Filming Othello
| Filming Othello | |
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| Directed by | Orson Welles |
| Produced by | Juergen Hellwig, Klaus Hellwig |
| Written by | Orson Welles |
| Starring | Orson Welles, Micheal MacLiammoir Hilton Edwards |
| Music by | Alberto Barberis Angelo Francesco Lavagnino |
| Cinematography | Gary Graver |
| Editing by | Marty Roth |
| Distributed by | Hellwig Productions |
| Release date(s) | June 26, 1979, (USA) |
| Running time | 84 minutes |
| Country | Germany |
| Language | English |
| IMDb | |
Filming Othello is a 1978 documentary film directed by and starring Orson Welles about the making of his award-winning 1952 production Othello. The film, which was produced for West German television, was the last completed feature film directed by Welles.
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Filming Othello begins with Welles sitting behind a moviola. He directly addresses the camera and announces: "This is to be a conversation, certainly not anything so formal as a lecture, and what we're going to talk about is Othello, Shakespeare's play and the film I made of it." Welles initially conducts a monologue where he recalls the events that lead up to the creation of Othello and some of the problems that plagued the production. As the film progresses, he switches to a conversation in a restaurant between himself and two of the film’s co-stars, Micheal MacLiammoir (who played Iago) and Hilton Edwards (who played Brabantio). The three men talk at length about the making of Othello. Welles then resumes his monologue from his position behind the moviola. He then runs footage on the moviola of a question and answer session he conducted during a 1977 screening of Othello in Boston. Welles concludes the film in his position as a monologuist, proclaiming: "There are too many regrets, there are too many things I wish I could have done over again. If it wasn't a memory, if it was a project for the future, talking about Othello would have been nothing but delight. After all, promises are more fun than explanations. In all my heart, I wish that I wasn't looking back on Othello, but looking forward to it. That Othello would be one hell of a picture. Goodnight."[1]
Filming Othello was made between 1974 and 1978. It was intended to be the first in a series of documentaries directed by Welles on the creation of his classic films. However, the second film in the proposed series, on the making of The Trial, was never completed.[2]
Filming Othello was shot in 16mm, with Gary Graver as the cinematographer. Welles shot the footage of his conversation with MacLiammoir and Edwards in Paris, France, in 1974, and shot the footage of his part of their conversation two years later in Beverly Hills, California. Footage was also shot of Welles visiting Venice, Italy, but it was not included in the final print and is now considered lost.[1]
Filming Othello uses clips from Othello, but the footage is not accompanied by the film’s dialogue track.[3]
Filming Othello was first shown at the 1978 Berlin Film Festival. It was first screened in the U.S. in 1979 at the Public Theater in New York, where it played on a double bill with Othello. However, the film’s presentation did not receive newspaper reviews.[1] Filming Othello had no further U.S. screenings until it returned to New York in 1987 for an engagement at the Film Forum, a nonprofit cinema, and that presentation was acknowledged by Vincent Canby of The New York Times as "entertaining and revealing" and "full of priceless anecdotes."[4]
To date, Filming Othello has never been theatrically released or presented on home video.[5] The film has been kept out of circulation due to a dispute between the filmmaker’s daughter, Beatrice Welles (who owns the rights to Othello) and Oja Kodar, the Croatian actress and Welles’ companion and collaborator in his later years (who owns the rights to Filming Othello).[6]
- ^ a b c “Filming Othello” by Lawrence French, Wellesnet.com
- ^ “Orson Welles: An Incomplete Education,” Senses of Cinema
- ^ “Filming Othello,” Film Threat, March 30, 2003
- ^ “Welles in ‘Filming Othello,’” The New York Times, February 4, 1987
- ^ “Surviving ‘Citizen Kane,’” The New York Times, September 3, 2006
- ^ “Discovering Orson Welles” by Jonathan Rosenbaum, Google Books
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