On 16mm at the PFA with Lucía and Neil, on 30 March 2008, at 14 o’clock.
It’s been a while since I last saw a film (or play, etc.) with Shakespearian dialogue, and it always takes me some time and a fair amount of effort to get into the groove of understanding what the hell anyone’s talking about. That said, this was pretty much tops for Shakespearian film. Orson Welles is easily one of the most magnetic personalities to have filled the silver screen with his face, and this was never more true than when he was fat and old as he is in Chimes at Midnight and Touch of Evil (not really that old; just in his late 40s, but trying to seem much older). I have yet to see him in anything after Chimes at Midnight but I will be sure to when I get the chance.
Few film directors have made such beautiful black and white films as Orson Welles, and Chimes at Midnight is no exception. From King Henry’s austere throne room with dusty streams of light reaching down from on high to the filthy brothel/inn that Falstaff inhabits to the lengthy and muddy battle scene to the closeups of Welles’ own grotesque face, Chimes at Midnight left me with a tremendous visual impression and is as much an exploration of the psychological effects of various kinds of lighting and camera angles as well as the expression of three-dimensional space in a two-dimensional image as any of his other films.
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