Page 164 - Shakespeare in the Movie From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love

The Green-Eyed Monster I 153

another by Arturo Ambrosio in 1914) and Germany (Max Mack, in
1918).

Cinthio's Othello
Othello
Worner Film, 1922; Dimitri Buchowetzki

In 1919, the German golden age began with The Cabinet of Dr. Cali-
gari. Werner Krauss, who played the title role, was picked by direc-
tor Dimitri Buchowetzki for lago in his Teutonic variation; this
made sense, since Caligari, like lago, is a master manipulator. The
era's other great star, Ernil Jannings (The Last Laugh; The Blue
Angel) always allowed full tragic dimension to anguished souls; he
seemed the perfect choice for the anguished Othello. What seemed a
likely classic instead emerged as a disaster. It was a commercial fail-
ure in its day and notably inferior in hindsight to the era's enduring
milestones.
During a scene in which frantic lago attempts to eat the incrimi-
nating evidence of the handkerchief, Krauss is guilty of embarrassing
overacting. Jannings, an expert at playing physically unattactive
characters, proved a poor choice for the charismatic Moor. Film his-
torian Robert Hamilton Ball complained: "What emerges is more
like Cinthio's narrative than Shakespeare's play, a bald and not very
well told story of primitive passions without nobility, romance, or
poetry, a complicated and unbelievable melodrama of unsympathetic
characters." Though there are marvelous moments, including some
strikingly surreal shots, they play as artificial rather than functional,
art for art's sake that in no way reveals character or theme.

Citizen Othello
The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice
Mogador/Mercury Productions, 1952; Orson Welles

Orson Welles's Hollywood career was over by 1948. In seven short
years, he had degenerated from boy genius to unemployable has-