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Tag Archives: Orson Welles

The Curator of Schlock #307: The Brood

24 Friday Jan 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Horror, The Curator of Schlock

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David Cronenberg, Oliver Reed, Orson Welles, The Brood

The Curator of Schlock #307 by Jeff Shuster

The Brood

Seriously, what is wrong with David Cronenberg?

Criterion DVDs are weird. They have weird special features. On my DVD for David Cronenberg’s The Brood, we have an interview with Oliver Reed on The Merv Griffin Show from 1980. Other guests include Orson Welles and, naturally, Charo. I’m terrified because Oliver Reed starts taking jabs at Welles and I’m expecting the whole affair to get bloody, with Merv Griffin getting set on fire at some point, but Reed spends much of the interview talking about his love of American hamburgers and eventually praises Orson Welles as a god among directors. At know no point in this interview is The Brood even mentioned.

Why did Criterion include it in the special features on the disc?

Brood1

1979’s The Brood from director David Cronenberg is a disgusting little movie. The movie begins with Oliver Reed wearing nothing but a robe while sitting in yoga pose on a stage berating his son in front of live audience. No, this isn’t a method-acting lesson, but a public therapy session. Oliver Reed stars as Dr. Hal Ragian, a psychotherapist who runs the Somatree Institute where he employs the use of psychoplasmics, a therapy method that has patients unleash their suppressed feelings by physically altering their bodies through pure will of the mind.

Brood2

Frank Carveth (Art Hindle) thinks Dr. Ragian is a quack. Nola Carveth (Samantha Eggar), Frank’s wife, is a patient at Somatree, dealing with anger issues while fighting with Frank over custody of Candace (Cindy Hinds), their five-year-old daughter. Frank notices marks and cuts on Candace’s back and doesn’t want her staying at Somatree. Dr. Ragain tells Frank that Nola needs Candace there to help with her therapy. He tells Frank that he’d better bring Candace back the following weekend or there will be legal action.

Brood4

Frank drops Candace off with his mother-in-law while he goes talk to a lawyer. I suppose Candace is having a better time with Grandma, as she seems more mellow than her mother. Granted, Grandma is indulging in some Scotch and it’s not even 3 PM. While going to refresh her drink, she gets attacked by what seems to be a small child in her kitchen. The attacker hits grandma with what I believe is meat tenderizer. It’s quite awful. There’s blood everywhere.

The child shrink at the police station tries prying some info out of Candace, but the girl remembers noththing. Frank’s father-in-law flies over to attend the funeral. Grandpa and Grandma got divorced about ten years prior, but he gets distraught over her death and decides to get smashed in his old house. Guess who shows up again? It’s that same child that killed Grandma earlier. The child beats Grandpa to death with a snow globe.

Brood3

Frank discovers Grandpa’s body and we finally see what the killer child looks like. It’s some kind of mutant freak. A really ugly kid. Its face is all caved in. The kid drops dead after fighting with Frank for a bit. Doctors do an autopsy on the deformed child. The kid has a beak-like mouth, no sexual organs, and no navel. This is bizarre. You’ll be seeing more of them as the film rolls on. And trust me, you don’t want to see how these things are born.

I could go on, but I’m about to lose my lunch. The toilet beckons.


Jeffrey Shuster 3

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #80: Filming ‘Othello’

03 Sunday Nov 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, Shakespeare, The Rogue's Guide to Shakespeare on Film

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Filming 'Othello', Orson Welles

Rogues Guide to Shakes on Film 2

80. Orson Welles’s  Filming ‘Othello’

I’ve neglected this blog for nearly a year, dear readers.

I had suffered a surfeit of Shakespeare, something I didn’t think was possible. Fucking Hamlet again, I would think. Why? I mean, why?

So far, I have reviewed seven films of Hamlet. Some of them are great, but I may not even be able to watch another great one, especially since I won’t know it’s good until I watch it, and I am waxing wroth for too long for every bad one. Even a decent new one grates on the nerves.

Filming Othello Title

What drew me back was this documentary of sorts about Orson Welles’s 1951 film of Othello. This isn’t a behind-the-scenes sort of film, since, as Welles points out, the film of Othello often lacked the materials to film Othello, so there were no cameras and film left over to film the filming. Instead, this document involves Welles sort of apologizing for making the film and daring to speak about Othello and Shakespeare at all, and eventually getting excited about showing us a movieola, which is kind of an excuse to show us clips for the film. For its small faults, Othello is a masterpiece of editing.

Othello 2

Welles tells wonderful stories about this legendary film shoot, including the roving production and filming in a bathhouse when they could not yet afford costumes. Welles does offer insights into the play, and into his filming of the play.

This conversation with Welles is spelled by a dinner conversation he shares with two of the other actors from the 1951 film, Micheal MacLiammoir (Iago) and Hilton Edwards (Brabantio) and by a question and answer session Welles submitted to with Boston University students.

I recognize the great difficulty of anyone trying to share commentary about Shakespeare for a mass audience, since there is the obvious question of, “Who is this for?” I imagine that is why Welles was apologizing at the start of this film for the very existence of this documentary,, and why documentaries such as Looking for Richard and Discovering Hamlet tend to be so idiotically, droolingly numb despite the intelligence of the artists working on them.

Filming Othello

Filming ‘Othello’ is the best among these, in part because of the conversations Welles is having with his peers, with students, with us, and with himself. I do think if he was speaking with a single interviewer—just the right interviewer—it would have been better still, but the cobbled-together nature of the documentary is some ways befits the film it is a commentary upon.

Filming Othello

What is so charming is that Welles is so earnest, despite his suspicion that he is both not as smart as Shakespeare, and that he is smarter than entertainment is allowed to be. Three years later he would be doing voice-work for Magnum P.I.

The conversations are intrinsically delightful, but also deepen my feelings for that troubled, crazy little film of Shakespeare’s tragedy. There was so much pressure on it, yet so much turned out right about it, too. At the end, Welles makes this confession: “With all my heart, I wish that I—I wasn’t looking back on Othello, but looking forward to it. That Othello would be a hell of a film.”


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John King (Episode, well, all of them) holds a PhD in English from Purdue University, and an MFA from New York University. He has reviewed performances for Shakespeare Bulletin.

The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #59: Othello (1951)

23 Sunday Jul 2017

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, Horror, Shakespeare, The Rogue's Guide to Shakespeare on Film

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Micheál MacLiammóir, Orson Welles

Rogues Guide to Shakes on Film 3

59. Orson Welles’s Othello (1951)

Othello poster

Orson Welles’s Othello opens with some weird music by Alberto Barbers and/or Angelo Francesco Lavagnino that splits the difference between a Modernist march and Gregorian chant during the funeral march of the Moor and Desdemona, with Iago brought along, caged in captivity, like some dolorous triumph. The tragic destinies are foretold rather than having any opening credits.

The film is in black and white, which may have turned off 1951 audiences. The restored version, however, makes the scenes look crisp, and so the black and white adds an antiquarian touch rather than just making the film look moldy. While I would have adored to see more of Venice, since the Venice scenes take place at night, perhaps black and white is just as well.

Othello 11

I say this with hesitant irony, since Othello is a play in part about the uses made of the color of a man’s skin. White actors who portray the Moor these days forgo the unpleasant tradition of blackface. Ideally, since there are only two black parts in Shakespeare (Othello and Aaron in Titus Andronicus), the parts could be reserved for black actors, even in these times of color-blind casting.

Othello 4

While I shrink from the practice of blackface, though, I don’t find it dreadfully offensive in the case of Welles. In black and white, it looks natural enough, and doesn’t impart direct associations with minstrelsy, although again I might have preferred to see Welles tackle Iago and grant the Moor’s part to a black actor. As weird as the casting of a white man in black make-up might seem to us now, the practice was considered totally normal in Welles’s time.

Othello 12

And Micheál MacLiammóir as Iago brings to mind the importance of Iago’s lack of something, some lack of charisma despite being eloquent and shrewd in the ways of Machiavellian political intrigue. I don’t mean that MacLiammóir is a poor actor, for that is certainly not the case. But physically, MacLiammóir looks rather skinny and average, bland compared to Othello and Michael Cassio. Kenneth Branagh as Iago is too handsome for us to sense that his private griefs are that compelling. Branagh makes us believe that Iago’s lies feel like truth to him, as a compulsive liar begins to have difficulty recognizing the difference. Butit’s difficult to believe he didn’t get what he wanted in the first place. MacLiammóir’s Iago is harder to root for, but easier to empathize with. It makes the tragic destructions of Othello feel less wanton and more tragic.

Othello 3

The sense of Othello’s testimony before the council regarding his courtship of Desdemona comes off poignantly in Welles’s mouth. Othello declares,

Rude am I in my speech,
And little bless’d with the soft phrase of peace:
For since these arms of mine had seven years’ pith,
Till now some nine moons wasted, they have used
Their dearest action in the tented field,
And little of this great world can I speak,
More than pertains to feats of broil and battle,
And therefore little shall I grace my cause
In speaking for myself. Yet, by your gracious patience,
I will a round unvarnish’d tale deliver
Of my whole course of love; what drugs, what charms,
What conjuration and what mighty magic,
For such proceeding I am charged withal,
I won his daughter.

Othello seems to be protesting the rudeness of his speech too much since his tale does not seem especially “unvarnish’d.” However, addressing these white Europeans with whom he serves, Othello seems to understand that his audience may hear his speech as rude, and is ingratiating them against their presumed racism. (I think of Trump supporters who feel like he has made the executive office “classy” again. Institutional racism means that there is a sliding scale for judgment.) This seems all the more enhanced from Welles’s amazing instrument of a voice. (Lawrence Fishburne’s Caribbean accent as Othello made the speech seem potentially rougher in tongue to Europeans, even though Fishburne’s instrument is excellent as well.)

For textual purists, the director was perhaps too rough with the cuts. Welles has added expository voiceovers to speed the play along, allowing the story to reach its conclusion within about ninety minutes.

Sizanne Cloutier makes for a taut Desdemona. She looks uncannily like a Disney princess in such Renaissance attire, and successfully conveys both a strong, clear will and a heartbreaking innocence.

Othello 2

The fortress at Cypress, abutting its geometry against the ocean, looks stark, adding to this antiquarian flair.

Othello 5

One of the later sequences occurs at a sauna. Iago convinced the lovesick dupe, Rodrigo, that he may win Desdemona after all if he will only kill Michael Cassio. Welles has a mandolin playing a gypsy-like tune, and added an essential ingredient to this scene: a poodle. I am not making this up. The scene is so uncanny as to be wholly believable.

Othello 10 Poodle.png

When Iago kills Rodrigo through the floorboards of the sauna, the effect is goofy, yet psychedelically terrifying. Indeed, as the film dispatches its climax, the effect is that of a classic horror film, in which nearly everyone left alive is a monster, imprisoned in the ancient jails of their psyches.

Othello 9

The gazes of the dying and the damned.


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John King (Episode, well, all of them) holds a PhD in English from Purdue University, and an MFA from New York University. He has reviewed performances for Shakespeare Bulletin.

The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #55: Falstaff: Chimes at Midnight (1965)

04 Sunday Jun 2017

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in The Rogue's Guide to Shakespeare on Film

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Chimes at Midnight, Henry IV Part 1, Henry IV Part 2, Henry V, Jeanne Moreau, John Gielgud, Orson Welles, Shakespeare

Rogues Guide to Shakes on Film 2

55. Orson Welles’s Falstaff: Chimes at Midnight [Henry IV Parts 1 & 2] (1965)

Chimes at Midnight 8

One restraint of most Shakespeare film productions happens to be, alas and fuck, the budget. Often, actors, including the best actors, will willingly work for scale in service of the bard, but the cost of film and catering and the crew and their equipage will or cannot do so. Quality often suffers.

Such seems to have been the case with Chimes at Midnight, which features a tour de force performance by Orson Welles as Falstaff.

Chimes at Midnight 7

Welles was very, very, very fat. That is not a criticism, merely an observation. He looks like an optical illusion, a caricature of a caricature that is Sir John Falstaff. And yet in appearing like such a cartoon, Welles somehow makes the part quite real, and shows us what Shakespeare’s own original audience would have loved about this rascal who contains so many vices, a bursting character from a medieval morality play.

715_462.jpg

Contrasting the enormity of Welles’s girth is the slender running time of Chimes at Midnight, which squeezes both parts of Henry IV down to under 2 hours of running time. If you don’t already know these plays, abandon all hope of following the manic, complicated plot. If you have experienced these plays, though, then lean in and enjoy this manic take on its complicated, truncated plot. Ralph Richardson served as a narrator, to offer context and some sense of segues.

Chimes at Midnight 4

Henry IV is played by John Gielgud, who makes England’s sovereign and his moral disappointment in his son, prince Hal, seem majestic rather than bitchy or sheepishly human.

Chimes at Midnight 2

Keith Baxter and his dimpled chin play Hal, and he seems truly mischievous, a quick, fun foil for Welles’s Falstaff.

Chimes at Midnight 11

Norman Rodway, as Henry Percy, AKA “Hotspur,” switches between manic comedy and tragedy in his threat against the throne. He seems to have gotten the memo to act and speak as fast as he can, and manages to make both seem palatable enough.

Chimes at Midnight 1

The great battle between Henry IV and Hotspur’s forces os both impressive and awfully awkward. I suspect the sound of rattling armor was created by shaking a pillowcase of silverware. (Perhaps that is authentically how battle sounded in the Middle Ages. If that is so, one should avoid accuracy.) There is a great confusion of fog, mud, and clanging, interspersed with Orson Welles hysterically trotting about in truly enormous armor. The editing is extra-manic, and I suspect the film was often sped up like kung fu action sequences.

Chimes at Midnight 3

It occurs to me, dear readers, that perhaps I’ve been premature to claim the low budget of this movie was its downfall. Perhaps the downfall was its modest reception, and its therefore being out of print a long while. The version I got ahold of was less crisp than I expect the Criterion Collection print is. As The Hollow Crown demonstrates, the inn setting of much of Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 are drab enough if treated with historical accuracy, so the black and white is less a burden than it might have been. Perhaps the sound is better in the Criterion edition (I doubt it). The energetically frumpy medievalish score by Angelo Francesco Lavagnino has to grate no matter how crisp it sounds.

Chimes at Midnight 10

But the chief musical instrument of Falstaff is the voice of Orson Welles. The voice and the man were larger than life, and experiencing it embodying Falstaff helps one believe that an absurd amount of indulgence might be his due. We can imagine a king, a prince, a beautiful young prostitute (played by Jeanne Moreau) could grant him something like grace. On the field of victory, or in the Boar’s Head Inn, Falstaff is a beacon of vivaciousness and intelligence. In the throne room, however, such grace reveals itself to be an almost infinite length of rope by which he will hang himself.

Chimes at Midnight 5

The subtitle of the film (or the title, depending on where it was released) might make the theme of this film seem unpleasantly sentimental. The “chimes at midnight” speech takes place between Falstaff and Master Shallow, a justice of the peace in the countryside with whom Falstaff is resting after a battle. This scene takes place before he learns that his carousing friend Prince Hal will be coronated as Henry V. Master Shallow is a dreadful bore, and his desire to reminisce about the greatness of being awake at midnight is sad. That Falstaff indulges him makes us sorry for Falstaff. Alan Webb’s Shallow speaks in an elderly quavering falsetto that is unendurable. This brief film shoves that dialogue into the beginning of our story to make the theme clear.

Chimes at Midnight 13

Except it isn’t, unless we are to see the theme as the weariness of having to deal with dullards. At least the screenplay skips repeating the speech later.

As brief as this film of two plays is, it ends by squeezing in the beginning of Henry V as well, to reach the closure of Sir John’s story, his death, and mourning of the Boar’s Head crowd. If the film were a half-hour longer, perhaps The Merry Wives of Windsor could also have been crammed in.

Like I said, if you know these Falstaff plays, then this film is well worth the effort, but do grab the Criterion edition. So says your humble rogue.


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John King (Episode, well, all of them) holds a PhD in English from Purdue University, and an MFA from New York University. He has reviewed performances for Shakespeare Bulletin.

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