Falstaff
I am on a
roll with odd film experiences. Seriously, the mid-sixties are awash with them.
“Falstaff (Chimes at Midnight)” is no exception.
It is a
period piece in a medieval setting around some English king and his son and as
such should be quite watchable, but as this story is based on a Shakespeare
play or two, the actors are all speaking in that particular Shakespearian, declamatory
and antiquated manner. Add to that that the sound was absolutely horrible, and
the DVD came without subtitles and I have not clue what anybody was saying. It
was like watching a silent movie without title cards. I tried to read up on the
plot summary as the movie progressed, but it is not the same thing at all and
large chunks of the movie is just incomprehensible to me.
This is of
course a failure on my side and I have no doubt that there are plenty of people
out there who gets a lot more out of this movie than I did. For one I have
never been into the whole Shakespeare thing and secondly a native speaker would
likely have less trouble than me catching the gist of what the characters were
saying.
In any case
the story is more or less this: King Henry IV of England (John Gielgud) has supposedly
usurped the throne of England from the true heir, triggering an uprising from
the followers of that heir. Meanwhile his son, Prince Hal (Keith Baxter) is
having a splendid time hanging out in bars with the corpulent and useless
knight Falstaff (Orson Welles). There is a big battle between the rebels and
the loyalists in which Hal defeats the leader of the uprising in single combat.
Later on, at the deathbed of the King Henry IV, Hal and the king makes friend and
when the king soon after dies, Hal takes the throne as Henry V. Suddenly Hal is
too good for Falstaff who feels betrayed and dies.
That was
about as much as I got out of it. Obviously the material of this movie is in
the details, in the dialogue and the banter of Welles’ Falstaff, but as
mentioned, this was largely wasted on me, so I cannot say if it was fun or deep
or hit the right Shakespearian heights. This could be absolutely brilliant, and
I would not know.
Orson Welles
is very corpulent and seems to be the joke of the movie. He does seem to have
an inflated opinion on himself and held in disrepute by everybody else. As such
he was likely very entertaining. For me he was just a fat guy rambling around
in oversize armor.
Speaking of
armor, the battle at the center of the movie is quite spectacular. It is a bloody
mess involving a lot of knights in heavy armor and soldiers of all sorts milling
around and as it does not require any dialogue I was able to fully appreciate
it. Too bad that men killing each other does not hold the same allure to me as
it used to.
Besides
being partially the reason to me losing out on the dialogue, the sound is an
annoyance all on its own. Technically it is very poorly done and some of the
voices are so annoying that I felt physical pain listening to it. Just
terrible.
I do not
feel I am able to judge this movie. There seems to be a consensus appreciation
of this movie and I am barred from that club on a mostly technical basis. I
will therefore leave it to others to say if this is a good or a bad movie. Let
me just say that these were two very long hours of my life.
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