Page 87 - Shakespeare in the Movie From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love

76 / Shakespeare in the Movies

Falstaff represented a throwback to Vice figures of medieval moral-
ity plays, albeit transformed into a three-dimensional character; to
Welles, Falstaff is a fine fellow and the rotund symbol of everything
that's best in the world. Welles does not "act" the role, as he had
done with Macbeth or Othello, because Welles is Falstaff, with Sir
John's experiences paralleling Welles's own brilliant but brittle
career. There is "no distance between Welles and Falstaff," Joseph
McBride noted in his Orson Welles biography— which is key to the
film's greatness as an original work as well as its serious limitation
as cinematic Shakespeare.
When Shakespeare wrote Falstaff's early words to Hal, "Banish fat
Jack, banish all the world," the literary artist stood at a distance
from his character, giving an old blowhard a desperate line of self-
defense. When Welles recites that line, the artist is at one with Jack,
expressing this as simple, unvarnished truth. This was "quite a free
adaptation," as Welles biographer James Naremore put it. "It's really
quite a different drama," Welles freely admitted. In Welles's defense,
we should note that he gave his film its own name. By distancing it
from the source, Welles made clear this should be viewed (and
judged) as a new work by himself, inspired by an old one by Shake-
speare. "Chimes is a somber comedy," Welles continued, "the story
of the betrayal of a friendship." Shakespeare would have been
astounded by the first part of that statement; for him, the tetralogy
was a history cycle with comedy relief.
The Bard would have agreed with the latter, though, if with a sig-
nificant distinction: For Will the betrayal is perpetrated on Hal by
Falstaff; in Welles's vision it's the other way around. Shakespeare's
tetralogy is about the difficult birth of a golden age, the world's
"greatest garden"; for Welles, the golden age had already passed. So
the current action of it is filled with nostalgia for a bygone past,
entirely preferable to the present. This fits not only Welles's point of
view during this bleak period of his life but throughout his oeuvre,
since Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons concern them-
selves with just such situations.
In Falstaff, as in the plays, we encounter dual worlds: the cold,
ordered universe of the palace, the warm, chaotic realm of the
tavern. Long shots display the castle (representing Henry IV) atop
the hill. The tavern (representing Falstaff) is below, and Hal is con-
stantly moving back and forth between the two. Shakespeare would
have approved of such a mise en scene: castle and king on high, Fal-
staff down low—physically and, by implication, morally. By travers-