another worthy showcase of the genius of Orson Welles.