The final Welles film from or friends at Mr Bongo is FALSTAFF (CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT). The bard is immortal. Sure he is. Orson Welles it seems is also. Thanks to Mr Bongo, maybe he will be long remembered. As a child, I knew this film as CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT and as such that is what I will be calling it. Excuse me my sins for I know not what I do.
Sir John “Jack” Falstaff (Orson Welles) is a drunk. The accursed drink has taken him and so it seems Justice Shallow (Alan Webb). Both are never sober and entertaining of the young prince Hal (Keith Baxter). King Henry IV of England has succeeded Richard II, whom he has killed. Richard II’s true heir, Edmund Mortimer, is being held prisoner in Wales, while Mortimer’s cousins Northumberland, Worcester, and Northumberland’s son Hotspur are contemplating a rescue attempt to save Mortimer. Problems abound indeed. As you see this also sparks a plot to overthrow Henry and install a new king.
The bard is a tough master. One that found its strongest suiter in the work of Welles, who seemed to understand on multiple levels how to wrestle with his work. MACBETH from 1948 is well known and one of the best offerings of the bard onscreen from Welles. Also OTHELLO from 1951, when he left the US for Europe. Welles also understood how to make the bard staging innovative and contemporary. Take his all Black MACBETH (titled by some as the VOODOO MACBETH). Or CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT for instance. This is not a single Shakespearian piece. It is an amalgam and originated in 1939 as a stage play called Five Kings, which Welles wrote and partially staged. It was an ambitious adaptation of several Shakespeare plays that chronicled the stories of Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VI and Richard III. Its sources were Richard II, Henry IV, Part 1, Henry IV, Part 2, Henry V, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Henry VI, Part 1, Henry VI, Part 2, Henry VI, Part 3 and Richard III—sometimes collectively called the “War of the Roses cycle”.
His filmic interpretation (for this is what we have here) translates some what well. Visually it is intoxicating (although the Mr Bongo transfer is not). The comedic angles add notes that capture the darker and sardonic points about the state (and skulduggery) in British kingdom making. Welles grants us a paradoxical prism to see from. Drunk stupor, menacing mischief and politic players. It feels like Shakespeare but feels as much like Welles. The Mr Bongo disc robs some of its best parts by avoiding extras and taking the less quality restoration as its starting point. Which means that it is worth getting for the price but as Criterion will no doubt release it in the UK, might be worth waiting a time for.
