CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT: Blu-ray (Peppercorn-Wormser 1965) Criterion Collection
“If you want a happy ending that depends, of course,
on where you stop your story.”
-
Orson Welles
Orson Welles’
never thought small. Indeed, Welles considered himself the cinema’s enfant
terrible long before others were using the phrase to describe his sense of
self-professed genius that, in fact, was about as undiluted and bewildering as
any of the more readily recognized in the history of humanity. That Welles’
chose artistry over, say, science, channeling his insight and immersive
indulgences, often to affect his own reputation negatively and thus severely
hamper his ability to get things done the way he would have wished, is one of
the titanic and senselessly incongruous misfortunes of the latter 20th
century in film. Welles, who shocked complacent New Yorkers with his all-black
Harlem stage production of Macbeth,
then equally caused an entire nation to cringe in fear with his cunning radio
adaptation of War of the Worlds; who
rocked the fundamental core of yellow journalism newspaper tycoon, William
Randolph Hearst with his scathing indictments run amuck in Citizen Kane; was forcibly removed from even more ambitious
excesses by RKO’s management on The
Magnificent Ambersons. In mid-life, Welles would find no place for his glint
of virtuosity; relegated as an actor for hire, dogged by most unfair criticism
from the cheap seats, and effectively denied assuming the directorial seat in
American movies again after 1958’s Touch
of Evil; another butchered masterpiece. As the girth of Welles’ respect in
the industry steadily eroded his own physical stature exponentially widened: a
lifetime of gluttonous indulgences exacting their toll on Welles’ health. Even
so, in his later years, Welles would illustrate he had lost none of his verve
or genius for intelligent storytelling.
Case in point:
Chimes at Midnight (1965) – an irrefutably
mesmerizing magnum opus, intermittently discounted as ‘Shakespearean goulash’ for its utterly ingenious melding together
of six plays. Chimes at Midnight is maybe
Orson Welles’ last great achievement, and, absent from public view for far too
long, thanks to petty rights issues and a proliferation of poorly rendered
bootlegs chronically cluttering up the internet. In Chimes at Midnight, Welles creates an intriguing inter-connectivity
between five Shakespearean plays – and The
Merry Wives of Windsor - to tell the story of Sir John Falstaff – only a
minor figure in Will’s estimation, but the crux of the whole shebang as far as
Welles is concerned. Chimes at Midnight
derives its aegis from an address given by Falstaff to Master Shallow in Act 3,
Scene 2 of Henry IV Part 2; a sort
of embittered farewell to the follies and foibles of youth, dragged far too
long into middle-aged obscurity by a lusty fool, lacking only in the realization
this ship has already sailed and he is no longer on it. To suggest Welles was
obsessed with the character of Falstaff is an understatement. The young protégé,
schooled in the hedonism of life by his father, Richard – a so described ‘Champagne Charlie’ drunken pleasure
seeker – and later, to be mentored in the art of expressing himself on stage at
the Todd Seminary for Boys by progressive Head Master Roger Hill, would hone
the beginnings of his craft here, exponentially compounded by Richard’s premature
death when Welles was only fifteen. In part, encouraged by Hill to administer ‘tough love’ to his father, in the hopes it
would reform Richard from his inebriated carousing, Welles never entirely
forgave himself for this ostracizing; an act virtually mirrored in Prince Hal’s
admonishment of Falstaff from Act 5, Part 2 of Henry IV; the penultimate “I
know thee not, old man…” speech, movingly played out in Chimes at Midnight between Welles, appearing
aggrieved and yet, so teeming in admiration for the austere Prince Hal,
superbly vetted by Keith Baxter.
Baxter’s
involvement in the film – indeed, even in the play that inauspiciously preceded
it with temperate debuts in Dublin and Belfast (virtually to go unnoticed
elsewhere) – was almost a happy accident; Welles, intrigued by the young
thespian’s audition, the only player not to perform a scene from Shakespeare,
at the end of which Welles thanked Baxter for his reading and offered him the
part outright without delay. Baxter would later describe Welles as not only a
consummate professional, but a benevolent – almost paternal – influence; a
quality of kindness for which the younger task-mastering Welles was hardly
known. Undeniably, this bro-mantic chemistry spilled over from stage to screen
to mutual friendship; Welles interpretation of Falstaff as an inherently good,
though slovenly pursuer of life’s pleasures is a quality most treasured by the
impressionable and fun-loving Hal; torn in his devotion to John Gielgud’s Henry
IV, a remote and unaffectionate father, and Welles’ Falstaff, the surrogate to
whom he cannot entirely surrender his heart, and, in the end, must banish from
the kingdom he has inherited in order to save face within the court – and – court
of popular opinion.
Chimes at Midnight is so transparently the innermost
of all Welles’ passion projects; Welles astutely described as “a man of many nostalgias” and profoundly
affected by his own loss of parental guidance as a boy, that even in middle
age, he was as yet unable to crawl from beneath its deprivation, sincerely
pining for the childhood of his dreams, so clearly imagined as sheer
perfection, innocence and undiluted happiness; the quintessence of a highly
romanticized ‘merry ole England’ never to have actually existed except in
Welles’ mind’s eye. Even while at Todd, Welles endeavored to bring Falstaff’s
troubled legacy to the forefront of Shakespeare; later, under his Mercury
Theater Players, indiscriminately rearranging the Bard’s prose for Five Kings; an elaborate play merging both
parts of Henry IV, 3 parts of Henry VI and Richard III. In hindsight,
this first attempt proved a weighty false start. The play was a bomb. But its muse
never departed Welles’, continuing to fester, morph and evolve until 1960’s
stage production of Chimes at Midnight.
Although this too would become something of a fiscal flop, Welles’ ability to
express a measure of opulence in both performance and essential Elizabethan
style, garnered him some very favorable reviews; in fact, the best of his entire
stage career.
However,
convincing the movies to embrace Chimes
at Midnight was an entirely different matter. Indeed, Welles, once – if all too briefly –
regarded as an untouchable among his peers, was by 1963 persona non grata in
Hollywood’s artistic community. Point blank: Welles had gambled and lost one
too many times on projects chiefly sacrificed by the powers that be; The Lady from Shanghai (1947) and Touch of Evil (1958) virtually
finishing off any chances he might have had to return to the states as a director.
Arguably, Welles was always an independent, merely lucky enough to toil,
however fleetingly exploiting every luxury afforded an auteur in an industry
never truly to respect such artistry in tandem with pure profit. His compounded
box office disappointments aside, Welles arguably never failed in achieving a
sort of repeatedly staved off greatness; vaster than mere odes to his own
celebrity, and later, to be misconstrued as infamous as a ‘failed genius’. Despite both his reputation as his obvious
talent, it would take Welles nearly 4 years to launch a movie of Chimes at Midnight; the necessary funds
cobbled together from a consortium of independent sources, Welles repeatedly
running out of money and progressively scaling down his extras and overhead to
keep the company afloat; turning to independent producer, Harry Saltzman –
then, briefly flush with capital, and selling off his controlling interests; a
snafu, later to inadvertently result in the finished film barely seeing the
light of day and prematurely pulled from circulation after Saltzman – now,
equally as desperate for cash – fragmented, then sold off his stakes in Chimes at Midnight to a smaller syndicate
of investors. Alas, these neither understood the movie, nor best how to market
it to a broader audience. And so the
picture died, quietly, alone and seemingly, without any hope for a resurrection
on home video.
In later
years, when asked by an interviewer about his own immortality as an artist and
his beliefs in an afterlife, Welles affectionately mused if for no other reason
he would be admitted past the pearly gates on the merits of Chimes at Midnight alone. And indeed,
if such a system of checks and balances is merited, then Chimes at Midnight warrants Welles for such saintly consideration.
It is a movie imbued with Welles’ appetite for performance, but also generously
struck by a sense of his own – then – middle-aged melancholy; a movie meant to
distinctly – even malignantly – linger in the heart and mind as a sort of sad-eyed/clear-eyed
statement about surrendering the past to an uncertain future; not only Falstaff’s,
but for Welles; a bloodied, yet unbowed bon vivant, whose fateful/fitful au
revoir to youthful folly, remains a reflection unvarnished in its moral decline
and decay of life itself, as seen with precision through Welles’ own repeatedly
interrupted legacy as a film maker. That it should have taken some fifty plus
years for audiences, video-philes, movie lovers and Welles’ devotees to experience
Chimes at Midnight in anything better
than grotesquely truncated bootlegs is an oversight bordering on artistic
travesty. Certainly, Welles could not have imagined an afterlife for his opus
magnum in his emeritus years; having moved on, or rather, forcibly pushed away
and down a few pegs on the artistic ladder, denied his craft and relying on
commercial endorsements for bare survival; frequently made the brunt of pithy,
if good-natured one-liners lobbed at his reputation by late night talk show
guru, Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show;
Welles’ legacy as the enfant terrible of the cinema seemed then unlikely to
downright impossible to fathom, with Chimes
at Midnight as its most elusive phantasm.
Welles’
interpretation of Falstaff as an inherently benevolent man’s man, driven by
pagan appetites, later to be afflicted by all too devastating disappointments
because, at his core, he remains inwardly tender and vulnerable to a fault, is
a figure unlike anything even Shakespeare might have envisioned; Welles,
discriminately borrowing, excising and switching out lines of dialogue from the
Bard’s folio to create an impactful, poignant and gargantuan tragic figure, so
obviously set much too close to his own bosom. And in performance, perhaps more
so than in any other committed to film, Welles allows his audience to see
beyond that usually hermetically sealed core into rawer emotions; one great
artist acknowledging another’s spark of incandescence prematurely snuffed out.
Physically, Welles’ Falstaff is a man well past his prime. Indeed, Welles
himself was suffering greatly from several ailments at the time Chimes at Midnight went before the
cameras. And yet, Welles – like Falstaff – is sustained by the illusion he has
remained the cultivator of a greater art; in Falstaff’s case; the reformation
of Prince Hal’s primal soul; tested in the contents of Hal’s character through
the wenching and wailing of happier times, retired for the ages at play’s end.
The cruelty of Hal’s banishment does not diminish Falstaff’s modicum of pride, smoothly
merged with an air of disbelief. As, most literally, son has taken over from
father as heir to the throne of England, so too does the newly appointed
sovereign liege now set all favor and friendship aside and behind him. For, uneasy
lies this head that wears this crown.
On the set,
the camaraderie between actors remained as heartfelt and genuine; Keith Baxter
taking his acting cues from Welles in their superbly shared and carefully
orchestrated ‘conversations’ between
Falstaff and Hal; both, readily idolizing Sir John Gielgud from a distance as
their irrefutable template for the classically trained Shakespearean artiste. “He was the least grand person you can
imagine,” Baxter recalls of Gielgud, “Genuine
and giving and so meticulously focused in giving Orson what he wanted.” For
his part, Gielgud adored Welles, describing Chimes at Midnight as one of the most symbiotic and rewarding of
all his movie-making experiences. Yet, little
is often written about Welles’ diffidence as an actor; this towering figure,
straddling virtually all major mediums of 20th century entertainment
(radio, theater, film and television), yet frequently compelled to leave his
own close-ups and reverse shots to the end of a day’s shoot, after the sets had
been virtually vacated by all but a handful of technicians and, of course,
cinematographer, Edmond Richard. And
herein, Welles expresses some of his most riveting soliloquies; tomes about the
expiration of youth and time, and, the ephemeral qualities of life; Falstaff’s
ennui with it, and the advancing queer security of giving in to death; dovetailing
into a kind of inexplicably epic truth about every man’s life: he gives all he
can with no tangible remuneration often coming his way in kind…at least, not in
this life.
Baxter would
later recall how, for Falstaff’s penultimate admonishment by Hal, Welles gave
him the only piece of direction in the entire film, suggesting ‘no tears’,
though neither adverse to Baxter choosing to provide them. “I was suddenly very full of emotion for him,” Baxter explained, “…because we both knew it was not just
goodbye in the film, but between Orson Welles and me. He said ‘We’ve come a
long way, haven’t we?’ and I said, ‘Yes…and we laughed and he said, ‘Listen,
you’ll do the speech. You may feel overcome by emotion…your eyes filling with
tears. That’s fine. But I wouldn’t do it because audiences don’t like seeing a
man cry. Besides, nothing is more moving than seeing somebody controlling the
desire to express emotion.’” Done without tears, though undeniably with an
overriding arc of humanity coursing as from these severed lifelines in a
fractured bond of friendship, the moment caught on camera is fraught with an
indescribably articulate sense of wretchedness and authenticity that both
stirs, but then settles the point of the tale. “You see this whole mixture of humiliation and pride,” Baxter
concludes, “He’s looking up at me as if
to say, ‘That’s my boy. He’s coming to his own. He’s the king’. I find that
terribly moving.”
The other
scene worth noting in Chimes at Midnight
is the battle sequence; Worchester’s (Fernando Rey) armies raised against
Prince Hal in a hellish assault, staged with only 150 extras at a park in the
middle of Madrid; the sequence touched by an inspired bit of kismet – a light
rain begun to fall, thus creating a mist and mud into which Welles thrust all
his vigor and vitality to hew a penetrating, and unanticipatedly violent
sequence, meant to punctuate a sort of ruined chivalry. Welles based the battle
on several well-known paintings; Paolo Uccello’s 1440 The Battle of San Romano, and Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s 1562
masterpiece, The Triumph of Death.
For further inspiration, Welles characterized Falstaff’s physicality, a
girth-laden, if cherub-esque and wispy-haired Santa Claus, on Eduard von
Grützner 1905 portrait of the man. During the battle sequence, staged in
convincing costumes nevertheless made entirely of plastic in Italy,
cinematographer, Edmond Richard was thrown, concussed and taken to hospital;
Welles, unnerved and running out of time, taking charge the camera to pursuit
the remainder of shots needed, but already played out in his mind’s eye, to
complete the sequence, cutting it together later this same day with his trio of
editors, Elena Jaumandreu, Fritz Muller and Peter Parasheles, employing
commando-styled precision. Welles was actually editing Chimes at Midnight as it was shot; much too eager to see how all
the pieces of his dailies and rushes would fit together later on, and thus avoiding
the need to go back at some later date to re-shoot inserts or retakes to make
these sequences work. In the eleventh hour of production, Welles unfortunately
ran out of money; his urgently cobbled together deal for another $500,000.00 on
loan from Harry Saltzman leading to grave complications over film rights and
the extremely limited distribution of Chimes
at Midnight when Saltzman elected to parcel off his investment to various
other investors for a quick buck.
Despite its
tight budget, Chimes at Midnight has
the appearance of a grand epic, thanks in part to Welles having shot the
picture in Spain. Our story, ostensibly, begins in the immediate past,
Falstaff, newly returned from his admonishment at court and commenting with
Master Shallow (Alan Webb) about having seen ‘the chimes at midnight’ – or rather, the last golden days of
debauching swept asunder by the sands of time. He is old, and tired and very
much realizing the follies of youth long behind him. We regress to Westminster
Abbey where a weary King Henry IV (John Gielgud) has grave concerns over the
onset of a civil war. Henry is lamentably certain his son, Prince Hal (Keith
Baxter) is neither worthy to succeed him on the throne, nor up to the task of
defending England’s honor against influences that would seek to destroy her.
The King is particularly infuriated by Hal’s devotion to Sir John Falstaff (Orson
Welles); the pair frequenting Mistress Quickly’s (Margaret Rutherford) house of
ill repute - the Boar’s Head Tavern. Things reach an impasse when Henry
‘Hotspur’ Percy (Norman Rodway), shunned at court, leads a rebellion against
the Crown for which Hal must rise up to defend the King’s honor and establish a
more well-grounded precedence of his own.
Back at the Boar's
Head, Falstaff fibs to Hal and Ned Poins (Tony Beckley) about money stolen from
his purse. The pair dispels Falstaff's story and shortly, through their drunken
revelry, a few painful truths are revealed; Falstaff, pretending to be the
King, chastising Hal for spending all his time with common criminals, while
naming himself as the prince’s one virtuous friend, to which Hal, equally
disguised as his own father, quietly refers to Falstaff a ‘misleader of youth.’
Hal’s pilgrimage to the castle incurs the real Henry’s ire. Hal’s behavior, as
far as Henry is concerned, is hardly befitting a gentleman and certainly
nothing like a future King. But now, Hal passionately professes to defend Henry’s
kingdom from Hotspur’s approach and equally to redeem his own good name in
battle. The King's army, including Falstaff, set off to engage the uprising.
Gravely concerned that Hal has miscalculated, the King arranges a détente with
Worcester. He offers to absolve Hotspur and his men of the crime of treason if
they surrender immediately. Incensed, Hal pledges to personally kill Hotspur
and Worcester lies to Hotspur, explaining Henry’s truer intent is to execute
all traitors to the Crown. The armies meet in the bloody Battle of Shrewsbury.
Alas, Falstaff shows his truer colors by hiding among the shrubs for most of
this conflict. After a ruthless exchange of steel on the battlefield, Hotspur’s
men are defeated and Hotspur and Hal come to blows in a hellish duel. Falstaff
observes from the relative safety of the bushes as Hal narrowly manages to
plunge his sword into his adversary. At court, Henry sentences Worcester to be
hanged and takes the rest of his rebels as prisoners.
But now,
Falstaff commits a mortal sin, carrying Hotspur’s body into court and claiming
the victory as his own. While the King does not believe Falstaff for one
moment, he nevertheless continues to frown upon his own son and the ignoble
company he keeps. From here, either to hasten the plot along, or perhaps due to
monetary constraints, Welles somewhat deteriorates the rest of the film’s run
time to montage; all enemies to the Crown put to death by 1408. We return to
Henry's court, the King incurably ill and slipping in and out of consciousness.
Hal visits the castle and presumes his father, lying still on his death bed,
has already expired. He reaches for the crown at Henry’s side and places it
atop his own head. Henry is stirred and with great conviction finally surrenders
his faith in Hal to succeed him on the throne; dying only several moments later.
We regress to the beginning of the film, Falstaff and Shallow, learning of
Henry’s demise, hurrying to court to witness Hal’s coronation. Bleary-eyed and
ebullient to a fault, Falstaff cannot contain his exuberance. He interrupts the
ceremony with fruitful promise of better things to come as a trusted advisory. But
Hal has forsaken their past together and turns away from his old friend now. As
Falstaff looks on with a thoroughly poetic mixture of wounded pride and abject
despair, Hal banishes him from his court forever. The coronation proceeds,
leaving Falstaff isolated and mortally sick in his heart and soul. He dies a
short while later at the Boar's Head Tavern, leaving Mistress Quickly, his
favorite prostitute, (Jeanne Moreau), Shallow and a few other friends to
quietly mourn the loss. The gathered reason Falstaff has died of a broken
heart. In epilogue we learn Hal went on to govern England as a noble sovereign.
Chimes at Midnight is an exquisitely gloomy affair;
Welles ingenious amalgamation of Shakespeare, with bits borrowed from The
Merry Wives of Windsor, telescopically concentrated on the calamity of
Falstaff. The picture’s set pieces - the gruesome battle and Hal’s coronation –
are equally magnificent and serve as bookends to the second and third acts of
this movie. In hindsight, it is a supreme misfortune none of the American
critics sitting in judgment on Chimes at
Midnight afforded it anything better than a smite in summation of Welles’
other financial failures, with New York Times’ critic, Bosley Crowthers
delivering the most supremely cruel, misinformed and judgmental blow of all,
suggesting “Evidently, Mr. Welles’
reading of Falstaff ranges between a farcical concept of him and a mawkish
sentimental attitude.” Crowthers’ arrogance seems to have carried the most
ballast among picture-paying attendees with the other critics quickly following
suit – all, ironically, except for the usually caustic Pauline Kael, who
thought Chimes at Midnight one of
the best independently made movies in a long while. Those able to withstand, or
perhaps ignore Crowther’s haughty diatribe were treated to a spectacle of high
stakes drama, the likes of which few movies of its vintage, and fewer still in
Welles’ canon, had aspired to express so concisely, and, with such heartfelt
and equally as earthy opinion. The reprieve, alas, was not enough to render Chimes at Midnight a box office
failure; merely the latest from Orson Welles, whose reputation now appeared to advocate
an artist well past his prime, if indeed, Welles had ever forged such an epoch
of self-discovery in the first place. With its feuding rights’ holders unable
to settle their differences in any tangible way, Chimes at Midnight was unceremoniously kept hidden from public view
for decades; its memory, expunged from the world of entertainment except for
two extremely limited home video releases on VHS in the mid-1980’s, and then, to
suffer even more egregiously the indignation of badly faded bootlegs, dumped on
the marketplace around the world. For decades, Chimes at Midnight remained the Holy Grail of all Welles impeded work
of art, with occasional ruminations about a pending DVD and/or Blu-ray release
in the works.
Well, the wait
is mercifully over; the rights resolved sufficiently enough to allow the
Criterion Collection its long overdue reissue of Chimes at Midnight in hi-def. The results, alas, are not altogether
satisfying, though they surpass virtually any and all previously issued home
video incarnations. For starters, this
is the first release to properly frame the image in its original 1.66:1 aspect
ratio. Criterion has advertised this release as deriving from a new hi-def
master. Of this I have no doubt, except I also have become accustom to
Criterion’s wording to know when they say ‘new’
and ‘hi-def’ without offering further
specs, the scan is likely a 1K offering, albeit, from elements having received
more than a modicum of badly needed restoration. But I will venture on a ledge
to state a 4K – even 2K remaster would have done more to greatly resolve some
of the digital artifacts on display herein; also, minor edge enhancement and a
grain structure, looking indigenous to its source in close-ups, but equally
harboring some rather harsh, digitized grit in long shots and, in particular,
plaguing the coronation sequence where grain bounces from marginal to heavy and
slightly obtrusive. Overall, it is the inconsistencies that are the problem:
weaker than anticipated black levels and residual softness creeping in around
the peripheries of the film frame. The graver weakness here is the audio.
Virtually all of Chimes at Midnight
was post-synced; Welles, paying little attention to the audibility perhaps,
pressed by an hourly shrinking budget. Although Criterion’s engineers have done
their utmost to restore and remove age-related hiss and crackle, nothing can
surmount the original and extremely variable sound design, barely discernible
and often inexplicably garbled in spots.
Criterion has
rounded out the extras nicely; an audio commentary by noted historian, James
Naremore, fact-laden and informative. We get four interviews, roughly totaling two
hours; with Keith Baxter, Welles’ daughter, Beatrice, critic Joseph McBride,
and, noted Welles’ biographer/actor, Simon Callow each providing in-depth back
stories on the making of the movie from their own very unique perspectives and
virtually with little to no overlap of content. Bravo, and bravely done! All four are a veritable feast with Callow’s
the most comprehensive, and Baxter’s the most heartfelt. We also get a little
over ten minutes excised from a 1965 episode of The Merv Griffin Show
where Welles discusses the upcoming theatrical release of Chimes at Midnight and waxes affectionately about other movies in
his career. Finally, there is an
eloquent essay written by film scholar, Michael Anderegg, regrettably presented
in a folded pamphlet instead of Criterion’s usually bound booklet. If I could
impart a suggestion on Criterion herein: please, fellas - no more fold-out
pamphlets. They are annoying – like looking for directions on a map, and, with
repeat viewing, they are not nearly as durable as the booklet format, creating
creases to obscure the text. Parting thoughts: Chimes at Midnight is an extraordinary achievement, made by a film
maker with few – if any – peers. Welles’ genius shines through the cost-cutting
shortcomings and, in fact, manages to achieve a level of visual artistry one
sincerely might not expect to see from such a tightly managed movie. Criterion’s
Blu-ray advances in all the necessary departments. But again, I cannot help but
suggest the movie’s overall visual presentation would have been better served
by a 2K (preferably 4K) remastering effort. Bottom line: recommended with
caveats.
FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)
4
VIDEO/AUDIO
3.5
EXTRAS
5+
Comments