The Tragedy of Othello - The Moor of Venice (1952)

Director: Orson Welles
Writers: William Shakespeare
Stars: Orson Welles, Suzanne Cloutier, Micheál MacLiammóir
Runtime: 90 minutes    

Plot: The general Othello is manipulated into thinking that his new wife Desdemona has been carrying on an affair with one of his officers Michael Cassio when in reality it is all part of the scheme of a bitter lieutenant named Iago.

Review: To be completely forthright about Mr. Welles, he has a wonderful skill at image-making but a blind spot where substance is concerned. For instance, he makes of the murder of Desdemona a chilling nightmarish display of stark faces, frenzied movements, architectural compositions, and shifting lights, cut into a montage with accompanying music and screams. But he backs up this hot, erratic action with little feeling for character or regard for the genuine human torment that is implied in this melodramatic display.

It would be hard to improve upon this rendering of Othello for sheer mise-en-scène. Mr. Welles has got Venice and Cyprus down to the ground. All the urbanity and stony beauty of the great Adriatic port and the island of Othello's triumph are made sharply visual in this film.

Suzanne Cloutier's Desdemona is a beautiful, frail, and gauzy girl who might be tremendously moving if you could sense her in relation to her man. But Mr. Welles has kept her an image of feminine anguish and nothing more. There are flashes of brilliant suggestion in this tumbled, slurred, and helter-skelter film with a little Shakespeare and a lot of Welles.

Reviewed by Mohaiminul Islam