Chimes at Midnight (1966)

Flesh and Frailty

by Jeffrey M. Anderson

Buy Chimes at Midnight on DVD.

Twenty-five years after Citizen Kane, Orson Welles turned out a different kind of masterpiece. It was his own favorite of his movies, and it may be mine, too. Clearly a low-budget film, it sparkles and amazes. It still has the maverick spirit that Citizen Kane had, but this time Hollywood was not involved. Too bad, though, because the film really could have been a classic if it had a little more money for the professional soundtrack that Welles was capable of.

In Chimes at Midnight (a.k.a. Falstaff), Welles plays Falstaff, one of William Shakespeare's most interesting and enduring characters. Welles called him "perhaps the only purely good character Shakespeare ever wrote." Falstaff appeared in five different plays; with young Prince Hal in Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, and Richard II, as well as in Henry V and The Merry Wives of Windsor. Welles very cleverly interwove scenes from these five plays to create the complete story of Falstaff. It may be Welles' greatest performance in a career of many great characters. Even with the limited budget, Welles managed to cast Sir John Gielgud as Henry IV, Jeanne Moreau as Doll Tearsheet, and Sir Ralph Richardson as the narrator.

Seeing Falstaff at the center of the story for the first time, we can see what a gentle, pathetic, boastful, and good-hearted man he was. When Henry betrays him at the end; "I know thee not old man", it's all the more powerful. (For a comparison, see Kenneth Branagh's great Henry V (1989) for the same scene. Without the context, it's doesn't work as well.)

All the scenes in Chimes at Midnight are mythically beautiful; each could be framed, but the dialogue scenes are marred slightly by badly recorded and badly dubbed sound. The exterior scenes and the battles, are spectacular, and deserve a place in history next to Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai and other such perfect movie battle scenes. (According to Psychotronic Video magazine, Welles' second unit director, the Spanish gore/porno filmmaker Jesus Franco, shot these scenes. It's difficult to tell; there's nothing nearly as powerful as these scenes in neither Welles' repertoire, nor in Franco's.)

Chimes at Midnight has not been officially released on video in the U.S. It's available on second-class videotapes, but you really have to hunt for them. It deserves a nice DVD release, or even a restoration and theatrical re-release. Shakespeare enthusiasts might balk at the idea of having the beloved dialogue so mutilated, but my advice is: read the plays so that you're familiar with the dialogue, then see this film. It may be the finest example of Shakespeare on film, and certainly one of the greatest films ever made.

DVD Details: January, 2005: Chimes at Midnight was released on a Region 0, PAL DVD in Spain -- under its Spanish title Campanadas a medianoche -- a few years ago, and I only recently aquired the technology to be able to check it out. Yes, it's playable in any region of the world, but Americans still need a PAL-to-NTSC converter. It's not superb quality, but then the film itself never was, and this is certainly the best condition I've ever seen it in. The image comes letterboxed (1.85:1) with an optional Spanish language track and optional English and Spanish subtitles, though I noticed that the English subtitles don't exactly follow what's being said. I've seen this DVD sell on the Internet for as much as $35, but Xploited Cinema has it for about half that.

Starring: Orson Welles, Keith Baxter, Jeanne Moreau, Margaret Rutherford, John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson (voice), Fernando Rey
Written by: Orson Welles, adapted from several plays by William Shakespeare
Directed by: Orson Welles
MPAA Rating: NR
Language: English
Running Time: 119 minutes
Date: October 15, 1997