Othello moor
He is the founder of Ireland's only independent drama school, the Gaiety School of Acting. After seven years as an actor, he became, at 29, the youngest ever artistic director of the Abbey Theater, Ireland's national theater. Dowling, now 42 years old, has become a highly respected classical theater director, an international figure with an impressive past. Othello is magical in its story telling and another worthy showcase of the genius of Orson Welles.Since the children's theater, Mr. The fact that parts of the film were shot MOS and other parts used ADR is distracting due to the obvious lack of lip-sync, but in the final analysis, we watch Welles with reverence almost as if on a visit to Sunday Mass, paying homage, never once forgetting that were are witness to a filmmaker stripped of resources, devoid of many essential tools, but one with indomitable spirit who refused to be cowed-down.
Sound & Editing: The restored version has a brand-new soundtrack mentored by Welles' daughter, and while it enhances the experience to telling effect, it is irony to note that just the new soundtrack cost much more than what Welles assembled the whole film for. The title shots of the film are harrowing in their effect, with the interplay of high-contrast earth and sky contours that at once establish the mood for an intense cinematic experience. Time and again Welles plays with foreground element to reveal psychologically subjective and meta-diagetic moods while cleverly using the depth in the frame to forward the narrative and plot the next progression. But there is no better example of exploring and using frame depth than in Othello. Cinematography: As we have come to expect, Orson Welles has a unique cinematic language, through which he creates a Wellesian world of skin-burning close ups, dutched crazy world-frames and low angle shots to create a tense atmosphere of foreboding. The stripped down set design works wonderfully for the film and even though budgets may have been the driving force, Othello's barren palace is preceded only by the barrenness of his blinding jealousy and irrational actions. She is every bit as dainty as we would have imagined her to be. But the person to steal our hearts is Suzanne Cloutier who portrays the fair-dame Desdemona. The figure behavior of Micheál MacLiammóir is utterly convincing as the detestable Iago who is consumed by jealousy and rage at being overlooked as the second-in-command. Welles' penury through his European sojourn is widely known and the passion with which he would invest into his films, every penny earned through moonlighting his booming voice and above-average acting skills is legendary, and should put this in context. This may well have had little to do with Welles' artistic choices, and more with his monetary situation at the time. The problem may have been that the critical scene where Iago poisons Othello's mind and fuels his suspicion is scrappy and left unexplored. Yet at the end, we are left with a feeling of deep tragedy and loss for Othello, played by Welles himself, and though we feel that Othello was quite an idiot, we at least feel that he was a very unfortunate idiot at that!. Mise-en-scene: Like with many of his other works involving especially Shakespeare, be prepared for Welles' licenses and personal interpretation of subject matter pertaining to Othello. To think that a whole master negative of this film (which won the Best film at Cannes in 1952) was lying abandoned in a New Jersey warehouse, was discovered by accident and is the reason for this print that we now have access to, is enough to send shivers down the spine of any Welles-phile. THE TRAGEDY OF OTHELLO: THE MOOR OF VENICE/ US/France/Italy/Morocco 1952 (3.5 STARS) The recent restoration of Othello brings to cinematic space the magic of another masterpiece from Orson Welles. The credits were adjusted to place Lee Dickter (sp?) as Re-recording Mixer, and Ed Golya as Sound Effects Editor. Basically, the film was retransferred, and the rebuilt sound effects tracks were added. The original mono music was then reintroduced into the final product. This decision was made for the entertainment value of the film. Unintelligible dialogue was replaced with 'sound-alikes'. It was purchased for distribution by Castle Hill, and taken to New York where it went through another transformation before release. Ed Golya, Lorita DeLacerna, and Steve Wilke, were digital editors. John Fogelson, editor, was a major supervisor of the project.
This was a problem as some of the dialogue was distorted and unintelligible. The audio was completely rebuilt, including the score, in Stereo Surround. The film was transferred to, and enhanced in video, (D1 format) retaining it as black and white. This film by Orson Welles, was 'restored' by a group in Chicago in 1991/2.