By RAY KELLY
Beatrice Welles, youngest daughter of Orson Welles, will introduce Janus Films’ new restoration of her father’s classic Chimes at Midnight at the Film Forum in New York on January 8 at 7:30 p.m. The restoration will premiere in New York and Los Angeles on January 1 before moving on to select theaters nationwide.
It is a rare East Coast appearance by Beatrice Welles, who makes her home in the Southwest. She has a deep attachment to Chimes at Midnight, having played the role of Falstaff’s young page on the Irish stage with her father in 1960 and again in the 1965 motion picture.
She talked with Wellesnet about the Janus Films / Criterion Collection restoration and her memories of Chimes at Midnight.
“I cannot thank Janus/Criterion enough for doing this,” she said. “For them to have asked me is a dream come true. Not only will I be part of what my father wanted most, it’s also a movie of which I have very fond memories of. I was in it – although in a tiny part! A little bigger than the part I played on stage in Dublin with him. In the movie, I actually say a few words!”
She learned at the start of 2015 that Janus Films had obtained the U.S. rights to the Filmoteca Española restoration of Chimes at Midnight and planned its own upgrade.
“I truly never thought it would happen. I so wanted this movie to be seen by many and for my father to get the recognition for this movie that he loved so much and wanted to be remembered by,” Beatrice Welles said. “I have wanted to restore and re-release Chimes for decades now! Julian Schlossberg, who so wonderfully restored and re-released Othello with me, wanted to restore Chimes as well. We both tried so hard to get the rights, but our efforts were in vain, at that time the Spaniards wouldn’t budge.”
Beatrice Welles introduced a showing of Chimes at Midnight to an appreciative audience at the Sedona International Film Festival last February.
“The reaction of any audience, as was Sedona’s, was very positive. Everyone is always very moved by the story and by my father’s performance as an actor. With his performance in Compulsion being a close second, it’s the best acting of his career.”
Like all Orson Welles movies, Chimes at Midnight influenced many filmmakers, she said.
“I remember Kenneth Branagh with his then wife Emma Thompson at the Cannes premiere of Othello’s re-release talking about it,” Beatrice Welles recalled. “Our conversation went quite naturally from Othello to Chimes, as this was the period when Julian and I wanted to restore Chimes and do what we had done for Othello. Kenneth mentioned that he would never have been able to make the battle scene for his Henry V had he not seen Chimes and the incredible Battle of Shrewsbury.”
She said her father would want to be remembered for Chimes at Midnight, which was his favorite film.
“One of his passions was Shakespeare. To be able to put together five of the Bard’s plays and make it into a two hour movie! He had worked on this for decades. It started with his play the Five Kings in the late 1930s, which he had started dabbling with as early as Todd School. He continued to work on his play. In 1960 in Ireland, where he first set foot on stage as a professional actor when he was barely 16, he debuted the play version of Chimes, simply called Falstaff.”
“The play was fun and jolly. He discovered Keith (Baxter), a young actor from RADA (The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art), who played young Henry V. And in the usual way he was with all his actors, very faithful, he brought Keith back for his role in the movie,” she said. “The movie was a joy to make. He had some of his most favorite actors – Jeanne (Moreau), Keith, Margaret (Rutherford) and, of course, Sir John (Gielgud).”
“As with all his pictures, the movie changed as it was shot,” she recalled. “Nightly, he would retype scenes for the next day and the movie evolved into what he had always wanted. ”
“He just loved that movie. It was also a happy time in his life.”
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For more about the Janus Film release, read the recent Wellesnet interview with Criterion president Peter Becker and check out the schedule of U.S. showings of ‘Chimes at Midnight’.
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