MERCHANT OF VENICE

Flint · Post by **Flint** » Wed Nov 12, 2003 12:35 pm

Hello All-

Very curious about the status of "Merchant". The scenes shown in "One Man Band" were fabulous. Anyone know just how much of this was shot? I looked it up in "This Is Orson Welles" and it only says the project was to be about an hour in length and something about the sound being lost or stolen (I think). But the clips from OMB looked like they were from a finished project. Anyone?

-Flint

colwood · Post by **colwood** » Wed Nov 12, 2003 5:05 pm

I recently got in contact with Peter Tonguette, author of the excellent piece about the Dreamers on the Senses of Cinema website. He said, that among the unfinished projects of Welles' that the Munich Filmmuseum have restored and assembled are the surviving fragement of Merchant (I imagine it was the clip shown in OMB) with the Shylock monologue Welles did years later in a trenchcoat.

Flint · Post by **Flint** » Thu Nov 13, 2003 4:57 pm

Thanks Colwood!
Fantastic article. The other Welles piece by Jaime Christley was very good as well - and mentions that ALL the footage was shot for "Merchant" and that only the sound is missing on two reels. If this is the case, hopefully a shooting script can be found and perhaps a voice double can re-record Welle's lines.

-Flint.

blunted by community · Sat Nov 22, 2003 4:15 pm

the clips of merchant are indeed fabulous. in citizen welles it said the sound was done but welles, courting disaster, was storing the sound in the back seat of his car, from where they were stolen.

some clips from merchant also turned up in a documentary about sheakespeare that showed on bravo. those clips were in better shape than the ones in OMB.

and flint's suggestion would certainly work for any of us; so much of what we love in welles is visual, the sound hardly matters. i love don q, and that whole audio is disposable.

Flint · Post by **Flint** » Mon Nov 24, 2003 12:20 pm

Blunted-
Do you happen to remember the name of the Shakespeare documentary on Bravo and also, were the clips of Merchant that were shown different than those in OMB?

Much thanks.

-Flint.

blunted by community · Tue Nov 25, 2003 3:58 am

flint, i think i might have a copy of that documentary. i will look. don't recall how the clips differed, but will check to see if i still have the documentary.

blunted by community · Thu Nov 27, 2003 4:39 pm

the documentary is called SHYLOCK, it's not a great documentary, it's ok. has less clip than OMB, and the clips are in the same shape as the ones in OMB. the mistake was because my first copy of OMB was terrible, now i have the showtime copy.

Sir Bygber Brown · Post by **Sir Bygber Brown** » Sun Jan 25, 2004 11:14 pm

Yes, i've seen the Merchant clip - and i agreed. It was one of the main things which got my blood rushing in One Man Band - what a tantalising treat! Welles is fantastic as Shylock, both in the TV film, and later in the monologue. And those are real tears in the monologue!

Sir Bygber Brown · Post by **Sir Bygber Brown** » Thu Jan 29, 2004 9:29 pm

Just watching the Merchant clip again. Woe is me! This could have been as great as Touch of Evil! This would rank among my favourite Welles works if only an agreement could be made about putting together as much footage as possible. It breaks my heart every time the film reel runs out at the end of the scene! (an excellent touch, whosever idea that was!)

Sir Bygber Brown · Post by **Sir Bygber Brown** » Wed Feb 11, 2004 6:33 pm

Anyone heard anything new about Merchant?

Are there any documentaries where more footage than shown in OMB can be seen, or is that the only seen available?

I can't stop thinking about it!

Swithun · Post by **Swithun** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 6:55 am

I was just watching the Lost Films of Orson Welles documentary on youtube and I really enjoyed the harpsichord incidental music on the Merchant of Venice. Does anyone know who it was by?

tony · Post by **tony** » Fri Apr 04, 2008 1:54 am

Lavagnino: the same composer who scored Othello and Chimes and who was going to score Quixote. He was interviewed for a documentary on Welles and was a very sweet and supremely talented man. He scored 100s of Italian films, but had a special place for Welles in his heart. When it came time for Merchant, Welles had no money for the music so Lavagnino paid for the recording, conducted it, and gave the score to Welles in exchange for some production sketches Welles made, some of which are reproduced in colour in the new book "Orson Welles at Work". I have heard some of his other work for romantic and dramatic Italian movies, and though it is very different from what he did for Welles, it is also very beautiful. The creative partnership between the two men has yet to be properly explored- they seemed to be extremely 'sympatico'.
At one point in the interview, Lavagnino recounts how they both had an idea for scoring the bath murder in Othello, but were both too nervous to be the first to tell the other, so they counted to three and spoke simultaneously: they both said "mandolins" and embraced, laughing.

"Angelo Francesco Lavagnino

Born to a musical family in Genoa, Italy on February 22, 1909, Angelo Francesco Lavagnino's love of film music began when he heard a live percussion orchestra playing during the showing of a silent movie. He studied composition under Renzo Bossi at Milan's Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory of Music, and his concert works include symphonies, an opera, symphonic poems, and much solo and chamber music. From 1941 until 1963 he taught at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, and he started scoring films in the early 1950s.

By the time he retired from film composing in the mid-1970s, he had scored approximately 300 films, among them: Chimes At Midnight, The Colossus Of Rhodes, Conspiracy Of Hearts, Five Branded Women, Gorgo, The Last Days Of Pompeii, Legend Of The Lost, The Lost Continent, The Naked Maja, Othello, Soledad, La Sposa Bella, L'Ultimo Paradiso, Venere Imperiale, The Wind Cannot Read, and many documentaries, spaghetti westerns, and sword-and-sandal pictures.

Lavagnino had a wide range of interests outside of music. He wrote a novel about pirates, he collected antiques, books, and Vatican medals, he enjoyed traveling, was a skilled photographer, and he spent much time with his family. This most important Italian film composer died on August 21, 1987."

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0006164/

Swithun · Post by **Swithun** » Fri Apr 04, 2008 4:23 am

Thanks Tony.

Alan Brody · Post by **Alan Brody** » Sat Apr 05, 2008 1:49 am

That's good info, Tony. I'd like to hear some of Lavagnino's concert music sometime, although what I've heard of Bernard Hermann's concert music has been pretty dull compared to his film music. I have the CD soundtrack for Chimes at Midnight and there is some beautiful music on it that didn't even make it into the film.

tony · Post by **tony** » Wed Apr 09, 2008 11:54 pm

One of film music's great losses is Welles abandoning the editing of Don Quixote in 1970 just after he had contacted Lavagnino to do the music: this was because the tabloids had revealed his affair with Oja, so he moved family and girlfriend to America. Another great loss is Lavagnino's score for Welles's Merchant of Venice: apparrently we have only 9 minutes of it, but what beautiful 9 minutes they are!

The cd soundtrack for Chimes is a treasure, and the music remains spellbinding on it's own: one realizes the enormous contribution to the film. And if one can find the original soundtrack to Othello, then one has a masterpiece of Lavagnino/Welles, with Welles doing the processing/mixing/editing of the score.

Welles was devoted to two composers: Herrmann and Lavagnino.

WELLESNET MESSAGE BOARD

MERCHANT OF VENICE

MERCHANT OF VENICE

Music on the Merchant of Venice