The Criterion Collection has announced this week that a 2K scan of Orson Welles’ last completed movie, Filming Othello, will be included with its October 10 release of the 1952 Shakespearean drama Othello on Blu-ray and DVD.
Created at the urging of producers Juergen and Klaus Hellwig, Filming Othello featured Welles’ reflections, a chat with co-stars Hilton Edwards and Micheál MacLiammóir and a talk with an audience after a screening of Othello on January 8, 1977 at the Orson Welles Cinema Complex in Cambridge, Mass..
Production of Filming Othello began in 1974 during the shooting of The Other Side of the Wind. A few Wind crew members ̶ Michael Stringer, Larry Jackson and Welles’ cinematographer, the late Gary Graver ̶ were involved in Filming Othello.
Graver spoke with Wellesnet about the experience some 15 years ago.
How did Filming Othello come about?
It was made for German Television. They wanted to show Othello on German Television, and they wanted a companion piece to go with it. They asked Orson if he would do it, and he said, “sure.” That’s why Filming Othello was made. We started in Paris, where we shot the scenes with Hilton Edwards and Micheal MacLiammoir in a hotel having lunch with Orson, and we finished it in Beverly Hills, shooting in the living room of Orson’s house there.
Just before we made Filming Othello, Orson’s lawyer called United Artists about sending all the prints of Othello back to him, so we could use material in Filming Othello. Orson had a great sense of humor, and was a very funny guy, but he basically never liked going down memory lane. He didn’t want to discuss the old pictures, like Citizen Kane or The Magnificent Ambersons. All he wanted to do was talk about the new projects. But he did enjoy making Filming Othello, so in 1981 we started to do a follow-up, Filming The Trial.
Was there a formal script for Filming Othello?
Yes, it was all scripted. Orson wrote it all. We started in 1974 with Hilton and Micheal in Paris, and then we did some work on The Other Side of the Wind and came back to Filming Othello in 1976. It was finished in 1977. We shot every night that Orson felt like it, but Orson was very superstitious of things, like black cats, or walking under ladders. Well, we shot Filming Othello in a house I had rented for him, right down the street from where Sharon Tate was murdered. Orson liked the house, but he never knew it was right next to where the Charles Manson killings took place. If he had known about it, he would have been very suspicious about staying there.
We also shot in that same house, a 10 minute short to promote F For Fake. It was done in 35mm and was meant to be the trailer for F For Fake, but the distributor didn’t want to make any prints of it! It’s really a 10 minute Orson Welles film, without using any of the footage from F For Fake. It was all totally new film, but the American distributor wouldn’t spend he money to cut the negative and make prints.
During the lunch with Hilton Edwards and Michael MacLiammoir, did you shoot Welles’s scenes later on?
Yes, and while we were in Paris shooting the footage of Micheal and Hilton, I said to Orson, “while we’re here, let’s get the reverse shots on you.” He said, “Oh no, we’ll get those later.” He didn’t want to do it then. He would often do that. He would say, “let’s get the body of the work done. I’m always around, we’ll get me later.”
Then, in the interim, Kodak came out with some new film stocks and when we shot Orson it didn’t quite match the earlier footage, because it was two years later. The color is different and the look is a little different. It’s just like the way Othello was shot. A guy’s talking in Paris, and two years later Orson is answering him back in Beverly Hills. Orson’s theory was that once he edited the initial footage, he might come up with some new ideas he’d want to use.
Filming Othello seems rather static for a Welles movie. Were there any scenes you couldn’t shoot?
We did a lot of stuff that’s not in the film. Orson made up storyboards, and we went to many different places. I went to Dublin, to Michael and Hilton’s house and filmed them there, as well as to the Gate Theater, where Orson made his professional acting debut. We went to Venice, and got up at 5 in the morning, when the sun was just coming out, and did about an hours worth of footage of Orson in his black cape and cigar, riding through the canals of Venice, pointing out the different locations where Othello was all shot. The negative of that footage somehow disappeared, so none of it could be used in the final film.
(Editor’s note: At least some of that lost Venice footage was found. Brief excerpts can be seen in Graver’s 1993 documentary Working With Orson Welles, in which Welles points out old filming locations.)
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The original interview and a full transcript of the movie can be found on the Wellesnet Legacy Site (2001-2006)
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