The lore and backstory behind Orson Welles‘ years-in-the-making production of “The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice” has come to overwhelm the movie itself.
He was so strapped for funds, filming this in Europe as his American directing career was all but finished, that it shooting and editing “Othello” took three years.
Actors came and went with the ebb and flow of production cash.
Money ran out and he lost access to a ready supply of costumes more than once. So he shot the murder of Cassio in an old Turkish bath, where costumes could be optional, or at least simple.
He couldn’t afford to film in Venice itself, cheap as that might have been in the post-war years. So he shot the movie in the stunning, off-the-tourist track, largely unchanged Medieval port of Mogador, Morroco.
The production could never have afforded to rebuild Medieval warships for the port of Venice. So Welles stuck poles as masts behind the battlements, hanging billowing sheets as stylized sails, and filmed that from just the right distance.
When people talk of the “genius” of Welles as a filmmaker, they may start with the wizardry of “Citizen Kane” and the sizzling camera technique of “Touch of Evil.” But it’s this improvising, wrangling a moody “Macbeth” out of a B-movie studio known for Westerns (lots of horses), filming Kafka’s “The Trial” in an abandoned Paris train station, piecing together locations, performances and chunks of Shakespeare plays for his masterful Falstaff turn, “Chimes at Midnight” and whipping up a stirring and stunningly, ruthlessly brisk (he cut and cut the Shakespeare script) “Othello” that shows real genius and makes his version a touchstone for how to tackle this play.
It is one of his most striking black and white films, with every exterior shot stark and beautiful, often shot from a low angle, emphasizing architecture and piercing Mediterranean skies that look production designed to suit. Crowds are filmed in closeup, hiding their size but emphasizing movement, turmoil and roiled emotions. And characters are captured in intimate closeups, by turns underscoring doubt, “the green-eyed monster” of jealousy, confusion and venality at its most sinister.
Welles immortalized two of his earliest influences, the Irish actors and founders of the Gate Theatre in Dublin, givingmMicheál MacLiammóir his lone great film role as the villainous Iago, and making MacLiammóir’s longtime life-and-theater partner, Hilton Edwards the role of Brabantio, Desdemona’s father.
Wellesians know them as the two gay thespians who either were taken in by teenage Orson’s bravado, showing up at their door claiming to be a “famous American actor,” or charmed by his lying bluster.
Welles opens the film with a dazzling prologue of images, setting the scene, showing the Moorish general Othello in his coffin and his young bride, Desdemona (Suzanne Cloutier) borne to her burial by black-robed monks.
We know how the story ends. We see Iago caged, facing justice. The movie thus turns this tragic tale into a long flashback. How did it all end like this?
Racism is suggested, as the respected and noble Othello has secretly fallen for Desdemona, and she for him. Her father doesn’t approve but the city needs Othello’s military prowess.
“Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see. She has deceived her father, and may thee. I do perceive a divided city.”
Iago is jealous, resentful, and bristles at how his privilege has earned him little more than the status of “ensign” to the acclaimed Othello.
“I hate the Moor!”
With his aide Roderigo (Robert Coote, his voice re-dubbed by Welles himself), Iago conspires to use jealousy to take out Othello and another rival Cassio (Michael Laurence). He will start a whispering campaign that Cassio is sleeping with Desdemona.
Othello, with some doubt yet with rising fury, is soon convinced.
The story passes by in a Shakespearean sprint. We barely have time to register the unique settings and costume flourishes amidst the dastardly machinations of Iago, the hapless drunken entrapment of Cassio, the protestations of Desdemona and the rising fury of Othello.
Welles preserves the poetic language and blunt-instrument plot of Shakespeare and rushes us past anything less important. A tag team of cinematographers serves Welles’ vision for an “Othello” in motion in a location preserved in amber. Stunning image after stunning image shows Welles’ sure hand with camera placement and blocking.
Every “Othello” has something to say and has its own merits, even the reset-in-an-American-high- school adaptation “O.” This version, if not definitive thanks to its many cuts, simply bowls you over with its brutal beauty.
But no Welles fan can confront the film without wrestling with the Shakespearean “tradition” of casting a white leading man, who then performs the role in makeup of varying quality even if here it is too subtle and polished to merit the label “blackface.” That is, to say the least, problematic.
This practice endured well into the world’s “civil rights” years, with Laurence Olivier’s “Othello” (1965) allowing Lord Larry to indulge in face painting that is almost minstrel show cringey. Welles’ makeup here doesn’t call attention to itself as much as you’d expect, and pairing the look with his brooding presence and sonorous voice make it the least offensive “blackface” version of the film, for what that’s worth.
But Welles knew Black actors, and whatever financing issues this no-budget classic faced, it’s within reason to ask why he didn’t try to enlist if not a Paul Robeson, then a Black acting “discovery.”
Welles made his name as an American theater director with his famed “Voodoo Macbeth,” a groundbreaking 1937 New York stage production with an all African-American cast that created a sensation and struck a blow for civil rights. He was an outspoken civil rights activist on the radio in the World War II years. He threw away his career indulging in South American “diplomacy” attempting to finish his docu-drama “It’s All True,” with Mexican and Afro-Brazilian actors and settings during World War II.
And yet the man never cast an African American actor in any role of note in any film before or after that.
Perhaps no Welles film invites “Well, which VERSION did you see?” quibbling like “Othello,” with the movie having a 1952 Cannes version, which was shown (dubbed into Italian) in Italy, the released version in the U.S. and U.K. from 1955, and the beautifully watchable “restored” version which Welles’ daughter Beatrice supervised in 1992.
That’s the one I first saw at an art cinema in Madrid in ’92, and the one now on Tubi and other streaming services. It’s worth it for the polished sound — most of Welles’ over-dubbing of other actors is removed for the cleaned-up original performances — and pristine images, and is not appreciably shorter than any other one, with Welles narrating the opening here rather than reciting the opening credits as he did in the Cannes “original.”
It’s not worth quibbling over any “lost” version of the film for those reasons. Watching Welles’ unrestored later films projected in class during my grad-school days underscored how sound was always a mess in Welles’ hardscrabble years, and getting that right in restoring “Othello” was paramount.
Any restoration that allows one to experience an “Othello” this beautiful and brisk in crisp clear images and words is to be embraced for what it is — the ultimate “bucket list” Welles Shakespeare adaptation.
Rating: TV-PG, violence
Cast: Orson Welles, Suzanne Cloutier, Micheál MacLiammóir, Robert Coote, Hilton Edwards, Michael Laurence and Fay Compton
Credits: Scripted and directed by Orson Welles, with contributions by Jean Sacha, based on the play by William Shakespeare. A Mercury Productions/Castle Hill release on Tubi.
Running time: 1:33
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