Wellesnet: The Orson Welles Web Resource

Reading Simon Callow's perceptive two books on King Henry IV, Part One and Part Two made me want to revisit Welles masterpiece, Chimes at Midnight. In doing so, I also looked at one of the best interviews Welles ever gave about a single movie, his long talk with Juan Cobos and Miguel Rubio that was first printed in the Spanish film magazine, Griffith.

Since Juan had worked as an assistant director to Welles on the film, he was in the perfect position to ask especially interesting questions about Welles's shooting techniques. For his own part, Welles was in an wonderfully expansive mood, as he had studied the history plays at least since his 1938 production of Five Kings, and clearly was in his element, knowing his subject like the true Shakespearian scholar he was. What I found especially interesting in re-reading the interview, was realizing how abridged it was when it first appeared in Sight and Sound's Autumn, 1966 issue. This fact became clear when I looked at a second version of the interview that appeared later in Cahier du Cinema in English. Almost like a Welles film, the two interviews are very different translations and often contain completely different comments. So below, I have taken the liberty of combining the two and also have re-arranged the order of the questions and answers.

Interestingly enough, when talking to Juan Cobos, he told me he thought he still had the master tapes of the interview, which obviously would make for a fabulous audio commentary for any eventual DVD release of the film. Or, if the sound quality of the tapes wasn't up to snuff, an actor like Simon Callow could "play" the voice of Orson Welles for a DVD commentary track---if the daunting rights issues can ever be worked out!

Meanwhile for your visual enjoyment you can see a set of twenty beautiful German lobby cards for Falstaff HERE.

Finally, like Falstaff's banishment, Chimes at Midnight was to become Orson Welles own banishment from filmmaking on an epic scale. Over forty years later, it seems inconceivable to me that this poetic masterpiece, a film that is clearly among the greatest movies ever made and one that Welles himself felt was his greatest work, still remains so unknown and unseen.

To understand why, one only has to look at this letter written by Sir John Gielgud, from Cannes on May 13, 1966:

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I talked to Sol Levine (another of those (Sam) Spiegel--(Mike) Todd --(Otto) Preminger--film tycoons), about the possibility of getting backing for my film idea for The Tempest, with Orson Welles (as director). He (Levine) was gracious and seemed interested but unless Chimes at Midnight gets better notices elsewhere than the one in The New York Times, which is very damning, I fear no one will risk (Orson) for another Shakespeare picture.

+++

After reading John Gielgud's "damning" indictment of The New York Times assessment of Chimes at Midnight, one has to wonder what Welles was expected to do to get further backing to make movies.

Give up Shakespeare and go back to making thrillers like The Deep? Do a remake of War of the Worlds starring Charlton Heston? Make sherry wine commercials?

To quote Pauline Kael (who was herself quoting a young Afro-American woman), "There just ain't no way." Which essentially describes Welles commercial career after Chimes at Midnight opened and quickly closed wherever it played, although at least it did do slightly better than Othello in America, in that it actually played in about a dozen cities.

In retrospect, it seems like there was just no way Welles was going to to able to make a commercially successful movie as he so often dreamed about doing, during the last twenty years of his life.

Instead, he had to emulate Shakespeare and do wine commercials, as he so prophetically notes in this YouTube clip from The Dean Martin Show of September 26, 1968. Welles gives a marvelous talk about Sir John Falstaff while making himself up as plump Jack, and then delivers "Shakespeare's first and greatest commercial on the subject of booze"---Falstaff's witty speech about the benefits of Sherry Sack.
______________________

ORSON WELLES on directing CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT

By JUAN COBOS and MIGUEL RUBIO

______________________

Did you do much work before you began shooting on Chimes at Midnight?

ORSON WELLES: Yes, I did a stack of research. But I had already worked on that period earlier, so I knew it rather well. But after you have done that research, the elements of that research are only a preparation, because the drama itself fixes the universe in which it is going to unroll. So you must not make museum pieces; you must create a new period. You must invent your own England, your own period, starting from what you have learned.

What importance do you give to the setting of the film?

ORSON WELLES: Very much, obviously. But a setting ought not to appear perfectly and solely real...

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Simon Callow, who is a great friend of Wellesnet, has sent along the biggest contribution I've yet to receive towards helping keep the site active and alive on the web. I know I've mentioned to everyone who has contributed to Wellesnet that we hope to add more pictures to the site in the future. Well, to my own surprise I found some very rare pictures I had never seen, that Jeff posted to the site from two brothers who were on the set of Chimes at Midnight in 1965.

These photos are especially interesting as they not only show Welles directing in his costume as Falstaff (and according to Keith Baxter, Welles designed all the costumes for Chimes himself), but several of them are also in color, giving us a unique view of the costumes and scenery. They can be viewed at Wellesnet HERE

Now, if there is ever an American DVD release for Chimes at Midnight, the producers might want to get in touch with Marc and Bruno Yasoni about including the rare production photos they took on location in Spain.

Anyway, while talking to Mr. Callow, I asked him whether his biography of Orson Welles would be concluded in one or two more volumes. He said there will definitely only be one more book, which will certainly make for an epic final volume in his acclaimed trilogy about the life and work of Orson Welles.

The last book in the trilogy, will of course, cover Welles's staging of Chimes at Midnight in Belfast and Dublin in 1960 and the subsequent movie version Welles made in Spain in 1965, which many critics (and Welles himself) considered to be his finest work in the cinema.

In 1998, inspired by Welles version of Chimes at Midnight, Simon Callow had the chance to tackle the role of Sir John Falstaff for the first time. He relates the specific details about playing Falstaff in this instructive TALK he gave at London's National Theater in 2003.

Mr. Callow was appearing at the National Theater to talk about the two (then) recent books he wrote for the Faber and Faber series, Actors on Shakespeare. Callow chose to write about Shakespeare's King Henry the IV Part One, and King Henry the IV Part Two. Both books are still available at AMAZON for quite a reasonable price.

Here is Simon Callow's forward to the books:

FOREWORD

My qualifications for writing this volume are a little oblique. Some years ago at the Chichester Festival Theatre I played Falstaff in a production of Orson Welles’s CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT, a play drawn from HENRY IV Parts I and II, which he had directed on stage some years before shooting the film of the same name. Reviving Welles’s version seemed like a good idea at the time, but for a number of reasons, it failed rather badly – as indeed had the original production in Belfast and Dublin. On the face of it, the notion of compressing the two plays into one to focus on the relationship between Hal and Falstaff is attractive; many of the most memorable passages in the plays are in the scenes between them, and Welles was careful to include the scenes between the ailing king and his son as a counterpoint. In practice, though, however ably staged and acted, it creates an unwieldy vehicle which lumbers across the stage unhappily and unrhythmically, dangerously risking over-exposure for the Fat Knight and removing the context in which events unfold. (The film, of course, is quite a different matter: the entirely different dramaturgical demands of the medium made Welles’s selective process not only feasible but inevitable).

My discomfort in the performance constantly led me back to the full texts – pointlessly, since it was by this time impossible to restore anything more than a line or two. But it did give me a peculiarly keen appreciation of Shakespeare’s craftsmanship, and some insight into why he does what he does in the very particular way in which he does it. Some of the fruits of that painful reading are to be found in the following pages. In essence, I aim to take the reader through the play from the point of view of a practitioner, not becoming entangled in the tricky logistics of the actual staging, but presenting a practical view of the play, a sort of groundwork for a production, which may bring out some of the ways in which the play works. Anyone who attempts to write in this way is consciously or unconsciously treading in the footsteps of Harley Granville-Barker, for actors and directors greatest and most useful of all Shakespearean commentators: a tough act to follow, to be sure, but the most inspiring of models (fortunately, perhaps, for me, he never wrote about HENRY IV).

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As noted above, Simon Callow's first appearance as Falstaff was in 1998 at the Chichester Festival Theatre, where Keith Baxter, graduated from playing Prince Hal in Welles film to taking on the role of his own father, King Henry IV.

Mr. Baxter's very insightful comments about working with Orson Welles on Chimes at Midnight can be found in Leslie Weisman's report for Wellesnet HERE.

The Simon Callow/Keith Baxter version of Chimes at Midnight opened in August, 1998 in Chichester, with the following cast:

CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT – By Orson Welles, adapted from plays by William Shakespeare. Directed by Patrick Garland.

Simon Callow (Falstaff), Keith Baxter (King Henry IV), Tam Williams (Prince Hal), Tristan Gemmill (Hotspur) Sarah Badel (Mistress Quickly), David Weston (Bardolph), Rowland Davies, Timothy Bateson, Rebecca Egan, John Warner.

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In doing research for the part, Simon Callow also wrote the following article which gives us some fascinating insights into the origins of Falstaff.

THE FAT MAN IN HISTORY

Falstaff is one of the great characters of Western literature, but he is not Shakespeare's exclusive creation. As Simon Callow prepares to play him, he explores the ancient roots of a mythic figure

By SIMON CALLOW
The Independent - 11 August 1998

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Sir John Falstaff has been widely described as Shakespeare's greatest creation and his best loved character, which in the circumstances is no mean claim. The adjective "Falstaffian" has long passed into the language. We all know what it means: fat and frolicsome, gloriously drunk, bawdy, boastful, mendacious; disgraceful but irresistible; above all, fun. Not only, as he says in Henry IV Part Two, witty in himself, "but the cause that wit is in other men," Falstaff provokes cascades of comparisons both from critics and from his fellow characters in the play; to see him is to be irresistibly impelled to describe him.

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On the day when Hollywood gives out it's esteemed Academy Awards, I came across an ad for Falstaff that quotes all the excellent reviews it received when it opened in March of 1967. Of course, the most important review for an art house movie at that time, was the verdict from The New York Times. Unfortunately, The Times was one of the few bad reviews Falstaff received.

What is clearly absurd, however, is how Falstaff could receive no Academy Award nominations in 1967, especially against such lightweight films as Doctor Dolittle and Thoroughly Modern Millie, which both received multiple nominations!

Today, of course, many film writers regard Falstaff as Orson Welles's best film, and I agree completely. Logically, that means Falstaff is also among the best movies ever made, since it certainly surpasses the brilliance of Citizen Kane.

So below, I've included the rave reviews that were quoted in the picture's original ad campaign, which sadly couldn't overcome that single bad review it got in The New York Times.

*****

"FALSTAFF IS PHENOMENON ENOUGH WITH ITS BEAUTIFUL, ORIGINAL, BIZARRE, IDIOSYNCRATIC, CHARMINGLY COCKEYED BUT INFALLIBLY INTERESTING notions of how it might have been if Shakespeare had had the wisdom to devote an entire chronicle to Falstaff. EXQUISITELY SUBTLE!"

—Joseph Morgenstern, Newsweek

'WELLES DOES JUSTICE TO HIS OWN GENIUS AND THAT OF SHAKESPEARE! ONE COULD NOT ASK MORE OF 'FALSTAFF'! Welles' 'Falstaff' is a Rabelaisian behemoth, amusing, outrageous, imaginative and lusty! The casting is excellent! His directorial genius is evident in every scene!"

—Judith Crist, World Journal Tribune

THIS IS ORSON WELLES'S BEST FILM SINCE 'CITIZEN KANE'! The movie reaches full stride in the long battle scene—SURELY ONE OF THE GREAT BATTLE SEQUENCES ON FILM!"

—Robert Kotiowitz, Harper's Magazine

'WELLES IS AN AUTHENTIC MASTER OF THE GRAND MANNER IN GESTURE AND IN SOUND—HE OVERWHELMS YOU! A ROUGH AND READY, BIG AND BOUNCY SHAKESPEARE COMPILATION OF FALSTAFF. POETIC ELOQUENCE!"

—Archer Winsten, N. Y. Post

"BRILLIANT CINEMATIC RE-VIGORATION OF SHAKESPEARE'S HENRY PLAYS! VISUAL POETRY-LYRIC, COMIC, EPIC!"

—Mademoiselle

"THE MAN OF GENIUS ORSON WELLES HAS PERFORMED TWO OR THREE ASTONISHING FEATS AT ONCE! It was up to Welles to make several Falstaffs into one and this Falstaff amounts to a new work in the Shakespeare canon. Mr. Welles plays Sir John with a relish and force and tenderness that make his Falstaff ours!"

—Brendan Gill, The New Yorker

WELLES FINEST SHAKESPEARIAN PRODUCTION TO DATE—ANOTHER NEAR MASTERPIECE... Welles has directed a sequence, the battle of Shrewsbury, which is unlike anything he has ever done. Indeed unlike any battle ever done on the screen before. It ranks with the best of Griffith, John Ford, Eisenstein, Kurosawa—THAT IS WITH THE BEST EVER DONE!

—Pauline Kael, The New Republic

*****
And here is the complete review from The New York Times:

*****

Screen: Orson Welles is Falstaff in Uneven Film: Cannes Movie Arrives at Little Carnegie

By Bosley Crowther - March 20, 1967

Nothing has happened to Orson Welles's "Chimes at Midnight" since I saw it last spring at the Cannes Film Festival to cause me to alter my opinion of it.

Although they have changed the title to "Falstaff" (which some people called it at Cannes) and are said to have tried to do something to make the dialogue track less fuzzy and incomprehensible than it was, it is still a confusing patchwork of scenes and characters mainly, from Shakespeare's "Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2," designed to give major exposure to Jack Falstaff, performed by Mr. Welles. And it is still every bit as difficult as I found it then to comprehend what several of the actors are saying, especially Mr. Welles.

This difficulty of understanding Mr. Welles's basso profundo speech, which he seems to direct toward his innards instead of out through his lips, makes it all the more difficult to catch the drift of this great, bearded, untidy man who waddles and cocks his hairy eyebrows and generally bluffs his way through the film.
Is this Falstaff a truly jovial person? Does he have a genuine wit and a tavern-companion's grand affection for the fun-loving scapegoat, Prince Hal? Has he, deep down, a spirit of rebellion against stuffy authority? Or is he merely what he looks like—a dissolute bumbling, street-corner Santa Claus?

Evidently Mr. Welles's reading of Falstaff ranges between a farcical concept of him and a mawkish, sentimental attitude. He makes the old pot-bellied rascal an armor-plated buffoon in the midst of a wild and brutal Battle of Shrewsbury, in which Prince Hal slays the brave Henry (Hotspur) Percy (for which Falstaff claims credit, of course).

He makes him a sort of Jackie Gleason getting off one of his homilies when he gives the great apostrophe to Honor, much of which I simply couldn't understand. And he chokes up like a soap-opera grandma when he is suddenly banished by the new Henry V, giving out with the cruel "I-know-thee-not-old-man" speech. Mr. Welles runs the gamut, as they say.

But his is still an inarticulate Flastaff. It is a big, squashy, tatterdemalion show, and it has no business intruding so brashly in the serious Shakespearean affairs of the Lancasters, the Percies and the Mortimers, which Mr. Welles does get to from time to time in this freely selected composite of scenes from Shakespeare, as it were.
When he does — when he breaks away from Falstaff and his puffy-faced lowlife friends such as Margaret Rutherford as Hostess Quickly, Michael Aldridge as Pistol, Jeanne Moreau as Doll Tearsheet and several others who are stuffed costumes more than characters — he gets to some rather solemn snatches of Shakespearean speeches and scenes.

John Gielgud gives out with several as the conscience-burdened Henry IV, and Keith Baxter does more than nicely with the chameleon moods and speeches of Prince Hal. While his character is more that of a cut-up — a juvenile scamp — in the early scenes with Old Jack, he makes an impressive princeling in his later confrontations with his old man. Norman Rodway's Henry Percy is also impressively strong — that is, the few times we see him. And Alan Webb's Justice Shallow is a cute old crock.
The picture, a Spanish-Swiss production, was shot in Spain, so the scenery, especially that around the walled city of Avila, has a noticeable Spanish tone. Mr. Welles's black-and-white cameras are very busy most of the time, rushing around and sweeping in for mammoth close-ups. This accentuates the patchwork effect.
Mr. Welles had always wanted to play Falstaff. Now he's had his chance. Those who are interested may see him at the Little Carnegie.

*****

FALSTAFF ("Chimes at Midnight"); adapted by Orson Welles from William Shakespeare's Henry IV, Parts I and II; directed by Mr. Welles; produced by Emiliano Piedra and Angel Escolano; presented by Harry Saltzman and released by Peppercorn-Wormser, Inc. Film Enterprises. At the Little Carnegie Theater, 57th Street east of Seventh Avenue. Running time: 115 minutes.

Producer Greg Boozell has sent along this link for Wellesnet viewers to preview a very informative interview with Jonathan Rosenbaum condcted by Mara Tapp, which concentrates on four of Orson Welles lesser viewed films:  MR. ARKADIN, DON QUIXOTE, FALSTAFF and F FOR FAKE.   

It also goes into some detail about Welles pioneering work with Afro-Americans and Afro-Brazilians, which really seems to be the smoking gun that nobody talks about in terms of Welles career problems.

However, it now seems clear it was one of the major reasons Welles RKO contract was terminated, and was also the reason Welles career on the airwaves ended,  since it was after Welles demanded that the white policeman who blinded the black WWII veteran, Issac Woodard be brought to justice, that Welles radio days came to an abrupt end.     

Rosebaum also points out that Welles use of mostly black entertainers, like  Grande Otelo in IT'S ALL TRUE,  had to have been considered incredibly radical back in 1942, epecially to the incoming regime at RKO, so that certainly has to be taken into consideration on why that film was never completed by the studio -- even after they invested over $500,000. in making the picture! 

But as Welles noted, "they thought I was just shooting a bunch of Jigaboo's in the streets of Rio."       

In fact, of all the numerous books on Welles, it seems most of them barely touch on how radical Welles was on the race issue back in the days when that could easily end the career of politicians and entertainers. Welles was challenging the status quo of the time, by featuring black entertainers in  what was supposed to be a mainstream movie documentary on "goodwill" between the Americas.  Unfortunately, that goodwill didn't extend to the many racist politicians and studio exectutives who obviously didn't share Welles enlightened views in the dark days of WWII.   

To imagine what kind of opposition Welles faced back then, one only has to look at what is happening in America today, and magnify it many times.   

Needless to say, the Rosenbaum interview is fascinating viewing for all Welles aficionados and will be airing locally in Chicago this Friday, October 26.  However, it can be previewed right now, at the links below.  Thanks to Greg and host Mara Tapp for putting together this wonderful piece, which includes many long clips, including the sequence from DON QUIXOTE, with Patty McCormack sitting with Don Quixote in a cinema, when the dumbfounded Don attacks the movie screen.   

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Unseen Orson Welles

Friday, October 26
at 10:00 a.m. on CAN TV19

Film critic, Jonathan Rosenbaum discusses the important, lesser-known works of filmmaker, Orson Welles with host, Mara Tapp.

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http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8395370399941473528  http://www.cantv.org/highlights.htm

Wellesnet correspondent Leslie Weisman attended the screening of Chimes at Midnight at the AFI Wednesday night, which featured star Keith Baxter in attendance. Baxter spoke at length after the film about his experiences with Welles and on the film. Despite the occasional factual error on Mr Baxter's part, this is a warmly remembered series of reminiscences.

Jeff W.

Keith Baxter

on Welles and CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT

AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center, Silver Spring, Maryland

Wednesday, 7 March 2007

Keith Baxter came onstage after the screening. “Weren’t we young!” he said softly. Baxter was asked what the differences between the stage and film productions of Chimes were. “Well, four years,” he began:

It was very moving watching that tonight, because I hadn’t seen it on the big screen for about... I should think, about 30 years. I was very conscious of the end, the farewell, that when we were playing it — I mean film is a very curious medium; you know what you’re doing in the theatre, but the camera picks up things that you’re not even aware that you are doing. I had been very out of work, as all young actors are, on the stage [returning to the time of Three Kings] and you know you have a dream, when you’re a young kid, of wanting to be an actor; and then the dream is very elusive.

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Here is a letter Darryl Zanuck, the President of 20th Century Fox and a great friend of Welles wrote to him after first seeing "Chimes At Midnight".  For whatever reasons, Zanuck and Fox were not able to secure the rights to "Chimes" which was rather unfortunate, since had Fox acquired the film it might have done far better in the U.S. marketplace, both critically and commercially. It might even have made it easier for Welles to complete a few more of his projects in the seventies.  

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August 10, 1965

Mr. Orson Welles Trianon Palace Hotel 

Versailles    

My Dear Orson: 

I was deeply moved and emotionally thrilled by your film “CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT”. It is far and away the best film in this category that I have seen.