Othello (1952); Dir. Orson Welles

Made with his own money and with tremendous difficulties, Orson Welles’ Othello took two years to actually complete, due to money running out, and cast having to take other jobs, and all kinds of problems involving costumes, locations, and logistics. It is a tremendous feat, any way you look at it, especially when you realize that certain two-way scenes were filmed sometimes years apart, and on different continents. Welles is standing in Africa and his cast-mate is standing in Italy, and then the scenes were cut together. The story he tells here, of what Winston Churchill “did for him” is in regards to the financing of Othello.

Arthur Penn always talked about “happy accidents”, and how it is the “accidents” that often make something brilliant, unexpected, unforgettable. That is why they are “happy”. You have a plan in your head as a director, but then it rains the day you are going to shoot the scene, or someone drops a glass by mistake, or someone fluffs a line … If you have created an environment of creativity and “saying Yes” on your film-set, from the actors to the crew, then those accidents don’t have to be mistakes on the cutting-room floor, or “lost days” of shooting. They can become THE scene in the movie, the one everyone remembers. But you have to create the right environment for that. Perhaps “create” is not the right word, which assumes the director has total control. You have to be able to nurture that level of creativity in everyone, that level of freedom, and be the kind of person who is open to all possibilities. This has a spill-over effect on your team. I have seen it time and time again. Acting is a human endeavor, which means it is full of flaws inherently, even in film, where things can be crafted to perfection. Penn’s advice to young directors was always to be on the lookout for ‘happy accidents’, because what may seem like a big goof-up could end up being gold in the end result.

So much of Othello was filmed under great strain. There was no budget. Welles used his own money, and then pieced together donations from “semi-Armenian Russian” types. When you are working under those circumstances, you have limits on what you can do. You can’t wave a magic wand and have a castle built for you, or a raging battle scene played out in real-time with hundreds of fully-costumed extras. You have to be creative. You have to do what you can do with what you have. Amazing feats of brilliance are possible with grave limitations. I love Welles’ Othello. I love his adaptation, too, which shows how free he was with Shakespeare (from the beginning – he never saw Shakespeare as an engraved-in-stone text. Welles’ first big splash as a director was the so-called “Voodoo Macbeth”, done in Harlem with an all-black cast, and he had no compunction with moving things around in the text, he never did). In Welles’ version of Othello, the film begins with a narration (done by Welles, of course), which sets up who Othello is and that he has just secretly married Desdemona. We see Desdemona running down an outdoor stairway to meet up with the shadowed Othello in a gondola, as Welles describes what we are seeing. In a balcony across the waterway, huddle Iago (played by Micheál MacLiammóir) and Roderigo (Robert Coote). The narration comes to an end, and then Iago states (the famous line): “I hate the Moor.”

Clearly, the original Shakespeare play does not start with the bald statement from Iago. We get the whole set-up first, we meet all the characters, we work our way up to it. But a film is different. Welles always understood that (although he felt the same way about stage productions of Shakespeare as well), and so the exposition is handled theatrically, with the artifice of a narration, and then, with no preparation, we are thrust into Iago’s fever-dream of hatred. We don’t need to know any more.

It’s a purely cinematic adaptation, and a fantastic one. Welles worked on it for years, but I can hardly think of a way it could be improved.

In This is Orson Welles, the book-long conversation between Orson Welles and Peter Bogdanovich, the two men talk about Othello. You can see here how Welles used everything to his advantage, even huge setbacks. His answers to the questions are quite practical, with no mystique about them. If you are a filmmaker, then you need to make films, end-stop. Whether or not someone finances them is irrelevant. Everything that happens, even the disasters, gives the director the possibility for a “happy accident”.

PETER BOGDANOVICH: You cut Othello to ninety-one minutes.
ORSON WELLES: Yeah, it’s my thing again about shows being too long.
PB: And you took out some of what is, I guess, dated comedy.
OW: It’s very good comedy, but the movie I wanted to make didn’t have room for it, that’s all.
PB: And you feel quite free to change whatever you like for that reason.
OW: I don’t see why there’s any argument about it: A movie is a movie, and if we’re going to take movies as a serious art form, then they’re no less so than opera. And Verdi had no hesitation in doing what he did with his Othello, which is an enormous departure from the play; nobody criticizes him. Why is a movie supposed to be more respectful to a play than an opera?
PB: Or to a novel or anything else?
OW: Yes.
PB: You are basically doing your own variations on Shakespeare’s theme.
OW: Yes. Of course, there’s nothing can be done without Shakespeare – but you can’t put a play on the screen. I don’t believe in that – I don’t think Shakespeare would have believed in it. He would have made a great movie writer.
PB: It’s one of your best performances.
OW: I was much better in the theatre, which I did after the movie. Just the reverse. I should have done it first.
PB: You improved.
OW: I knew much more about it, had more time to think about it. Though I’ve always had a great feeling for Othello. The two plays I’ve most wanted to do in movies have always been Othello and King Lear.
PB: I have noticed that all the music you’ve put in your films – with the exception of Touch of Evil where it wouldn’t fit – has a classical quality to it.
OW: I attach an awful lot of importance to it.
PB: But it must go back to your early love of music.
OW: Yes, all of those things. I was very lucky in having Benny Herrmann for a while, and since then I’ve used some good composers, but I tend more and more to get music that isn’t composed for the picture – so that I can control it, so that I’m not at the mercy of what the composer turns up with after he’s already under contract.
PB: Well, the music in Othello is most memorable.
OW: Yes. That’s an extraordinarily talented man, [Angelo Francesco] Lavagnino – he did the music for Chimes at Midnight, too. Extraordinary music for the battle. But I took it out and recorded it three times over each other, did all those kinds of Beatles tricks with it. But still awfully good. Othello was superb. We used forty mandolins at one time. And that opening theme of the funeral [clip below], the main one, is just hair-raising. He makes too many movies now – does forty a year. He’s an ex-professor of music at Vienna with a big classical background. And he wrote an entirely different score for Othello when I did it in the theatre.
PB: The first line in the movie – “I hate the Moor” – sets everything up. You do that sort of thing quite often – begin by telling what it’s going to be about. You did it in The Trial.
OW: I like it in Elizabethan plays. In the primitive theatre, too, you find somebody coming out front and telling what it’s all about. I just got through writing an opening exactly like that for The Other Side of the Wind. We tell what it is – and then, really, you could go home if you want to [laughs].
PB: Why did you decide to begin Othello with the funeral?
OW: Why not? [Laughs.] I don’t know. Have another drink.
PB: Well, it couldn’t be coincidental that Kane, Othello and Mr. Arkadin all begin with the death of the leading character.
OW: Just shows a certain weakness of invention on the part of the filmmaker.
PB: You can give me a better answer than that.
OW: Peter, I’m no good at this sort of stuff. I either go cryptic or philistine. All I can say is, I thought it was a good idea; whether you get me in the morning or the evening, I’m always going to say that [laughs].
PB: I loved the classic unity of that film. Beginning with Othello’s head and then into the funeral – ending with his head and then the funeral. And it’s not precious.
OW: Well, the shooting script, as such, was quite painstakingly developed.
PB: I think you’re saying that as a reaction to some critics, who probably said it was thrown together. Where did you get the idea for the cage they put Iago in? Was that, in fact, the kind of punishment they might have used?
OW: You do see cages in museums sometimes, of one kind or another. Wasn’t it Abd el-Krim, the great North African insurrectionist leader, who was driven in a cage tied to a donkey all over North Africa to show to the tribes? That’s where I got the idea.
PB: Why did you shoot the long scene on the beach between Othello and Iago in one continuous traveling shot?
OW: Because the picture was made in pieces. Three different times I had to close it and go away and earn money and come back, which meant you’d see me looking off-camera left, and when you’d cut over my shoulder, it would be another continent – a year later. And so the picture had many more cuts than I would have liked; it wasn’t written that way, but had them because I never had a full cast together. Now, for that shot we had the entire cast – Iago and Othello – and a great long place where we could do it all in one. So, for once in the picture, we could do a single substantial scene. Just as simple as that.
PB: Beautiful scene.
OW: It’s a marvelous set. [Alexandre] Trauner found it for me.
PB: In the scene before the mirror that follows – where Iago continues to poison his mind – did you mean his removing of Othello’s armor as a symbol of what he’s doing to him emotionally at the time?
OW: Well, it’s not exactly a symbol. When the visual thing is so direct and so basic that you don’t have to cerebrate, then it’s OK. In other words, when it doesn’t present the director in front of the curtain for his comments, then it’s all right. It’s so clear what’s happening – you don’t have to think about it – it’s a kind of physical fact.
PB: It becomes a metaphor.
OW: Yes, a metaphor – you’ve found a good definition. I rather like metaphor.
PB: It’s integral to the scene.
OW: There was a moment at the end of that scene that has remained a standing joke between Micheál and myself for years. He had to pick up Othello’s cloak and go. And he picked it up and looked very meaningful and all that sort of stuff, and I finally said to him, “Micheál, pick up the cloak and go!” And that’s become since then a sort of basic thing I use when an actor wants to enrich his performance – I say, “Pick up the cloak and go!”

And here is Welles and Bogdanovich talking about the play itself. I very much like Welles’ take on the villainy of Iago (and its so-called unmotivated nature), and agree with him entirely – although that doesn’t quite solve the problem of how to PLAY such a thing. Many an actor has been sunk by Iago. He’s a tough one.

PB: Why do you think Othello is destroyed so easily? Do you think he’s a weak man?
OW: He’s destroyed easily because of his simplicity, not his weakness. He really is the archetype of the simple man, and has never understood the complexity of the world or of human beings. He’s a soldier; he’s never known women. It’s a favorite theme of Shakespeare’s. A curious thing about Lear, too: Lear clearly knows nothing about women and has never lived with them at all. His wife is dead – she couldn’t exist. Obviously, the play couldn’t happen if there were a Mrs. Lear. He hasn’t any idea of what makes women work – he’s a man who lives with his knights. He’s that all-male man whom Shakespeare – who was clearly feminine in many ways – regarded as a natural-born loser in a tragic situation. Othello was another fellow like that. Total incomprehension of what a woman is. His whole treatment of her when he kills her is the treatment of a man who’s out of touch with reality as far as the other sex is concerned. All he knows how to do is fight wars and deal with the anthropophagi and “men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders”.
PB: That’s his tragedy, then.
OW: Yes.
PB: He could not imagine a person like Iago.
OW: No, and neither could a lot of Shakespeare’s critics. As a result of which we have eight libraries full of idiot explanations of Iago – when everybody has known an Iago in his life if he’s been anywhere.
PB: There are several moments in the movie which give the impression that Iago does what he does because it’s in his character, rather than that he’s plotting for some particular reason.
OW: Oh, he has no reason. The great criticism through all the years has been that he’s an unmotivated villain, but I think there are a lot of people who perpetuate villainy without any motive other than the exercise of mischief and the enjoyment of the power to destroy. I’ve known a lot of Iagos in my life. I think it’s a great mistake to try to motivate it beyond what is inherent in the action.
PB: You could say he was like the scorpion that followed his own character.
OW: Well, yup [laughs].
PB: Iago is certainly the most interesting part in the play.
OW: Shakespeare is like no other artist when his characters start to live their own lives and to lead the author against his wishes. In Richard II, Shakespeare is absolutely for Richard, but nevertheless he has to do justice to Bolingbroke. And, more than that, he has to make him seem real, human – so that suddenly this man Bolingbroke takes life and pulls off a large part of the play. You see Shakespeare trying to hold him back: nothing doing, Bolingbroke is launched! A very interesting theory has been put forward by some scholars; according to them, Shakespeare not only played small roles, but large ones. They think now that he played Iago and Mercutio – two second-level roles which steal the play from the stars…
PB: You said somewhere that there was an implication of impotence in your Iago.
OW: Yes. I don’t think that is necessary to the truth of the play, but it was the key to MacLiammóir’s performance, that Iago was impotent. It isn’t central, but it was an element that we used for the actor, as a means of performing the part. In the play, it’s pretty clear that isn’t so, and when I did the play in the theatre later, there was no suggestion of it. But I think it’s a perfectly valid way of doing it, though I wasn’t anxious for the audience to understand it, not trying to inform them of it – if the audience can find it, more power to them. To use the Stanislavsky argot, it was basically something for the actor “to use”. I do a lot of that with actors. I’m always making fun of the Method, but I use a lot of things that are taken from it.
PB: Does Othello feel guilt at the end – after Iago’s proven guilty?
OW: Depends on how you play it.
PB: In your picture.
OW: I’ve forgotten, because I remember my performance in the theatre much more clearly than in the movie, and I revised a lot of my ideas of playing it.
PB: Well, then, in the stage production.
OW: I don’t think “guilt” is the right word. You know, Othello is so close to being a French farce. Analyze it! All he’s got to do is say, “Show me the handkerchief,” and you ring down the curtains. Being that close to nonsense, it can only come to life on a level very close to real tragedy – closer than Shakespeare actually gets. And Othello is so blasted at the end that guilt is really too small an emotion. Anyway, he’s not a Christian – that’s central to the character. And Shakespeare was very, very aware of who was a Christian and who wasn’t, just as he was very aware of who was a Southern European and who was a Northern, who was the decadent and who was the palace man, and the outdoor man. These things run all the way through Shakespeare.
PB: There’s an implication at the end that Othello understands, even almost forgives Iago for what he had done.
OW: He didn’t forgive him.
PB: Well, understood.
OW: Yes, it was this terrible understanding of how awful he was which drains him of hate. Because when something is that awful you can’t react to it that way. He becomes appalled by him.
PB: The look between them is filled with ambiguity.
OW: That’s a very interesting moment in the play.
PB: Do you think Othello is detestable in his jealousy?
OW: Jealousy is detestable, not Othello. He’s so obsessed with jealousy, he becomes the very personification of that tragic vice. In that sense, he’s morally diseased. All Shakespeare’s great characters are sometimes detestable – compelled by their own nature.
PB: So are your characters.
OW: Well, you could say it, I think, about all dramas, large or small, that attempts tragedy within the design of melodrama. As long as there is melodrama, the tragic hero is something of a villain.
PB: Why did you give Roderigo a white poodle?
OW: Because Carpaccio’s full of them. And it’s not a poodle, it’s a tenerife – very special kind. We had a terrible time getting it. All the dandies in Carpaccio fondle exactly that dog – it’s almost a trademark with them, like Whistler’s butterfly; they’re always clinging to those terrible little dogs.

Here they discuss the difficult (a mild term) nature of the shoot, and here, we start to see some of the happy accidents:

PB: Would you say Othello was the most arduous to make of all of your pictures, since it took so long to finish?
OW: It was about two years between starting it and finishing it because of lack of money, but “arduous” is maybe not the word – just maddening, because I had all the money and the contract early on. I went to Rome after the collapse of Cyrano to do Black Magic, which I made at Scalera Film Studios, then the biggest studio in Italy. And Mr. Scalera, the head of this great outfit, decided that he wanted to finance my making Othello, and we wrote a contract together. I gathered together my actors and Trauner [art director) and my Italian crew, and away went to Mogador to shoot it. We arrived in this condemned area – a little-known, out-of-the-way port on the Atlantic coast of Morocco – and everybody checked into hotels. Two days later, we got a telegram saying the costumes wouldn’t come because they hadn’t been completed. A day later, a telegram came saying they hadn’t been started. And then a telegram came saying that Scalera had gone bankrupt. So I had a company of fifty people in North Africa and no money – though we had film and we had our cameras – but how can you shoot Othello without costumes?
That was how I got the idea to shoot two reels in a Turkish bath, because if people are in a Turkish bath they won’t be wearing clothes. And we worked in a Turkish bath for about three weeks while a lot of little tailors in the village – with Carpaccio reproductions pinned on their walls – made the clothes; the costumes were all based on his paintings. My plan was to show much more of the corruption of the Christian Venetian world – this world of what Othello called “goats and monkeys”. But everything I’d thought up for that had to go when I was obliged to film without costumes.
PB: How would you have done that?
OW: I don’t know how to describe it: the same scenes, but it was just the way they would appear. You can’t show people being very goatlike and monkeylike sitting, sweating it out in a Turkish bath! Anyway, I shot until the money in the bank ran out –
PB: Your own money.
OW: Sure. And then everybody had to go home until I could earn some more or find some more. In fact, we stayed a little longer by virtue of a fellow who arrived and arranged for sales of the film for some strange countries like the Dutch East Indies and Turkey – places like that; we got together about $6,000 or $7,000 and stayed on a week or two more, thanks to him. And I gave him a role in the film. He wasn’t an actor and he’s very poor in it, but he was a big help in getting us the money. And then that ran out and everybody had to go home. Micheál MacLiammóir, who was playing Iago, and his partner, Hilton Edwards [who played Desdemona’s father], went back to Dublin to open their theatre season, and they couldn’t be brought back just when I wanted, because of their theatre schedule. So, even when I got the money, I had to wait until my actors were free, which made a long wait – even longer than it took me to get the money. And when they were free, we went back again to Africa and then to Italy, where we shot all over the place and finished it. But that began the story of how long it takes me to make a movie. You know: “Look at him – even on his own pictures, it takes him over three years to finish it.”
PB: That’s how that myth got started –
OW: Yes, it’s all very prevalent, and it all began with Othello. But the movie wasn’t arduous – we had tremendous fun doing it, and everybody got along awfully well. Our headaches were all riotous and amusing; it wasn’t anguish like Mr. Arkadin was. Arkadin was just anguish from beginning to end. No, it was a very happy experience for me in spite of these terrible troubles.
PB: Trauner told me he loved making the film, and remembers it as sort of an insane experience.
OW: He’s a wonderful art director and an extraordinary fellow. I’m devoted to him. Marvelous at his job – of course, there wasn’t much he could do with no money, but he still kept a very large staff. Imagine: the picture was being shot in a real location where there’s no money except what I happened to have left in the bank, and Trauner had three assistants. So, when he remembers it as a crazy experience, there was nothing as crazy as Trauner, who insisted on keeping three assistants in Mogador drafting pictures of where we would put the matting that we bought – which is all they had to do, since there was nothing we could build.
PB: Well, then, what did he do?
OW: It was all going to be built originally in the south of France. All sets. And he designed everything. Then, when we decided on real places, he found Mogador – he found all the locations.
PB: The castle?
OW: Well, that’s partly Safi and partly Agadir – all different places made to look the same.
PB: Really?
OW: It’s shot in four different towns in Morocco and about five different places in Italy. And there is even a set that he did design, the doge’s palace, which he built in a studio in Rome. Poor Trauner was reduced to a mere wisp of what his original conception was.

This entry was posted in Movies and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

24 Responses to Othello (1952); Dir. Orson Welles

  1. Desirae says:

    “Oh, he has no reason. The great criticism through all the years has been that he’s an unmotivated villain, but I think there are a lot of people who perpetuate villainy without any motive other than the exercise of mischief and the enjoyment of the power to destroy.”

    Yeah, that’s pretty much Iago in a nutshell. His actions are their own reward, really. Which doesn’t make him unmotivated so much as unreasonable; his motives are right there in the text but aren’t going to make much sense by any reasonable standard of human behaviour. He just likes seeing other people hurt. It satisfies something in him.

    Am I the only one who reads Iago as being the protagonist of the play? I don’t mean that I like him, as he is a sociopath and a professional shit stirrer, but he’s the driving force behind all the action. Othello just responds. I might be wrong but it also seems to me that Iago gets the most stage time as well.

    I like Welles’ point about a lack of female connection playing a big part in the downfall of many of Shakespeare’s heroes downfall. I never noticed that before. And I love the part about the poodle…that they had to have that particular kind of dog and no other dog would do.

  2. nightfly says:

    I don’t know. Have another drink.

    HAHAHAHAHA

    PB: Well, it couldn’t be coincidental that Kane, Othello and Mr. Arkadin all begin with the death of the leading character.
    OW: Just shows a certain weakness of invention on the part of the filmmaker.
    PB: You can give me a better answer than that.

    Can I just say how much I love that Bogdanovich said this to Orson Welles? Brilliant interviewer. I love that he knows when to draw out and when to just go ahead and call nonsense – though you feel from the tone of the rest that he’s doing it in good-nature, sharing a laugh with Welles rather than bulldogging him.

    Lots of great insight. Thanks for posting this!

  3. sheila says:

    Nightfly – the whole book is like that. Welles gets tired with probing questions, he doesn’t like to seem self-important (ironically), but then when he gets going he can be the most self-important man on the planet.

    It’s a great book – Bogdanovich did the interviews, and then when his life fell apart in the 80s he handed over the 1000-plus page manuscript to Jonathan Rosenbaum to put together. Included in the book is Orson’s version of Magnificent Ambersons, which of course we can only dream of seeing (although what ended up onscreen ain’t too bad either) – I could have read 400 pages more. It’s a book I dip into constantly.

  4. sheila says:

    Desirae – I agree. Iago is the center of that play, most certainly the most interesting character, as villains often are. Trying to muck up the part with psychological motivations only weakens it – although the “impotence” choice made here by Welles and MacLiammóir is certainly interesting, and you could certainly see how something like that could drive a man totally evil. But the best part is there are no lines to support it – it’s just in the strangely sensual intimate way MacLiammóir deals with Welles (in the body armor scene), and how he always seems to be peeking around vast corners – to try to get a glimpse of lovemaking, you can’t help but speculate. But again, it’s just an inference, nothing too on the nose.

    Welles gets rid of all of that insecurity by coming out and starting the movie with “I hate the Moor.” That’s it. We don’t need to know why. MacLiammóir is terrific in how he insinuates doubt into Othello’s mind about Cassio – and you do wonder: “Hm, does he want to destroy those who AREN’T impotent?” But it’s nothing too literal.

    I myself have run into many people who just want to “make mischief” and who enjoy being brutal, just to see the look of hurt that comes across people’s faces. I haven’t met too many of those people in person – but I’ve met a bunch online, and they seem truly unbalanced and, as with all natural predators, the best thing to do is just stay the hell away from them.

    Iago strikes me as a person like that. But it is Othello’s misfortune (ie: tragedy) that he trusts Iago.

    I also loved Welles’ observation about men who don’t understand women and how Shakespeare viewed such creatures. I hadn’t quite seen it in that way before, but it certainly does seem to make a lot of sense. I love how Welles knows the character so well he can stand back from him and judge him. Many actors think they shouldn’t “judge” the characters they play. I’ve often that was a blinkered way of looking at the job of actor. Tommy Lee Jones said, about playing Gary Gilmore, “I don’t think the State killed him fast enough. You don’t have to sympathize with the character you’re playing – but you do have to want to WATCH that character.”

    I like that clear way of thinking.

    Another thing I love about Welles’s Othello is how so many of the scenes take place out of doors, and you can hear the roaring of the wind and the crashing of the waves.

  5. sheila says:

    Nightfly – and if you ever read it, wait til you get to the section on Kane! It’s like pulling teeth. Bogdanovich has to be persistent since it seems to hurt Welles to talk about a lot of this stuff (there is a very touching anecdote about Welles starting to cry watching Ambersons late one night on TV) – but Bogdanovich keeps pressing. Orson will explode in annoyance at the very FORM the questions have taken but they were close enough as men that Bogdanovich could keep pushing.

    It certainly makes me want to see Kane again, holding the book in my hand, shot for shot.

  6. sheila says:

    But yes, one of the best things is how damn FUNNY Orson is! You just want to hang out with the guy and get him started on the ancient Roman Empire or something like that.

  7. nightfly says:

    sheila – I loved Final Cut, and I don’t know that I would have ever picked it up without reading about it here… so it looks like it’s off to Borders again for this one. You will indirectly bankrupt me one of these days, and then who will feed the dog?

  8. Catherine says:

    It always kind of surprised me that Welles played Othello rather than Iago – I agree with Desirae that Iago is the centre of the play and is by far the more interesting character. This is my favourite Shakespearean tragedy, but when I think about it I don’t immediately think of the Moor himself, my mind always springs first to Iago. He gets all the best speeches; he’s just a fascinating guy. A complete black hole. Coleridge described Iago as having the quality of “motiveless malignancy” – isn’t that great?

  9. sheila says:

    Catherine – God, yes, that is wonderful. “Malignancy” is such a scary word. I need to read the play again. I liked Orson’s point about those second-tier roles that Shakespeare couldn’t help but make as fascinating as the leads – because he was that kind of writer. In my opinion, Mercutio is the best character in Romeo and Juliet – it’s kind of THE role. But there are so many examples. I like it best when Shakespeare himself seems to lose control. “Oops, this guy’s becoming a lead as well … oh well, let’s go with it.” I mean, obviously, there’s more to it than that, but that’s why his plays LAST so well. They have intricate plots, but the characters … all of them!

    Orson Welles always said that he was born to play Kings. From when he was, like, 12 years old, he knew that. Strange. He seemed to know his limitations as an actor to some degree – he said that he thought he was best when he played a man deep in thought, as kings often are. Although his Iago would sure have been interesting as well.

  10. sheila says:

    Nightfly – The other thing about reading these books is it makes my movie list grow exponentially. Although I’ve seen most of the movies mentioned in this book – reading it makes me NEED TO SEE THEM AGAIN.

  11. sheila says:

    Catherine – why is Othello your favorite? I’d love to hear.

    I am racking my brains, and I honestly don’t believe I’ve seen it live. I’ve seen scenes in acting class and the like, but I don’t think I’ve seen it on stage.

  12. Catherine says:

    Well, maybe not my absolute favourite of all time ever ever ever, but it’s the one I think about the most. Probably because it was one of the Shakespeare plays I did in school and it coincided with a great English teacher who really did a fantastic job of encouraging us to love the language of the play (conversely, the year I studied Romeo & Juliet I had the worst English teacher I’ve even encountered and she completely turned me off the play). I think the reason I’m drawn to it so much is just I’m obsessed with the character of Iago. I reread his speeches so many times that I used to know his entire part off by heart; I would recite his lines while I was cleaning my room or in the shower! Just the fact that he’s so unknowable – why does he wreck such havoc? Is he impotent, is he secretly in love with Othello, is it a jealousy at being passed over? It could be any of these, or a combination, but I prefer to think of him in Coleridgean terms – he’s motiveless, which is even more frightening. There’s something inhuman about him. He’s like Anton Chigurh – just this embodiment of evil with no safe explanation. And yet, unlike dear old bowl-head Anton, Iago is charming. I love the 1989 Trevor Nunn Othello, where Ian McKellen plays Iago. McKellen nails the seductive mellifluous tone that Iago can mimic – he’s extremely flirtatious at times, even when he’s being misogynistic.

    So I suppose it’s the language that attracts me. So many different registers, but all equally eloquent. Obviously every Shakespearean drama plays around with dialect and language and the different ways people speak, but it’s an important thematic consideration in Othello. The whole thing hangs on language – Iago planting little seeds of doubt and jealousy in Othello’s mind, the reason Othello and Desdemona fall in love in the first place springing from her listening to his tales.

    I saw a truly atrocious version of Othello, in which the woman playing Desdemona was woefully miscast. She was too old, for one thing, and just physically all wrong. She was about six foot tall, bony and lanky, with dark hair and, worst of all, a thick Roscommon accent (!). We were all a little relieved when she was smothered to death…

  13. Catherine says:

    I didn’t mean for that last paragraph to be italicized!

  14. sheila says:

    Catherine – I fixed it!

    hahahaha about being glad when Desdemona was smothered. Someone shut that woman up! I’ve seen productions like that where death is a mercy. For us out there in the dark.

    I love the unknowability of Iago, too. The desperation of critics to “explain” him speaks much to our fear of that kind of evil – I’ve written about that a lot, obviously – are psychopaths born or made? Are there some people just born with a chip on the old shoulder about life and the rest of the human race? Who knows, but it obviously has interested authors through the centuries: how to EXPLAIN evil. I guess back to the Bible, with pesky curious Eve. It’s comforting to think there is a “reason” for things – but drama isn’t supposed to be comfortable. I agree with Welles that we all have met Iagos … and the explanation of why they may be that way is probably the least interesting thing about them. The studies done on psychopaths in jail show that. Chilling stuff. Because it can’t be fought or prevented.

    And perhaps if Othello had been a different kind of man – more firm in his own convictions (at least about women), and more confident – he wouldn’t have been swayed by Iago. Every Iago NEEDS an Othello in order to express his evil.

  15. sheila says:

    And funny how teachers can sometimes make or break a work of literature for their students …

  16. sheila says:

    Also, Catherine – your comment made me think: Just watched Othello again last night and was amazed at how much of it I know by heart. Like you, almost entire monologues are committed to memory. I have no memory of sitting down to memorize it – but there it was, “it is the cause” and all the rest – word for word. I love it how that happens. By osmosis.

  17. phil says:

    Wow. I always keep This Is Orson Welles at arms length, constantly referring to it. Bought it from a $1 clearance table when I was far away from home once.

    btw…way off topic, but I just read your essay on William Holden this morning. Sent shivers through me. Excellent, sheila.

  18. Shelley says:

    Thanks for Welles’ fascinating comments on Iago. And that picture of the birds! I have an episodes where the stirring of the birds presages disaster, but that visual you give above is way scarier than anything Hitchcock ever did.

  19. Jake Cole says:

    “I love the unknowability of Iago, too. The desperation of critics to “explain” him speaks much to our fear of that kind of evil”

    That’s why Othello is far and away my favorite Shakespeare. Like most of his plays, I only read it because it was assigned in school, but I excelled enough in my English classes to get into honors elective my senior year and high school and took a course called Evil in Literature. My teacher was one of the assistant football coaches, which did not fill me with confidence (he did have a Bruce Springsteen poster hanging prominently in his classroom, though, so he couldn’t have been all bad). But he really loved the subject, and he brilliantly structured the course to teach Paradise Lost just before Othello. Once we got about halfway through the play, he stopped class and said “You’re probably wondering why I had you read Paradise Lost in the middle of the semester and then end with this short thing. One: I didn’t want you to have to cram for the final using such a massive text you only just learned. Two: it’s because any way you slice it, Iago is 10 times more evil than Satan.” And damn it, he was right.

  20. Desirae says:

    “He’s like Anton Chigurh – just this embodiment of evil with no safe explanation. And yet, unlike dear old bowl-head Anton, Iago is charming.”

    This is a good point, Catherine. Iago is very good at “passing” – he may not function the way other people do, but he knows how to fake it from the outside. It’s what makes him such a masterful puppeteer. I listened to an on-tape production of Othello once where the actor playing Iago had an evil voice with a capital E. He sounded like a cartoon villain. It couldn’t have been more wrong – Iago should sound like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.

  21. sheila says:

    Phil – The book is such a goldmine!!

    I love William Holden – which one did you read? I wrote a piece for him on House Next Door, is that the one? He’s the best.

  22. sheila says:

    Jake – Oh my God, I love that teacher. I love stories of teachers who really make an impact on students like that. And the thought he put into the order of what you guys read … wonderful man!!

  23. sheila says:

    Desirae/Catherine – Yes, Iago must “pass” as normal and helpful. Otherwise it makes no sense. Shakespeare understood psychology like no playwright before or since. There is melodrama inherent in a lot of his stuff, he was a good showman, but never at the expense of reality. If he was a sneering villain, then we all in the audience must assume that Othello is a moron for trusting him. But that doesn’t serve the play and that’s not what Shakespeare wrote. Iago is treacherous. From his actions, yes, but also because he is so accepted, he “passes” as a normal person. The literature of psychopaths is full of such examples. Ann Rule, no dummy herself, was totally fooled by Ted Bundy when she worked with him at, of all places, a rape crisis hot-line. Charm is the one thing that all off-the-charts psychopaths have. It is a shallow charm, but it is enough to fool most people.

    All you can do in life is hope to AVOID the Iagos. Because there is no fixing them, no preventing them.

    In the opening of Welles’ Othello – he starts with the double funeral of Othello and Desdemona – a haunting terrifying procession (reminiscent of the death-dance across the hills in Bergman’s Seventh Seal – with that same use of far-off silhouettes of people) – and as the procession goes through a vast square, we see Iago – enclosed in a cage – and being lifted up off the earth. His punishment for his part in the debacle.

    He has been “found out”. This was something Welles added. You can see Iago peering out between the bars at the procession as he is lifted up off the square, and the expression on his face is 100% ambiguous. Does he feel sorry? I don’t see that. Maybe he feels sorry for himself. Regardless: it’s a fascinating moment, because it could be so many different things.

  24. sheila says:

    Strangely enough, I was just reading an interview with Harold Bloom in one of my Paris Review Interview compilations, and came across this quote which really speaks to what we’ve been talking about here, in terms of Iago (and Iago needing Othello, specifically, in order to express his evil):

    There’s that lovely remark of A.C. Bradley’s that Shakespeare’s major tragic heroes can only work in the play that they’re in – that if Iago had to come onto the same stage with Hamlet, it would take Hamlet about five seconds to catch on to what Iago was doing and so viciously parody Iago that he would drive him to madness and suicide. The same way, if the ghost of Othello’s dead father appeared to Othello and said that someone had murdered him, Othello would grab his sword and go and hack the other fellow down. In each case there would be no play.

Leave a Reply to sheila Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.