Orson Welles, Chimes at Midnight (Spain and Switzerland, 1965; 119 minutes)

Orson Welles (1915–1985) had already worked with the figure of Falstaff before he embarked on this rearrangement of five Shakespearean plays (both Henry IV plays, Richard II, Henry V, and The Merry Wives of Windsor). In 1939, he partially staged a vast and ambitious adaptation of several history plays from the playwright, called Five Kings (Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VI, and Richard III). In the winter of 1964, in locations near Barcelona and Madrid, Welles brought Falstaff to film, using parts of the old Five Kings script and playing the leading role. Chimes at Midnight may be seen as less of a faithful adaptation and more of ‘a commentary on a literary text’. In the context of this film, it has been rightly stated that fidelity is ‘rarely the most exciting’ of the many kinds of relations that may exist between film and literature. According to Welles’s own account in his famous series of interviews with the film director and film historian Peter Bogdanovich (b.1939), only one set was built for the entire film: The Boar’s Head – in a garage, because it was ‘a hell of a lot more economical than a film studio’. The ‘palace’ was a ruined church and those scenes were shot in a week. Many interiors were done with ‘one little piece of [plastered] wall against the side of the garage’ and ‘miniature columns in the foreground’. The director also designed the costumes himself, and Sir John Gielgud (1904–2000) was only present for ten days, after which scenes in which Henry IV appeared were done in reverse shots over his back with a Spanish extra standing in for Gielgud ‘in a crossover wig’. As Welles put it, they were ‘cutting corners – and then cutting the cuts’. The usual problems with continuity and the sound issues of the ‘late’ Welles are present in the film, but that does not prevent it from being considered one of his major works – even his masterpiece according to some critics, indeed surpassing Citizen Kane (1941) (Chimes at Midnight was also Welles’s own personal favourite among his films). The director also used some extracts from Holinshed’s Chronicles (Shakespeare’s main source for the history plays). The impressive score is by Francesco Lavagnino (1909–1987), who apart from more than one hundred other films, mostly spaghetti westerns and peplums, also scored Welles’s Othello (1952).

 

Part of the Medieval Film Club, for more information go to the website.

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