Orson Welles - Chimes at Midnight Is a Classic Worthy of Citizen Kane
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Why Orson Welles’ Chimes at Midnight Is a Classic Worthy of Citizen Kane
Chimes of Midnight is a thoughtful, emotional epic that may even rival Citizen Kane as the pinnacle achievement of Orson Welles' career.
Any director who creates an instantly iconic film as their debut feature will always be expected to reach that level of success on every subsequent project; it’s an unfair standard, but film films and scholars can’t help but expect the same level of excellence from a filmmaker who initially impressed them. As great as George Romero’s other films were, he will always be known as the mastermind behind Night of the Living Dead; similarly, Jordan Peele will always be referred to as "the writer/director of Get Out," even though Us and Nope were also well-received. There’s no filmmaker who learned that better than the great Orson Welles.
Welles’ directorial debut was Citizen Kane, a film that many have cited as the greatest of all-time. The American Film Institute named Citizen Kane #1 on its all-time list, where it beat out other classics like The Godfather, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Casablanca, and Lawrence of Arabia to reach the top spot. While Citizen Kane was enough to make Welles a legend, he continued to create interesting projects throughout his career. Between noir thrillers like The Stranger and The Lady From Shanghai to subversive documentaries like F for Fake, Welles showed that he wasn’t interested in coasting on the success of Citizen Kane for the rest of his career. In fact, his 1966 Shakespearean adaptation Chimes of Midnight is a thoughtful, emotional epic that may even rival Citizen Kane as the pinnacle achievement of his career.
A Creative Slant on Shakespeare
Chimes at Midnight isn’t the first time that Welles looked to Shakespeare for inspiration; much of Citizen Kane’s narrative is based on the tenets of tragedy that can be found in The Bard’s most heartbreaking stories. Welles directed versions of Othello and Hamlet, each of which thoughtfully and dutifully captured the same beautiful words and brought them to life with an excellent group of actors (including Welles himself, who played the title role in both projects). However, Welles decided to take a slightly different approach with Chimes at Midnight. Rather than adapt one of Shakespeare's most iconic plays word-for-word, he would follow the journey of the character Falstaff over the course of several different stories.
Related: The Best Orson Welles Films, Ranked
Chimes At Midnight draws primarily from Henry IV, Part 1 and Henry IV, Part 2, but also includes segments from Richard II, Henry V, and The Merry Wives of Windsor. In addition to Welles, Chimes At Midnight also featured Keith Baxter as Prince Hal, John Gielgud as Henry IV, Jeanne Moreau as Doll Tearsheet, and Margaret Rutherford as Mistress Quickly. However, their performances were differentiated from other interpretations because Welles only showed the moments of their lives when they would have interacted with Falstaff. Welles chose to catalog a Shakespearean version of history, but he simply presented it using a different story structure.
Welles was interested in the "betrayal of friendship" that drew these stories together, and was interested in playing a more mature version of Falstaff than he had seen in previous adaptations. At the time, word-for-word adaptations were incredibly popular in Hollywood; Laurence Olivier’s 1948 version of Hamlet even won the Academy Award for Best Picture. However, Welles was always a rebel within the industry, and believed that he could find success taking a different slant on the beloved material.
Welles’ Personal Self-Analysis
Like all of his work, Welles put a lot of personal insight and emotion into Chimes at Midnight. Interestingly, all of Welles’ films have a personal connection to the age that he was at when he made them. Citizen Kane is the story of the loss of childhood innocence told by a young man, and The Lady From Shanghai showed Welles as a confused bachelor trying to discover what romance really means. In Chimes at Midnight, Welles reflected on his experiences and reimagined the characters to reflect his own struggle choosing between paternal figures as a young man.
Welles’ father Richard Head Welles was very much a figure who resembled Falstaff, as Welles’ biographer Simon Callow described him as a "a drunkard, a trickster, a braggart, a womanizer, a gentleman and a charmer — and he is rejected by the person he loves the most." Similar to how Prince Hal is forced to get Falstaff out of trouble, Welles was often responsible for watching out for his father. When a young Welles attended the Todd Seminary for Boys in Woodstock, Illinois, he was mentored by his longtime mentor Dr. Maurice Bernstein and the Todd School for Boys headmaster Roger Hill.
Related: What Really Happened During Orson Welles' The War of the Worlds Broadcast?
Welles’ biographer Barbara Leaming chronicled this friction by exploring the tension that resulted from Welles’ dueling father figures. After a young Welles took the advice of headmaster Hill and rejected outreach from his father, Richard Head Welles passed away shortly thereafter. It was something Welles would always feel responsible for, and this inspired his depiction of Prince Hal in Chimes At Midnight. Hal’s inability to protect Falstaff at the end of Chimes at Midnight works on an emotional level, but it’s even more powerful knowing the context within Welles’ mind.
Incredible Production Scope and Scale
Welles has always been a showman, and it’s no surprise that he so often ran into production setbacks and financial issues with his films, as they all required massive sets and groundbreaking technical achievements. Welles spared no expense in bringing the castles and battlefields of medieval times to life in stunning detail; the Battle of Shrewsbury in 1403 is particularly gruesome and epic, even if Falstaff himself adds a touch of humor to the events by hiding and cowering.
While the battlefield scenes in Chimes at Midnight might pale in comparison to modern Shakespeare adaptations, such as Justin Kurzel’s Macbeth or Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V, they’re just as impactful due to the emotional weight that Welles installs each character with. Additionally, Chimes at Midnight brings back some of Welles’ best technical advisors, and features stunning cinematography by Edmond Richard and an incredible score by Angelo Francesco Lavagnino that reflects the tragic end to the film’s pivotal relationship.
Liam Gaughan is a writer at MovieWeb. He has been writing film reviews and news coverage for eight years with bylines at Collider, Dallas Observer, About.com, Taste of Cinema, Dallas Morning News, Schmoes Know, Rebel Scum, and Central Track. He aims to get his spec scripts produced and currently writes short films and stage plays. He lives in McKinney, TX.
Tags: Cinesemiotics, Citizenkane, Zas, Orsonwelles, Filmqueue