RogerBW's Blog

Chimes at Midnight (1965) 01 July 2025

1965 Shakespearean adaptation, dir. and starring Orson Welles: IMDb / allmovie. Falstaff!

And this is Orson Welles at his Orson Wellesiest: he's most definitely got fat by this point, but he's admitting it and playing Falstaff as a fat but powerful man, rather than relying on camera tricks to make him appear svelte. The filmmaking tricks here were mostly around the budget: he got funding by claiming he'd use it to make two films with the same cast and on the same sets, the other being a Treasure Island which might have had some commercial success, and then he just didn't get round to doing the Treasure Island bit.

This specific thing had its genesis in Welles's 1939 stage project Five Kings, an epic that would run from Richard II to Richard III. That would have had a young Burgess Meredith as Hel, but Welles went off roistering with him rather than directing rehearsals, the thing was eventually cut down to more or less the events we see here, and it was a complete financial and critical disaster. A 1960 revival also didn't do well.

But what strikes me here is that the great John Gielgud as Henry IV seems to be in an entirely different film, one that needs traditional acting rather than the physicality of Falstaff's sections. It's an odd contrast, and one can't tell whether it was intended by Welles or simply something Gielgud couldn't be stopped from doing. Certainly the production does assume that you know the Shakespeare, because the refocusing of this on Falstaff gives little time for explaining what's going on.

This Falstaff is much more straightforward and honest than the Falstaff of Shakespeare (as variously interpreted over the centuries). He's just out for a good time, and he fails to understand that his protégé and source of funds Hal is growing up and will not be grateful to Falstaff for all the good times Falstaff arranged when he was younger. If anything, it's Hal leading Falstaff to the wrong here rather than the other way round.

And alas this disconnection reaches its climax in the coronation scene. I don't get on with what's often known as "cringe comedy", but which I think of as the Man Who Gets It Wrong: someone is doing a thing which he (usually he) believes to be right but which everyone else knows is wrong, and he's allowed to make a fool of himself and dig himself ever deeper rather than anyone telling him. And that's this scene for me.

Oh well. The story worked better than this telling of it. I talk about this film further on Ribbon of Memes and even if you don't normally do podcasts I recommend this episode, because we had my friend Michael Cule as a guest; and he knows his stuff, as well as being very entertaining.

Tags: film reviews

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