Word: othello
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Lies to cause harm, or "Trust me on this one." The role model here is Shakespeare's Iago, insidiously, malevolently and falsely poisoning Othello's mind against his faithful wife Desdemona. These are the lies people fear and resent the most, statements that will not only deceive them but also trick them into foolish or ruinous courses of behavior. Curiously, though, lying to hurt people just for the hell or the fun of it -- the Iago syndrome -- is probably quite rare. Though Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote influentially about Iago's "motiveless malignity," the play itself does not really support this...
...Othello shared the top prize at the 1952 Cannes Film Festival, but another three years elapsed before it opened in the U.S. Welles had a lingering fondness for the movie; in 1978 he directed a documentary about its making, Filming Othello. It was his last picture. "He always talked about Othello with great love," says his daughter Beatrice Welles-Smith. "Yet he was under the impression that it was not a good movie. 'If only I'd had the money and not had to work under those conditions,' he said, 'I'd have made a much better movie...
...tones here. Dark cloaked figures rush toward the Grand Canal, and pigeons scatter up into an angry sky. The spider-webbery of shadows casts doom across an innocent face. It is a canvas, of baroque silhouettes and diagonals rampant, that marries text to texture in vintage film-noir style. Othello: the postwar man who feels betrayed by his wife. Desdemona: the innocent woman brutalized by her suspicious spouse...
...Welles-Smith, launched a search for the film's original elements. They turned up in a New Jersey warehouse, and a restoration team set about polishing the visuals, re- creating the score and synchronizing, to the extent possible, words with lip movements. Restoration supervisor Phillip Schopper sees the new Othello as a revival supplemented by modern technology: "We did things that Welles wished he'd been able to do, but couldn...
...Othello should be just the beginning of a true restoration. Welles made only 18 films, and at least five might-be masterpieces remain to be seen. It's All True, a three-part Technicolor film Welles shot in Brazil in 1942, ran afoul of censors and studio executives, and the film was aborted. In the late '60s Welles shot part of The Deep (Dead Calm), with Laurence Harvey and Jeanne Moreau. Around the same time he completed a 40-min., stripped-down (no Portia) version of The Merchant of Venice, but somebody stole the sound track. The Other Side...