Page 85 - Shakespeare in the Movie From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love

74 / Shakespeare in the Movies

plimentary of, rather than similar to, movies. As Marshall McLuhan
later noted, the medium is the message; therefore, the content of a
particular play should dictate whether it is adapted for film or TV,
and such decisions should not be made arbitrarily.

The Death of Chivalry
Falstaff or The Chimes at Midnight

International films Espagnol, 1965; Orson Welles

Although never filmed in the silent or early sound eras, the two
parts of Henry IV and the subsequent Henry V all but beg for a large
scale. The focal figure isn't the title character but his oldest son,
Hal. A wastrel frequenting the London inns, Hal causes consterna-
tion in his father, who wonders what will become of his beloved
Britain when this "unthrifty" youth ascends to the throne. "The old
king is a murderer," Orson Welles once flatly stated, who "has
usurped the throne." Shakespeare actually conceived of Bolingbroke
as a decent, if dubious, man who did not ambitiously seek greatness;
rather, he had greatness thrust upon him. Henry IV ploddingly does
the best he can, all the while knowing he is not truly "legitimate"—
though Hal will be.
Welles first expressed interest in tying various chronicle plays into
a single epic while mounting the Mercury Theater stage production
Five Kings in 1938. The show was a failure, but without that early
experiment Welles might never have brought so glorious a work as
Falstaff (a.k.a. The Chimes at Midnight) to life on-screen. Begrudg-
ingly admitting that five kings were two too many, Welles settled for
a brief glance at one (Richard II), followed by portraits of the next
two (Henry IV and V). Welles tightened the Henry plays incorporat-
ing the finale of Richard II at the beginning, the opening of Henry V
at the end, plus several lines from The Merry Wives of Windsor,
which features Sir John Falstaff and friends but in a less serious sit-
uation. Falstaff, like the plays, is composed of three parallel stories:
the unhappy reign and painfully slow demise of Henry IV, ever eager
to do right by England; the initial decadence of Prince Hal, whose
wild behavior may be God's punishment for Henry IV's treatment
of Richard; and the boisterous, bawdy comic misadventures of Fal-
staff, Hal's delightfully dangerous foster father, who was tagged