Othello (1965 film)

Othello
Directed by Stuart Burge
Produced by Anthony Havelock-Allan
John Brabourne
Written by William Shakespeare
Starring Laurence Olivier
Maggie Smith
Joyce Redman
and Frank Finlay
Music by Richard Hampton
Cinematography Geoffrey Unsworth
Production
company
Distributed by Eagle-Lion Films (UK)
Warner Bros. (US)
Release dates
  • 15 December 1965 (1965-12-15)
Running time
 165 minutes
Country United Kingdom
Language English

Othello is a 1965 film based on the National Theatre Company's staging of Shakespeare's Othello (1964–66) staged by John Dexter. Directed by Stuart Burge, the film starred Laurence Olivier, Maggie Smith, Joyce Redman, and Frank Finlay, who all received Academy Award nominations, and provided film debuts for both Derek Jacobi and Michael Gambon.

Background

The film retains most of Shakespeare's original play and does not change the order of scenes, as do Olivier's Hamlet and Richard III. The only major omission is the Fool's scene, although other minor lines are cut here and there. (The stage version contained more of the play than did the film.) Derek Jacobi (Cassio) and Michael Gambon both made their film debuts in Othello, while Edward Hardwicke would go on to work with the National for seven years.

The film of Othello used enlarged duplicates of the original stage settings, rather than having elaborate new sets built. Olivier's former backers for his Shakespeare films were all deceased by 1965, and he was unable to raise the money to do a film version on location or on elaborate sets. Nearly a decade earlier, Olivier had been attempting to find financial backing for his own film version of Macbeth after he performed the role in 1955 at Stratford, but ultimately without success.[1] The National Theatre Company had already produced a staged film of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya (1963) and would later produce Strindberg's The Dance of Death (1969). The Olivier Othello is the first English-language filmed version of the play made in color (there had been a Russian version in color in 1955) and widescreen. It was the second major film adaption of the work having been produced in 1952 by Orson Welles. In the U.S., it did not play the usual several-week run given to most films; instead, it played for only two days.[2] The film was exhibited as a roadshow presentation.[2]

Of all Olivier's Shakespeare films, Othello is the one with the least music. Iago and the soldiers sing a drinking song in one scene, and in another, musicians are seen playing briefly on exotic instruments, but otherwise the film has no music.

Reception

Olivier played Othello in blackface. He also adopted an exotic accent of his own invention, developed a special walk, and learned how to speak in a voice considerably deeper than his normal one. Columnist Inez Robb disparagingly compared Olivier's performance to the blacked up Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer. She described Olivier's performance as "high camp", and said "I was certainly in tune with the gentleman sitting next to me who kept asking 'When does he sing Mammy?"[3] Film critic Pauline Kael gave the production and Olivier's portrayal one of her most glowing reviews, shaming the major movie studios for giving Olivier so little money to make the film that he and the public had to be content with what was almost literally a filmed stage production, while other films received multimillion dollar budgets.[4] John Simon, while disagreeing with the approach the production's interpretation took, declared that "Olivier plays this misconceived Othello spectacularly, in a manner that is always a perverse joy to behold."[5]

It is, so far, the only Shakespeare film in which all the principals were nominated for Oscars. Finlay (Iago) was nominated for Best Supporting Actor despite having the role with the most lines in the play: 1117 to Olivier's 856. Olivier did, however, appear on screen three minutes longer than Finlay.

Cast

See also

References

  1. ↑ Anthony Davies "Macbeth" in Michael Dobson & Stanley Wells The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, p.271-75, 275
  2. 1 2 http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9D07E0D6163AEF34BC4A53DFB466838D679EDE
  3. ↑ Inside Oscar by Damien Boa and Mason Wiley, Ballantine Books, page 383
  4. ↑ Pauline Kael (1970) Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Marion Boyars Publishers
  5. ↑ Stanley Wells . Shakespeare in the Theatre: An Anthology of Criticism.
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 8/15/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.