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CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT (Welles 1965) We often think Shakespeare's history plays give an accurate account of what really happened all those years ago. Indeed for many of us, the only knowledge we have of the 14th Century is what we can remember from The Histories, either from reading them at school or seeing them on the stage or screen. The most accessible text that I have found that describes the relationship between the plays and the written history that Shakespeare had available is Shakespeare's Kings by John Julius Norwich (1999). Norwich concluded that generally Shakespeare did remain faithful to his sources but censorship, shortages of actors and occasionally, dare we say it, mere carelessness, produced a good number of divergences. Most departures from the texts were however made in the interest of producing good drama. The character of Falstaff of course is entirely a Shakespearean invention. Intriguingly, In Chimes at Midnight, Orson Welles uses the authority of one of Shakespeare's historical sources, Raphael Holinshed - read sonorously by the Narrator - to suggest historical authenticity. Chimes at Midnight, the film with which we open our cinema club, was Orson Welles' last major feature film and the culmination of many years working with Shakespeare's plays. Welles melded scenes from five plays (Richard II, Henry IV Parts 1 & 2, Henry V and The Merry Wives of Windsor), to produce a film about Sir John Falstaff and his relationship with Prince Hal, later Henry V. While in Olivier's version of Henry V (Olivier 1944), anything that could damage Henry's candidacy for sainthood had been edited out, Welles used the story of Falstaff to show the less celebrated consequences of Hal's rise to power. The film is steeped in the melancholy that comes with aging and the realisation that when the young eventually do write their own agenda, they may chose to jettison a past one has shared with them. It has been remarked that for Welles, Hal's rejection of Falstaff mirrored his own by Hollywood.  As with so many of Welles' projects, this one too was dogged by lack of funding. The actors were often available for a few days only so scenes were often shot with stand ins, only later replaced with the appropriate character. All the same, the acting is never less than superb, with fine performances from John Gielgud as the remote and disappointed Henry IV, Welles himself as Falstaff, Norman Rodway (Hotspur), Jeanne Moreau (Doll Tearsheet), Margaret Rutherford (Mistress Quickly), Keith Baxter (Hal) and Ralph Richardson as the Narrator. The film is shot in black and white. The intimate set used for the tavern scenes (a wooden building with low ceilings) contrasts with the cathedral like coldness of King Henry's palace. The battle of Shrewsbury is shown in all its gory, the identity of the soldiers becoming progressively less distinct till all you see of the battlefield is their torment rather than which side is victorious. It provides an instructive contrast with the triumphalist battle in Olivier's film. On the other hand, Branagh's overtly antiwar version of Henry V owes much to Welles' cinematography. I am fortunate in having obtained a DVD of Chimes at Midnight. While not digitally remastered, it was clearly made from an excellent print. The images are fine and the Dolby 2 sound as good as it ever will be till some wealthy studio treats this film like the masterpiece it is and produces a fully digitalised version. A sensitive review of Chimes at Midnight can be found at http://www.cinescene.com/reviews/chimes.html Image from www.hollowaypages.com |
Chimes at Midnight
