Page 168 - Shakespeare in the Movie From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love

The Green-Eyed Monster I 157

Welles's art would change the nature of moviegoing, forcing a viewer
to see in an entirely new way—that being, of course, Welles's way.
It's a way that subsequently influenced the later films of Stanley
Kubrick, who in movies as diverse as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Barry
Lyndon, and The Shining insisted on playing down conventional
drama in favor of photogenic elements. Though Welles's Macbeth
was shot in a studio and Othello on actual locations, they ultimately
express the same attitude: that of a man who creates his own world
out of the raw materials at hand, whether artificial or real. He is the
director as God, and each individual film serves as one of his plan-
ets, with the auteur's entire oeuvre constituting an alternative uni-
verse.
There is a strong dose of Sergei Eisenstein in Welles's visualiza-
tion of the past. In particular, he appears taken with the operatic
quality and a stark sense of the past as existing halfway between
history and legend, as expressed in that director's Ivan the Terrible.
Even the editing is Eisensteinian: For example, as Welles the actor
becomes consumed with jealousy, repressesing it so no one will
notice, Welles the director cuts to the fortress's cannons, firing one
after the other, expressing his hero's hidden feelings. Onstage it
would have been necessary for the performer to convey feelings
through controlled use of vocal tones and body language; in the
cinema, editing is acting. Likewise, when Welles the director cuts
from an image of Welles the actor snuffing out the candle to Desde-
mona, we know by the symbolism in the montage that her fate is
sealed.
"I have no objection to Mr. Welles having himself photographed
as he dashes through a liberal selection of Italy's architectural gems
and curiosities," Robert Hatch ventured in the Nation.

He is a splendid figure of a man and the chase is invigorating.
But I wish he wouldn't try to tell a story at the same time—par-
ticularly, a story so terrible, one touching so closely the general
madness of humanity. His voice is an impressive instrument,
but I could not hear half he said, he panted so; and I cannot
attend closely to Othello's tragedy when he sticks his head
right out of the screen and drips sweat in my lap. I haven't got
the damned handkerchief!

Clever as Hatch's gag may be, Welles attempted to create a cine-
matic equivalent of the intimacy of live performance, with solilo-
quies and asides conveyed by direct address to the moviegoer. The