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20 Jan

Orson Welles “Othello” (1952, restored 1992)

Posted by Neil in Shakespeare, film and dvd, movies.

I saw this just now, thanks to Surry Hills Library. It is brilliant, though there are still a few rough patches because of the way it was made. The DVD has a good documentary on that, and how it was a particularly challenging (and brilliantly done) restoration job. The movie was never seen in anything like the form Welles intended until 1992! Just look at the sublime opening!



I have added the ending of the movie to the Vodpod. See also the Internet Movie Database. There are some famous names in it aside from Welles himself — Micheál MacLiammóir as Iago for example. I thought Fay Compton particularly good as Emilia.



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3 Responses to this post.

  1. Posted by James Russell on January 21, 2008 at 8:22 pm

    Welles’ Othello is fine, but his Macbeth is even better. If you have an all-region DVD player, Title Music & Film up on Crown Street may still have the UK edition of the latter.

  2. Posted by kanani on January 22, 2008 at 6:57 am

    Welles always had wonderful shots, really knew how to hit the dramatic in his use of light and dark. I’ll have to go look for both Othello and Macbeth. In the meanwhile, I should dig around and re watch Citizen Kane.

  3. Posted by ninglun on January 22, 2008 at 7:48 am

    Thanks, James; I will look out for Macbeth, trying the library first! ;) Kanani, good to see you are still “wasting time” here. ;) I am sure you will enjoy Othello as it has some wonderful examples of Welles’s (Eisenstein-)inspired use of black and white and amazing examples of weird angles and unusual focal length.

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