By ROBERT KROLL
With Beatrice Welles in attendance, Chimes at Midnight played to a more-than-full house at the 2016 Traverse City Film Festival on July 28.
The noontime showing took place at The Buzz, Traverse City Film Festival’s venue for free film screenings. It followed a showing a day earlier at the State Theater of Citizen Kane, also hosted by the filmmaker’s youngest daughter and director Michael Moore.
Chimes at Midnight started about 20 minutes late – not for technical delays, but to accommodate stand-by seating. Some 47 extra seats were added to the rows for the additonal audience members. One of the screening’s coordinators pointed out that The Buzz has never turned away a stand-by audience member, which the crowd applauded.
After everyone was finally seated, Beatrice Welles was introduced and gave a few opening remarks about Chimes at Midnight. When asked if anyone in the audience had seen Chimes before this screening, hardly 10 people in the audience raised their hands (this writer included).
With the knowledge that this was a group totally new to Chimes, the film started. The new restoration played to an appreciative crowd. The scene with Falstaff (Orson Welles) and Prince Hal (Keith Baxter) alternately playing the parts of King Henry IV and Hal was greeted with hearty laughter, while there was palatable shock at the exile of Falstaff.
As fine as the 2015 Filmoteca Española restoration of Chimes is, there is simply no comparison with the more recent Janus restoration. The result is so clear that it is possible to take for granted how good it actually looks and sounds.
With limited time between the end of Chimes and another film starting at 3:30 p.m., the Q & A with Beatrice Welles quickly began.
Moderated by Philip Hallman, Film History Field Librarian at the University of Michigan and curator for its Screen Arts Mavericks & Makers collections, the session was very lively and covered many topics.
Many of the questions asked revealed that many audience members were not only new to Chimes at Midnight, but to Welles. One audience member asked if Chimes came out before Citizen Kane, while another was interested in The War of the Worlds broadcast.
Mirroring her father’s affection for the film, Beatrice Welles was gracious with each question.
She started on a light note about co-star and friend Keith Baxter, saying, “I saw him in January and he’s in his eighties, but looks like he’s in his fifties. He’s amazing and he said, he really said this, ‘It’s the first time I’ve heard myself speak all the way through this movie.’”
Speaking about the successful re-release of Chimes, she said, “This would have been my father’s dream. What has happened this year to see this movie shown. It has had a theatrical release throughout America. In Phoenix of all places it ran for over a month. Can you imagine that?”
An audience member’s reply of “air conditioning” was greeted with laughter by the audience and repeated by Beatrice Welles.
Elaborating on making the Battle of Shrewsbury sequence, she said, “There were maybe 120 extras, in that. He had no money, as always, on all of his pictures he always had zero budget. He really did it out of nothing, it’s incredible. It took only three days to shoot, which is amazing when you think about it. Most of it was done in the editing room. He basically created that battle scene in the editing room. I think it’s one of the most extraordinary battle scenes ever shot.”
She also noted the influence of Chimes’ battle scene on directors like Kenneth Branagh and, in her words, “the unmentionable Mel Gibson.”
Happily relating a memory of her boyish appearance as Falstaff’s page, Beatrice Welles pointed out that, “I was nine and I had long hair, and when you’re a little girl you start thinking about being a little girl. And he [Orson] cut all my hair off to look like a boy and a bad haircut because he said in that time they wouldn’t have a good haircut. So, I was extremely upset about this. And I noticed on the script that I had written in my hand-writing ‘Beatrice Welles’ and then as an afterthought there was ‘Miss,’ M-I- S-S, so that everybody would know that I was a little girl and not a little boy. I was obsessed about that.”
The session wrapped up as she finished a story about sneaking into A Hard Day’s Night by using a pair of shoes and a wig from her mother, as she was too young to see the film while in Spain.
As audience members filed out so the theater could be readied for another screening, Beatrice Welles stuck around to greet the equally thankful members of the audience.
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Robert Kroll is an English professor at St. Clair County Community College in Michigan. He is currently working on a book about Orson Welles’ commercials.
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