European Film: Othello (1952)

By -

Welles plays the title role in this 1952 Shakespeare adaptation, which he also directs. The film also stars Suzanne Cloutier and Micheal MacLiammoir.

The latter was difficult to woo. He was an old friend of Welles’s, but he thought of acting on the screen as slumming, later telling Welles biographer Charles Higham that Hollywood was “a collection of shacks at the end of a poisoned rainbow.”

As for Suzanne Cloutier as Desdemona, she was chosen at the end of a long process. The first candidate was Italian Lea Padovani, with whom Welles was locked in a passionate affair. She spoke little English, and ultimately was scratched. Welles briefly considered Cecile Aubry, and then mounted a protracted search. Betsy Blair did some shooting, but was replaced by Cloutier in August of ‘49. They were then shooting in Venice, and would soon move to Rome.

Higham claims that a shot in which Welles had to smack Cloutier in the face was particular arduous, since Cloutier would flinch with each take. He also asserts, without explanation, that “no one connected with the picture knew what would be happening from one day to the next.”

It would be hard to predict an amazing moment between Welles and Francesco Lavagnino, one half of the film’s composing team. Scoring a steam bath scene, neither great mind was satisfied with the melodramatic score Lavagnino had written thus far, and agreed that they’d sit in silence, count to three, and blurt out whatever came to mind. At the end of three, the two men, remarkably enough, shouted, in unison “mandolins!” Mandolins it would be for Welles’ adaptation of Shakespeare’s Othello.

The score would also include the work of a 200-member orchestra, conducted by Franco Ferrara.

Financing the film proved to be a matter that required tremendous legwork for Welles, as was the case with most of his films. He had a hard time paying Micheal MacLiammoir and Hilton Edwards until well into the nearly four-year-long production, extracting much free labor from his increasingly disgruntled friends. In Nov. 1950, he finally paid the two enough to keep the repo man from taking their possessions, and production of the movie moved forward.

Of the finished product, Higham writes
The opening is remarkable: a shot of Othello’s
face, frozen in death, as he is laid out for an elaborate
funerary procession and carried by pallbearers across
the battlements of a castle against a sky full
of cumulus clouds.
The movie took the grand prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Biographer Barbara Leaming, however, cautions it would be a mistake
to think that the great artistic success of Othello would considerably
improve Orson’s reputation. In the State’s the unusual way in
which he had made his new movie seemed like further proof
of the eccentricity, the queerness that Hollywood had
ascribed to him all along.
Sources
Higham, Charles. Orson Welles: The Rise and Fall of An American Genius. New York: St. Martin’s. 1985.
Leaming, Barbara. Orson Welles. New York: Viking. 1983.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Death and Funeral

By -
Image
On Oct. 10, 1985, Welles appeared on The Merv Griffin Show in what would be his last public appearance before his death. It is made all the more poignant by the personal, wistful turn the discussion takes. Dressed in a Navy blue jacket with a sky blue shirt and an ascot, Welles says that not long ago he’d begun thinking he was 70 when really only 69, meaning that he’d given himself an extra year. He told Griffin that he experienced “certain parts of every day that are joyous,” continuing, “I’m not essentially a happy person, but I have all kinds of joy.” On the difference between the two, he said, “joy is a great big electrical experience, but happiness is...a warthog can be happy.” He died in the early morning, slumped over his typewriter, of a heart attack. He’d been, as in life, working on a script for one of his crammed schedule of projects. It was a script for a TV show tentatively titled “Orson Welles Solo.” Welles was cremated and a stark funeral was hastily arran
Read more

Orson Welles: Introduction

By -
Image
Best known as the director of Citizen Kane and for the radio broadcast of H.G. Wells 's "War of the Worlds," Orson Welles was a polymath who excelled as an actor, writer, director, and producer on radio, film, and television. In fact, his reach went so far as television commercials, and by the end of his life, he was a household name for his Paul Masson wine commercials ("we will sell no wine before its time.") Welles was the director of (in addition to Citizen Kane ) The Magnificent Ambersons, The Lady From Shanghai , Touch of Evil, and Chimes At Midnight. In addition to playing major roles in some of these films, he also starred in the classic The Third Man and has more than a hundred screen acting credits to his name. Orson Welles began his career on stage, directing plays under the Federal Theatre Project and then with his company Mercury Theatre. He took the Mercury Theatre to the Air , becoming a radio celeb with broadcasts of productions of va
Read more

Orson Welles 1984

By -
Image
While Orson Welles never acted in or produced any version of George Orwell’s Novel 1984 , he is associated with the work because of the similarity in named. Some people think Orville Wright invented really good popcorn, or that Bill Cosby sang “White Christmas.” This is the same phenomenon. However, there’s no reason not to know what Welles was doing in 1984. It was the year in which he voiced the lead chipmunk in a film called Enchanted Journey . He also played a supportive role (Klingsor) in Where is Parsifal ? a film that holds the distinction of bringing together Tony Curtis and Erik Estrada. For Orson Welles, 1984 was not the highlight of his career, but I’d guess that for Welles, Orwell’s 1984 was a great read.
Read more