I like that, with all the hubub about Tropic Thunder coming out and "blackface" coming back, that this double standard has arisen in that nobody is about to say that what Orson Welles does here or what Laurence Olivier does in his version are considered "blackface" by it's traditional terms...because it's not. But they'll call Tropic Thunder "blackface". Ridiculous!
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The simple fact of the matter is that Welles was a racist.
Touch of Evil is about a Mexican man...he has Brando in brownface instead of finding one of the many Mexican men in Southern California who were trying to get jobs in Hollywood.
Playing Othello himself was just another sign of how massive the man's ego was and how overrated he is as a director/actor. He could have hired Sidney Poitier for the role...it was post Jackie Robinson, so casting a black actor as a black man would not have been nearly as controversial as before.
I liked Citizen Kane (gave it an 8, not my favorite by any stretch, but much higher than my average rating of about 6.9) but every other Welles film I have viewed has been disappointing or not very good.
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He cast several Mexican men. He also cast severals arabs. He had HESTON in brownface, playing the mexican as the most stereotypical honky I can imagine, while he himself played a white cop with the portly, sweaty, dirty cop clichés that would normally be expected of Mexican cop in a Hollywood film. It was actually a clever reversal on racial stereotypes and does not in any way support your idea that Welles was a racist.
Welles' first wife was a Mexican woman named Dolres Del Rio. He also had an affair (and subsequent scandal) with Lena Horne who was a black woman. When someone told him she wasn't welcome in a nightclub, he setup an elaborate prank to get the club owner to inadvertently sexually harass an old black woman so that he'd be arrested, and it would be made public that in secret he was into black women as well.
Welle's spent much time and anguish in Brazil filming the black natives in a positive light, which was one of the many reasons why the Hollywood funding fell through and the film was shut down.
Before he was a cinematic success, in the 1930s, Welles staged a version of Macbeth with an all black cast. You weren't seeing black casts in Shakespeare anywhere else in New York at that time period.
Welles proved pretty consistently that he was far from a Racist, and your offhand remark was clearly ill-thought out.
What's the ugliest part of your body?
First of all, it was Charlton Heston in Touch of Evil, not Marlon Brando. Secondly, Heston was already set to be cast as the lead in the film when Welles was hired to direct it (and, according to Heston, it was he who suggested Welles as director). Both Welles and Heston were quite racially progressive for their time (Heston would later often insist on the casting of black actors in his movies, sometimes over the objections of the studios). And the fact is that the film's treatment of Mexicans as marginalized on the U.S. side of the border town, and brutalized and bullied by the U.S. police is revolutionary for its time. Welles was brave enough to cast himself in the role of the deeply bigoted cop, and then play that angle for all it was worth to the story. But don't confuse the character with the actor.
As for Othello, as pointed out elsewhere, it has been quite common for a white person to play that role. Certainly when Shakespeare wrote it, and for a very long time thereafter, there simply were no black actors in Britain to play the role. In his adaptation, Welles does not play up the racial difference aspect of the character as much as some other actors have, neither in his acting or his makeup (Olivier's very blackface version is particularly glaring to modern eyes). His "cut" of the play leaves that pretty much to the other characters, which allows them to show that their prejudices are their own. Certainly Welles' own characterization of Othello is a deeply humanized and sympathetic one, despite his inexcusable act that brings the work to its climax.
Lol... racist. Thank God you'll never be in any position of influence to spread your skewed worthless gossip anywhere more than the depths of imdb.
The simple fact is that you're simple.There is nothing wrong with blacking up or whiting up,any more than there's anything wrong with putting on any other kind of makeup. Welles was a great actor, suited to Shakespeare-that voice!
shareThat is not actually proof of racism little SJW. Remember, this is a movie---fiction, acting.
Is it racist because scorsese did not get all real mob guys to play in goodfellas?
Anyone calling Orson Welles a "racist" for his use of "black face" in his role as Othello is just a Politically Correct MORON, just like all the PC MORONS who criticize old films for not complying to modern day acceptable social attitudes in terms of roles given to Asians, the treatment of women, etc. The fact is that only a PC MORON would fail to realize that the "awakened" social sensitivities and "awakened" social mores of 2015 didn't even exist at the time that these old films were released. So how can you criticize these old filmmakers for not having the ability to somehow look decades into the future and tailoring their films to suit the social attitudes of yet to be born generations of movie fans? These old films merely reflect the social attitudes of the times that they were produced and, for that, these old films provide a valuable historical documentation of the old, now discredited social attitudes of a bygone era.
In any case, the use of "black face" by Welles in this film, and by any other White actor playing Othello is merely a stage prop, just like the costumes worn by the actors in a period piece, and nothing more. Trying to criticize any actor at any time for using "black face" to portray Othello is merely the PC MORONS hard at work, plying their craft.
Although the concept of "political correctness" is a good one that reminds us to be sensitive to all other human beings, regardless of the circumstances of their birth or their social background, the militant PC MORONS want to radically transform this socially valuable concept into a weapon that they can use to act out their character disorders on everyone around them, including the filmmakers of a bygone era.
Calling it blackface is a bit much. Blackface is a grotesque collection of negative stereotypes about black people, like you'd see in minstrel shows, not merely darkening the skin to match a character's skin tone
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