Fri 16 Oct 2009
by DAN STUMPF:
Got a wild hair up my brain last month and started watching Othello: the 1965 film-of-the-play with Laurence Olivier, and the 1953 version done by Orson Welles, and now some *** SPOILER COMMENTS ***
I’m going to talk about the ending here because I assume most folks are familiar with it, or if you’re not, the full title, “The Tragedy of Othello” might tip you off.
Olivier’s film is entirely too slow and stagy, especially the acting, which is rather too broad for a movie. The actors never seem to sit down and relax; they’re always standing (or posing, rather) to declaim their lines. Maggie Smith, Derek Jacobi and Frank Finlay (who plays Iago like a mean-spirited Peter Cook) inject some naturalism, but they’re woefully overridden by Laurence Olivier, grimacing gesticulating, eye-rolling, and yet somehow compelling as ever.
Then the 1949/53 Welles film: Visually splendid, and for a bespoke egotist, Welles is very generous to his supporting players, but the film itself has the kind of dubbing one normally associates with Japanese rubber-suit-monster-movies, so given the tricky mise-en-scene and the floating sound track, it’s sometimes hard to figure out who’s saying what. Surprisingly, in the whole cast, Robert Coote stands out as a deftly comic Roderigo, cast effectively against Micheal MacLiammoir, who plays Iago like a petulant Dudley Moore.
MacLiammoir wrote a book about the chaotic production of this film, which took about a year-and-a-half to make and another year-and-a-half to get released. Put Money in Thy Purse (Methuen, 1952) is required reading for fans of Shakespeare and Welles, and a treat for those who just love good writing.
MacLiammoir masters that subtle, self-deprecating humor one finds in the best of Walter Albert, and his evocations of the film’s exotic locations (Rome, Venice, Casablanca, Morocco…) are vivid and hilarious at the same time.
He also has a clever way with his anecdotes, setting up a situation, milking it for potential, then delivering the punch line like a witty prize-fighter. There’s an exceptional scene of a drunken actor with a thick Dutch accent auditioning for Roderigo, who keeps getting drunker, more energetic and less comprehensible as the audition goes on for hours, at the end of which, Welles turns to MacLiammoir and says, “We may have been in the presence of genius. However, I think what the part calls for is talent.”
The most effective film of the story, however, may be Franco Zeffirelli’s 1986 Otello, from Verdi’s opera, with great sets, costumes, and color, plus fast pace and snappy performances. The music ain’t bad either.
Verdi gives a fine duet to Otello and Desdemona (which is more than Shakespeare did) and Zeffirelli caps off the ending with cathartic energy — which, I’m afraid, is also more than Shakespeare did; the Immortal Bard had a tendency sometimes let his plays keep going when the story was over. (And I wonder: did savvy Elizabethans slip out of the Globe right after Hamlet died or Juliet croaked, to avoid the rush in the parking lot?)
If I mentioned Peter Cook and Dudley Moore earlier, it’s because Othello is largely an extended double-talk routine between Othello and Iago, gullible stooge and fast-talking con man: like a Hope-and-Crosby “Road to…” movie gone tragically wrong without the comic timing, or Oklahoma! if Poor Judd had actually hanged himself in the first act.
The story ends with Iago found out but basically triumphant, and Othello, who would have been a more compelling character if he had any brains, little more than his patsy. Some fine writing, but the story is weak at its core and ultimately unsatisfying.
And if I can throw in just one more aside, my favorite Othello isn’t a film at all, but a radio production with John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson as Othello and Iago, and Judy Dench as Desdemona.
Brutally edited but fast-moving, it gives the listener no time to get bored, and those who only know Gielgud from his “old prig” roles in the movies will find his Moor simply astonishing: he sounds fierce, black and seven feet tall, and he and Richardson play off each other like … well, like a well-practiced comedy team.
October 16th, 2009 at 8:17 pm
Ironic isn’t it that the best screen Othello turns out to be the brief glimpses we get of Ronald Colman in the role in A Double Life.
I’m pleased to see someone besides me found the operatic version superior to the two ‘straight’ versions, and Olivier’s eye rolling scene chewing version tiresome in the extreme. I did like Finlay’s Iago a bit better, but not all that much, and would have to agree the best performance in the Welles version is Robert Coote.
Perhaps the best film version of the play is the Delmer Davies western Jubal (loosely based on the Paul I. Wellman novel Jubal Troop) which casts Ernest Borgnine in the Othello role, Rod Steiger as Iago, and Glenn Ford as Roderigo.
The Lawerence Fisburne version isn’t bad, and Kenneth Brannagh a good Iago, but I’d rather watch Jubal or a Double Life.
By the way. Gielgud and Richardson were also brilliant on radio as Holmes and Watson, with Orson Welles as Moriarity. Othello like MacBeth may work better in the theater of the mind than on the screen.
October 18th, 2009 at 6:16 am
The problem with OTHELLO is that, although the big leading men will inevitably go for the title role, the best part in the whole thing is, in fact, that of Iago. If you forget that he’s basically setting up a murder, Iago is clever,daring, charismatic, and brave (the scene where he risks being physically attacked by Othello is mesmerising on stage). Shakespeare more than once fell in love with his villains (RICHARD III, anyone?), and this is a case in point. He puts no effort into the Moor and Desdemona, because I think that he felt they were of secondary importance. This play should really be called THE SCHEMES OF IAGO.
October 18th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
Really enjoyed this article on Othello!
I too enjoyed the visual brilliance of the Welles version, and the good acting in the Fishburne-Brannagh. Saw the latter with a theater full of people who were absolutely glued to their seats. Everyone was emotionally involved, and all in the same way.
October 18th, 2009 at 7:50 pm
I think Bradstreet is close to the problem with the play. Othello is showy and outsized, but too often overplayed by actors like Olivier or underplayed by actors trying to give the character more dignity — when somewhere between the two is the ideal.
Reviews I have read say Paul Robeson was disapointing in the role because he underplayed it trying to bring a dignity to the character that undermined Shakeseare’s intent — and yet his Emperor Jones was perfect.
Mike
Fishburne was very good, a bit overshadowed by Brannagh’s Iago, but as Bradstreet says it is the better part.
Still Ronald Colman shows an Othello I would love to have seen on stage or big screen in A Double Life, and I’m not alone there — he did win an Oscar for the role.
And to be fair there is an element of race that comes in. I think some black actors are understandably uncomfortable at playing Shakespeare’s only black role as broadly as it is written. That seems to have been what happened to Robeson, and I applaud Fishburne that he took risks with the role without falling into Olivier’s overly mannered performance.
But there is a reason Placido Domingo is so good in the film of the Verdi opera, and that may be as simple as opera is perfectly keyed to the melodrama, broad humor, and broad playing the play calls for. What seems too much on a stage or a film set is just the norm in opera.