#23 - Chimes at Midnight (1965, Orson Welles


Wow, I really thought this would be one of the very last of the movies on my list that I would ever get a chance to see. Thank you Shakespeare in Washington celebration for bringing this to the AFI Silver with Keith Baxter as special guest.

This film is Welles' adaptation of several Shakespeare plays (Henry IV parts 1 & 2 mainly, with bits of Richard III, Henry V, and The Merry Wives of Windsor) all featuring the character of Sir John Falstaff, the jovial corpulent companion to Prince Hal. It's the role Welles was born to play, or at least one he had grown into by this time. The man is ENORMOUS in this film. Welles relishes the role, commandeering the frame and wringing out every fat joke and sexual double-entendre from Shakespeare's dialogue.

Welles is such an engaging personality, and such a funny guy, it is surprising he never made many film comedies. Four of the five Falstaff plays are tragedies, with him as comic relief. By centering on Falstaff for the main narrative, Welles has created a comedic version of the Prince Hal/Henry V saga but when the film takes a turn for the tragic near the end, it's all the more heartbreaking.

Keith Baxter played Prince Hal in the film and was in person to discuss working with Welles. He was grateful for the role, which he won in an open audition and launched his career as a respected thespian of stage and screen. He lamented that Chimes at Midnight is so hard to see (a Spanish DVD exists and there is an OOP VHS tape in the U.S., though that may be from a public domain source). He said there is a legal battle over the rights and that the sound must be restored before it gets a rerelease (I concur). He's in Beatrice Welles' camp, as he blamed Oja Kodar for holding up the restoration although it was Bea who caused a big stink over Othello and the recent announcement of a 2008 DVD release of The Magnificent Ambersons implied that she was the road block on that project. Anyway, I'm glad to have seen it on the big screen and I hope it gets a R1 DVD release sooner than later because I want to see it again!

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