Chimes at Midnight
- 8 years ago
Plot synopsis:
The crowning achievement of Orson Welles's later film career, Chimes at Midnight returns to the screen after being unavailable for decades. This brilliantly crafted Shakespeare adaptation was the culmination of Welles’s lifelong obsession with the Bard’s ultimate rapscallion, Sir John Falstaff, the loyal, often soused childhood friend to King Henry IV’s wayward son Prince Hal. Appearing in several plays as a comic supporting figure, Falstaff is here the main event: a robustly funny and ultimately tragic screen antihero played by Welles with towering, lumbering grace. Integrating elements from both Henry IV plays as well as Richard II, Henry V, and The Merry Wives of Windsor, Welles created an unorthodox Shakespeare film that is also a gritty period piece, which he called "a lament ... for the death of Merrie England." Poetic, philosophical, and visceral -- with a kinetic centerpiece battle sequence as impressive as anything Welles ever directed -- Chimes at Midnight is as monumental as the figure at its center.
directed by Orson Welles
starring Orson Welles, Keith Baxter, Jeanne Moreau, Fernando Rey, Sir John Gielgud
release date January 1, 2016 (re-release in select theaters)
The crowning achievement of Orson Welles's later film career, Chimes at Midnight returns to the screen after being unavailable for decades. This brilliantly crafted Shakespeare adaptation was the culmination of Welles’s lifelong obsession with the Bard’s ultimate rapscallion, Sir John Falstaff, the loyal, often soused childhood friend to King Henry IV’s wayward son Prince Hal. Appearing in several plays as a comic supporting figure, Falstaff is here the main event: a robustly funny and ultimately tragic screen antihero played by Welles with towering, lumbering grace. Integrating elements from both Henry IV plays as well as Richard II, Henry V, and The Merry Wives of Windsor, Welles created an unorthodox Shakespeare film that is also a gritty period piece, which he called "a lament ... for the death of Merrie England." Poetic, philosophical, and visceral -- with a kinetic centerpiece battle sequence as impressive as anything Welles ever directed -- Chimes at Midnight is as monumental as the figure at its center.
directed by Orson Welles
starring Orson Welles, Keith Baxter, Jeanne Moreau, Fernando Rey, Sir John Gielgud
release date January 1, 2016 (re-release in select theaters)