CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT Movie Review

Falstaff
Campanadas a Medianoche

When considering the work of the late Orson Welles, pundits still tend to drone on about the lost opportunities, the unfinished projects, the technical sloppiness. It's the schoolboy's nightmare of being reminded that he's “not living up to his potential”; and if Welles is looking down on us now, he knows he's destined to hear it for all eternity. There are still a few of us, though, who take much more pleasure in sifting through the astonishing riches he left us, not the least of which is his brilliant, 1966 Chimes at Midnight (also known as Falstaff), the storyline of which is a surprisingly deft juggling of plots and characters from at least five of Shakespeare's plays. Yes, the post-synchronized sound is a mess, and the images often don't match what the characters are saying—many are given voices by Welles himself for reasons we can only imagine—but in the final analysis it doesn't matter; indeed, one can even see its technical shortcomings as obstacles that make the film's triumph all the more moving. Welles's performance as Falstaff reminds us of what is often forgotten in the age of the auteur, and that is how a great actor can make familiar material appear to have been just invented—even improvised. Keith Baxter and Margaret Rutherford give no hint of the chaos that must have surrounded the production, and when he's front and center as Henry IV, the great and irreplaceable John Gielgud makes us grieve at the prospect of a cinema that will lack his incomparable presence. Chimes at Midnight, one of the greatest of all screen adaptations of the work of William Shakespeare, is rumored to be under “renovation”—due for a “clean-up” of both its image and soundtrack. If it's a true restoration of Welles's original accomplishment, three cheers. If, however, it's fiddled with and “repaired” in an effort to “smooth over” the passionate and crazy risks that made Welles the great director that he was—to make his Chimes at Midnight acceptable to an audience for whom stereo and seamless technology are all—it will be a far greater tragedy than the never-ending myth of this magnificent genius's “unrealized potential.”

NEXT STOP … Othello (1952), Henry V, Throne of Blood, Touch of Evil

1967 115m/B SP SI Orson Welles, Jeanne Moreau, Margaret Rutherford, John Gielgud, Marina Vlady, Keith Baxter, Fernando Rey, Norman Rodway; D: Orson Welles; W: Orson Welles; C: Edmond Richard; M: Angelo Francesco Lavagnino. VHS FCT