Not a fully realized Othello


I came away disappointed that atmospheric and cinematic elements overshadowed full character development in this adaptation of a satisfyingly full play.

To hit a few points:

While it is laudable that the play could actually be set in Venice and Cyprus, or places that looked like them, the time that was lavished on crashing waves, amassing soldiers and formidable castle walls could have been better spent with the multiple scenes and lines that were deleted. Almost all the rich secondary characters, including Cassio, Bianca, Emilia and Desdemona, were turned into appendages to the highlighted relationship between Othello and Iago.

Michael MacLiammoir as Iago physically did not look or act the role of a commanding second in charge. All of his acting was in his face and voice, and those were of a limited palette. In essence, he exuded a one-note sneer. As one of the two major characters in this play, he did not have the necessary bearing to carry the role's many facets. Even an major evil-doer needs to exhibit complexity. Instead of a strong and magnificently scheming competitor for power, we have a petty usurper. It also did not help his cause to not fully engage the camera, or that he spoke his lines quickly and with his face and/or back turned away. The uneven sound quality added to the forgetfulness of the performance.

Welles as Othello was magnificent. He absolutely makes this film worth watching, even for it's flaws. His acting and the way he filmed himself are among his best work.

Desdemona - While fully audible and physically beautiful enough to inspire Othello's love and our beliveability in their relationship, she unfortunately was not given the opportunity (and lines) to show her determined and self-possessed side. She ended up a pitiable, used character.

Emilia - One of Shakespeares's strongest secondary female characters gives the impression of a spurned washerwoman.

Editing - Displeased. While some of the outdoor action and crowd scenes could have been interesting and added color, they were rushed and cut too abruptly, leaving me frustrated and agitated instead. Do it right or don't do it at all! When the camera stopped switching back and forth wildly, we could absorb the action and the words. The scenes with the senators, were, however, effective, thanks mostly to Nicholas Bruce as Lodovico (yes?) who anchors the scenes.

Lack of humor - These elements of the play were for the most part left out. The scenes with Iago and Roderigo do not work. A simpleton and a devil; stereotypes, not characters.

Summary: An engaging performance when Welles is in the spotlight, but a dour and supressed production overall.

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I'm in complete agreement with you. This Othello left me feeling empty and flat, the characters were under exposed and poorly presented. I did however quite enjoy Iago. His voice was poor though, his rushed performance had me worried that the tape I was watching was faulty as I could barely make out his lines. But I enjoyed seeing one of Shakespeare's most powerful villains being portrayed as a sneaky, weak little man. I think it worked. Shame MacLiammóir didn't take his time with his lines though.

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I was actually in a production of Othello recently, as Emilia. When I saw this version on TCM, I watched it, specifically looking to see how Emilia was done.

To say the least, I was disappointed. She came off as a crazy old woman, and I had very little pity for her, which is surprising, given that Emilia is one of my favorite female Shakespearian characters.

Overall, I think your review hit the nail on the head.

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I saw this flim without having any prior experience with this play. Therefore, I cannot really say whether or not most of your points are correct. I can however, say that I found this film to be one of the most amazing displays of cinematics, ever. I really found it to be more visual than Citizen Kane, which I always considered to be Welles' most visual film. I thought the editing was masterful. It was really in the style of Pudovkin and Eisenstein, only more effective. Watching "Othello," I really felt like I was watching a silent film, and there was so much to see that I did not even pay attention to the dialogue or plot (upon first viewing). There are shots that I thought were first done by Scorsese, Coppola, and Bergman until I saw "Othello." Of course this is all my own opinion. I am admittedly a much bigger cinema fan than of drama/literature (though of course they have many similarities), so I love Welles' "Othello" even though he may not have made it the way Shakespeare wrote it.

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Having seen this in a theatre (and not on dvd) I definitely agree with cman2099x. The cinematography is dazzling, the opening sequence with the burial procession, the music and Iago lifted into the castle in a tiny cage is astonishing,and this powerful eye for scenes and for locating drama holds all the way. Granted, Othello is not a realistic figure - to us his downfall strains credibility a bit, you keep thinking sometimes he'd only have to ask someone else than Iago to trash the suspicions, but this is a drama set in an extremely male culture where bonding between warriors is supremely inportant, and we have to accept the story for what it is. Great acting, but first of all it's a testimony to Welles' cinematic vision.

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SurrenderToto's criticism of Roderigo as a simpleton is odd; after all, he is depicted as a gull, duped into thinking that Desdemona could be interested in him. Iago? Calling him a "petty usurper" seems about right. That's what makes him monstrous. He has no grand ambition, like Milton's Satan. He just wants to get Cassio's job. If in doing that he ruins a few peoples' lives, that's a bonus. You get the distinct impression that his plan was not mapped out in advance, but rather created ad hoc as he went along. I thought MacLiammoir was perfect: adaptable, slimy, treacherous, a villain who stumbles his way into dreadful crimes.

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[deleted]

Not "fully realized"? By whose criteria?

If this version of "Othello" is emasculated in contrast to the original play, then so be it. But it is not a play: it is a film, and by the very definition of the medium it will be different from the play. And people generally take great issue to Shakespeare being presented as a film, as if his words are so sacred that altering even a single syllable is tantamount to literary treason. But Welles had made a name for himself re-interpreting Shakespeare in the theatre before he became a radio star, and I generally have a lot of faith in his re-interpretations, as Shakespeare was one of his favorite writers. On the other hand, I can't claim to be enamored with the bard's works (aside from MacBeth), which perhaps gives me the distance that I need (and that I would recommend a viewer having) to watch Othello as a film, and not as a play.

But outside of that, you also have to take into consideration the strenuous birthing process for the film. Welles shot it over three years using his own money. In fact, one setback in particular brought about the most striking sequence in the film: the attempted murder of Cassio (and subsequent murder of Roderigo) in the Turkish baths. In many ways, Othello is important simply because of how it came into existence and what it ended up accomplishing (an independently-financed film made on a measly budget over three years, and going on to win the Palm D'Or at Cannes -- in many ways, it set a new precedent for what truly independent film-making could accomplish, even if it didn't make money). But now, 55 years later, what matters more is whether the film holds up well as a film.

In all honesty, my feelings about Othello are mixed. Othello was the true start of Welles' love affair with rapid editing and montage, but the difference in application is what was crucial in Welles' work: Eisenstein used it to build tension and tell a story, whereas Welles added to the equation the ability to shoot film practically *anywhere*, and sometimes without even using the same actors. On the other hand, this method of shooting caused the entire film to be dubbed, giving the dialogue an unnatural feel in places.

Overall, it isn't Welles best adaptation of Shakespeare by far -- that would be Chimes at Midnight, perhaps his greatest film -- or even one of his better films, but I've seen far worse adaptations (like that absolutely horrible re-working of Romeo & Juliet that came out a few years back with Leonardo DiCraprio). I do think, however, that Othello stands alone in contrast to its source material, and judging it stricly against the play is the wrong tactic.

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I have watched this for the first time tonight, fantastic film - it brought the entire tale to life. In some Shakespere plays there are characters who have lines/parts that are nothing to do with the central plot. These can quite properly be abridged to give a tighter narative.

I have wondered if these odd characters (Hamlet has some,) were sponsors or benefactors who Shakespere had to "Give a part to" and so were written in but have no value to the play.

Orson Wells is much larger than life and one of the truly great directors.

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The cinematography is dazzling, the opening sequence with the burial procession, the music and Iago lifted into the castle in a tiny cage is astonishing,and this powerful eye for scenes and for locating drama holds all the way

On a technical level it was a fascinating scene, drawing the audience right into the film. I prefer the film on a visual level rather than based on performance although Welles was great as Othello. It is the expressionist tone which was the film's best achievement creating such a darkly vibrant atmosphere.

"I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not".

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"Film will only become an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper."-J Cocteau
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Dear ur3066971:

Regarding your post "Not a fully realized Othello" of Jul-29-2004:

Your criticism of Welles not closely following Shakespeare's original Othello is just one of many such criticisms that I've encountered on IMDb message boards, and elsewhere, about a filmmaker deviating from the original literary work in his cinematic adaptation of it. Your criticism, along with the many other such criticisms is rather one dimensional, in my opinion, and lacks any appreciable amount of reflective thought.

1) I feel that a filmmaker should have unhampered creative freedom to use a a literary work in any way that he sees fit in his cinematic adaptation of it. After all, the filmmaker is as much an Artist as the creator of the original literary work, is he not? As such, the role, nay the duty, of any Artist is to infuse his own personal vision of reality into his work, here being the cinematic adaptation of a literary work. Without granting the filmmaker such unhampered creative freedom, he becomes much less of an Artist, and much more of a mindless puppet, merely parroting the words of the Artist who originally created the literary work. In summary, I feel that a filmmaker can, and should be able to, use the literary work as a mere inspiration, a creative "springboard", if you will, if he so chooses, and be able to proceed from there in any direction that his Creative Imagination and his Social Consciousness takes him.

2) If we are to confine a filmmaker to a strict adherence to the original text in his cinematic adaptation of it, then what is the point of making a cinematic adaptation at all? Then why not just direct a curious member of the public to the literary work and leave it at that? I feel that it is intellectually dishonest, and quite possibly financially fraudulent, to expect the average, ticket purchasing movie fan to receive no more for the purchase price of a movie theater ticket than he would receive from reading the original literary work, perhaps even free of charge at the local public library. In short, a filmmaker's "deviation" from a literary work, that is his Artistic and Creative input in his cinematic adaptation of it, constitutes "value added" to the original work, "value added" being a very common term in the traditions of Western Capitalism, potato chip manufacturers who charge more for their products than would be the consumer cost of an equal amount of raw potatoes being a mundane case in point.

3) The class of film viewing people is larger, more diverse, and much less specialized than the class of people who would be inclined to read a serious literary work. The notable exception to this "rule", of course, is the wide social spectrum of high school students, and college students who are required to read a serious literary work as an assignment in an English class. But even here, how many of these students will ever again read that assigned serious literary work, or even any other serious literary work after their formal education is finished? In short, it is generally a small subclass of the general public who would even consider reading a serious literary work after their formal education. The simple reason for this is that most people find serious literary works to be "boring", uninteresting, a "snnoze fest", and "a good cure for insomnia". As such, a filmmaker who gives a literal rendition of a serious literary work in his cinematic adaptation of it would likely put the typical movie fan to "sleep", either literally or figuratively speaking. As such, for the commercial viability of his film, he usually must invent creative, yet intellectually honest ways of making a "boring" literary work palatable for the more diverse movie viewing public. As such, the filmmaker also has a crucial social function in familiarizing the non-technical, general public in a serious literary work, and giving them at least SOME appreciation of it, where otherwise they would have no appreciation of it at all. To accomplish all this, an innovative, creative, and Artistic filmmaker must often significantly deviate from the text of the original literary work in his cinematic adaptation of it.

For these reasons, among many others, I feel that any criticisms of a filmmaker regarding his "deviation" from a literary work in his cinematic adaptation of it are without a firm, and well thought out basis. As such, reviews of cinematic adaptations of serious literary texts should be completely devoid of criticisms that such cinematic adaptations are somehow inferior because they somehow "deviated" from the source text. A cinematic adaptation of a serious literary work should be reviewed and criticized as would any other instance of Cinematic Art, namely on its own merits as a stand alone film, that is, as an original work of Art.

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