(For information regarding my Shakespeare Lectures: georgewalllectures@gmail.com)

Friday, February 11, 2011

Having written recently about Orson Welles' Chimes at Midnight (1965), it occurred to me that I may not have ever mentioned his powerful 1952 film version of Othello, which is a must-see for every Shakespeare fan. It's also a must-see for movie fans: It's simply amazing visually - in fact, its opening scenes (showing events that occur after the play's action) seem to me an obvious precursor and influence to such acknowledged masterpieces as Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal (1957) and several others. Like the play itself, the film takes many liberties with the order of events and the normal unfolding of time. But it's all done (in both cases) with a purpose: the portrayal of a mind in psychological torment. Welles, like Shakespeare, would never sacrifice the revelation of human truth for the sake of such relatively trivial matters as temporal accuracy.

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