All language subtitles for Filming Othello.ENG

This is a Moviola.

A machine for editing film,

but you know, when we say
that we're editing or cutting a film,

we aren't really saying enough.

Movies aren't just made on the set.

A lot of the actual making happens...

right here;

so a Moviola, like this is
very nearly as important as the camera.

Here films are salvaged,
saved sometimes from disaster, or...

savaged out of existence.

This is the last stop on the long road

between the dream in
a filmmaker's head and the public...

to whom that dream is addressed.

Carlyle said that almost everything
examined deeply enough will...

turn out to be musical.

Of course this is profoundly
true of motion pictures.

The pictures have movement;
the movies move.

Then there's that movement
from one picture to another.

There's a rhythmic structuring to that;

this counterpoint,
harmony and dissonance.

A film is never right,

until it's right musically.

This Moviola,

this filmmaker's tool,

is a kind of a musical instrument.

It's here that other film
instruments are tuned and finely...

orchestrated, so if you find me
winding up our conversation here,

you understand that...

I'm speaking to you from my home.

This is to be a conversation,

certainly not anything
so formal as a lecture,

and what we're gonna
talk about is Othello.

Shakespeare's play...

and the film I made of it.

That sounds rather arrogant
doesn't it, just...

naming the two in the same sentence.

Truth is of course that by
any real standard of worth,

comparison is not merely impossible,
it's absurd.

The play is...

something more than a masterpiece.
It stands through the centuries as...

one of the great monuments
of western civilization.

We pick an arbitrary figure: Twelve.

Name twelve plays
which could be called great.

Othello must be one of those twelve.

And of that twelve, at least nine,

which is another arbitrary figure,
are by Shakespeare.

That leaves three on our list for
all the other writers who ever lived.

Is that putting it too strongly?

Or is it too high?
You can't go higher than that,

and Shakespeare remains immortally...

number one.

Among all dramatists the first.
The greatest poet...

in terms of sheer accomplishment,
very possibly...

our greatest man.

So...

where does that leave a mere moviemaker?

Nowhere.

Nowhere at all...

unless we leave out all
comparisons and consider...

that my Othello, based upon,
adapted from and...

inspired by William
Shakespeare's tragedy has...

some little right to be considered

on whatever merit it may
presume to have as a movie.

As a movie, and yet...

if merits there be...

This is...

not at all a conversation,

nor am I the conversationalist
to treat with them.

Don't imagine for a moment that I'm

pretending to be modest,
it's just my fixed conviction

that critical opinions about one's
own work should be left to others.

Is my movie, Othello,
good or bad, flawless...

or flawed, a masterpiece or a mess?

It's been vigorously,
even viciously attacked,

denigrated and dismissed and...

also praised, sometimes...

quite extravagantly.

I don't know your opinion.

And I won't tell you mine.

I can't help the movie by
telling you it's good and...

if I think it's bad, if I really do,
I'd better not say so.

Why? Because...

this movie is still being shown in the
theaters and for almost thirty years...

People are still going to see it,

and I admit to feeling
quite happy about that.

Good or bad there's still some
kind of life in it, which is...

the reason I'd be sorry and I guess
pretty foolish to do anything...

to kill it.

Kill that like other fact.

But I've been asked to talk to
you about it after all this time,

and this imposes upon me,
I guess that...

a certain...

guarded respect for the subject. So...

what I'll do is to tell you...

what I can.

How the picture came to be made,
for instance.

But I can tell you about that,
and how it was made.

To put it mildly, that was...

quite an adventure.

It led us...

before we were... done to many...

strange and rather wonderful
places in the world.

Into and out of more than one disaster.
There were moments of...

sheer desperation and...

there was much delight.

Escaping then from...

auto-criticism by
means of autobiography,

I will...

to quote the Moor himself,

"A round unvarnished tale deliver."

Now, how to begin the tale.

Where shall we begin? You might...

You might say it all began in Rome,

in a Roman film studio,
with a Roman film producer...

named Scalera, who owned the studio.

He wasn't going to own it
for very much longer, but...

if anybody else knew about it,
nobody bothered to tell me.

Now those are early post-war years in
the Italian motion picture industry,

Montatori Scalera was
still very much Mr. Big.

He came on the set, he looked at me
and said, "Dobbiamo fare Otello."

We've got to make Othello. I...

I saw no reason to argue.

As an actor...

since my very earliest days when I first

charted an optimistic
course I hoped would...

take me to some of the great roles in
dramatic literature, Othello has always

been among...

the highest...

of those aspirations.

But why did Scalera

suggest that I should do Othello?

Well, he loved opera, he was an opera
buff and he'd made a lot of opera movies

and made a lot of money
making those movies and...

when he saw me...

made-up as I was for the role of
Count Caliostro, in a gypsy make-up,

with curly hair
and a big gold earring...

he was thinking Verdi,

and not Shakespeare really,

and he naturally said, "Otello.

Let's make Otello."

Why did it happen in Rome?

I...

I didn't even want to be in Rome,
I wanted to be in Paris.

It was the wrong place
and the wrong movie.

I'd been planning to
do Cyrano de Bergerac.

Now there's a romantic part for you.

Body has a nose, He describes
himself as a man with a funny nose.

I was going to make Cyrano,

I'd been working with Trauner
on it for months in Paris,

but suddenly Korda, who was
our producer, came to me and said,

"my dear fellow I need dollars.
I want to sell it to America."

And he did, Jose Ferrer played
it and got the Academy Award,

and that's the end of that story.

Cagliostro was supposedly commercial,

and it wasn't, it was supposed
to make me rich, and it didn't.

It was a result of a letdown, but...

But here's an irony.

I've been talking quite a bit...

too much perhaps,

about myself as an actor.

It's because as you've seen,
it was primarily as an actor

rather than as a filmmaker that I came
to do Othello in the first place.

But, if that movie is still being seen

and if it is indeed still worth
talking about at all, it's...

It's not, I must admit,
primarily because of what...

I contributed to it as an actor.

I was just reading a book,

on the subject of my Othello,

in preparing for this conversation
with you this afternoon and...

it quoted Eric Bentley, who said that,
"I don't act, I'm just photographed."

Those are the kinds of things
you never forget.

So maybe I was just being photographed
in Othello. After all that,

act to thinking and after all that

nonsensical actor's ambition.

Which means it's high time for a word
or two about Othello as a film.

I won't venture into
the territory of the critics,

I promised I wasn't going to, but...

staying safely on my own side of
the fence, what I can offer is a...

hint or two of what I was thinking of in
terms of cinematic style and substance,

or less pompously,
what kind of film it was...

that I set out to make.
What was thematic, what was planned...

and what was accidental.

In...

Olivier's Othello,

which was a cinematic record
of his stage production,

"its core was the

shocking spectacle of a man reverting
to savagery, eaten up by jealousy...

until he murders the woman he loves.

My film, by contrast,

tries to depict
the whole world in collapse.

A world that is a metaphor...

not just for Othello's mind,
but for an epic,

pre-modern age."

And here, I'm...

or misquoting...

to... not very good effect,

the critic, Jack J.
Jorgens who wrote a book on...

Shakespeare on Film.
I'm very grateful to him,

for what he said. I'm going to leave
out the good things, and the bad ones.

There're also some other quotes
I'll refer too, because it does sum up

the intention behind the film.

"The visual style of the film mirrors
the marriage at the center of the play

which is not that of
Othello and Desdemona,

but the perverse marriage
of Othello and Iago.

Part of the cinematic language is
born of Othello's romantic and,

here we come to that word,
his romantic and his heroic nature,

which we embody,

I attempted too, and here it
says that I did, by vast spaces,

monumental buildings, the sky,
sea and rocks. The brute fortress.

And these walls,
these vaults and corridors

echo and repeat and reflect
and multiply, like so many mirrors,

the eloquence of Shakespeare's
tragedy," at least that's the intention.

"The grandeur
and simplicity are the Moor's.

The dizzying camera movements,
the tortured compositions,

the grotesque shadows
and insane distortions,

they're of Iago,
for he is the agent of chaos.

In Shakespeare's verbal terms,
Iago's masterpiece is to reduce

Othello's lyricism to bursts of
confused logic, shattered syntax,

obsessive repetitions,
and unconscious puns."

"Lie with her? Lie on her, we say lie
on her when they belie or lie on her!

Zounds, that's fulsome."
I can't quote it exactly right,

but it's a total disintegration and the
attempt of our camera was to create...

that sense of vertigo,
a feeling of tottering instability

culminating of course in
Othello's epileptic seizure,

that murder of Roderigo,
the Othello's dizzying final fall.

And in Venice, Iago's attempt
to sow discord are frustrated.

He is but a shadow on the canal.

or a lurking whisperer,
a threat, a possibility.

The civilized order in Venice

is embodied in rich harmonious
architecture, placid canals,

and in the symmetrical altar at
which Othello and Desdemona are married.

In Cyprus,
at the frontier of the civilized world,

the restraints of Venice are lifted.

Art, luxury, and institutions are taken
away. And the longer we are in Cyprus,

the more the involuted
Iago style triumphs over

the heroic and lyrical
Othello style in the film.

Venetian Christianity is
overpowered by paganism.

Christian images appear
but they're put to perverse use.

Othello's killing of desdemona is a dark
ritual recalling the wedding in Venice,

but now...

he puts out the candles at the altar.

The sounds in Cyprus - wind, shouts,
echoing footsteps, slamming doors...

they become surreally loud. Moving
shadows distort the human figure...

characters are separated by
tremendous distances, yet there's...

an increasing feeling of confinement.
Ceilings bear down,

walls become overpowering,
the world seems to be closing in."

"In the play, one of Iago's
favorite images is that of the net,

the snare, the web, making him
a fisherman, a hunter, a spider.

`With as little a web as this,
will I ensnare as great a fly

as Cassio,' he says.

And our camera holds
that image before the camera's eyes

and plays variations on it. We see it

through the grate which Desdemona
passes to escape her father,

the net that holds her hair in Cyprus,

the ships rigging, the rack of spears in
the fortress, and the windows and doors

of Othello's bedroom. In the end...

Iago is caught in his own mesh;

always hovering above him is the iron
cage where the sun will scorch him...

and the gulls will peck at his flesh."

Again, my thanks to Jack J.
Jorgens and to Andre Bazin

whom I quoted in the midst of all that,
or misquoted again.

But now having laid all that heavy
stuff, here I think I'd better explain

how circumstance itself had a lot to
do with the determination of our style.

I should explain
that as originally projected,

we were going to shoot most of
the movie in the south of France.

We were going to work out of
the old Victorine studios in Nice.

This was the choice of the art director,
my dear friend Alexander Trauner.

I know only a few true
artists who've emerged from...

or worked in that profession.

Men like Georges Wakhevitch,
Cameron Menzies, Vincent Korda,

and Trauner is at
the very least their peer.

Well, we'd just finished working
together for several long months

preparing that Cyrano de
Bergerac for Alexander Korda,

which you remember was never made.

And we were working at
various museums in Paris,

especially in the fascinating Carnavalet

and... Paris was Trauner's city.

Once you've turned your back on Budapest
in the good old days, I guess...

there wasn't any choice.

Anyway like many another Hungarian,
Trauner was in love with France.

I really do think that's
why we were there. Why not?

Anyway so I found myself
rehearsing a cast of English actors

in the Bois de Boulogne.

That's why we were going to build
the island of Cyprus on the Cote d'Azur.

Why shouldn't we, after all Cyprus,

Cyprus as Trauner painted it was
a grimly handsome fortress of a place,

starkly posed between
Veneto and Byzantine,

And for our movie much more
right than anything real

which might still be
standing in this century.

I say he painted it, because...

that's what he did.

None of the usual architectural
renderings. No mere color sketches.

Trauner, Trauner painted,
he made pictures.

Picasso, who's not

frequently an enthusiast for
the work of lesser mortals,

spoke very highly of those paintings.
I heard him.

I was very happy and pleased about
shooting in the south of France

and this was not to have been only
for the Cypriot part of the story,

but for Venice too, and you'll see why.

If for three-fourths of
our film we were to inhabit

an invented world rather
than a series of real locations,

than our version of reality would
have been merely mocked by those

famous and familiar
old stones of Venice.

There could be no

stylistic integrity unless Venice too,
would be a Venice by Trauner.

A city totally undeveloped
by the tourist industry.

So what happened to all that? The answer
is Montatori Scalera is what happened,

or rather what didn't.

Remember him, saying "Biama fare Otello"

Well, the arrangement
for financing Othello

as he explained
Italo-Francese co-produciona

that's co-production
between Italy and France,

but even as the first
nail was to be driven

in the construction of
Trauner's Venice a la Nicoise,

word was rushed to us that the French
part of Scalera's construction

had somehow collapsed.
There was no more co to the produciona.

We were now Italian, 100%.

We would be several other things too,
before all this was over.

Time and chance and many,
many other vicissitude

would take us over half of Italy,
to England for the mixing of the sound,

to Africa, especially to Africa,
and specifically to Morocco.

Now Othello's story has nothing
to do with his own native land,

but our story was
very much involved in it.

We were all over Morocco,
and in a minute I'll tell you why.

Just here I'd like to mention
how it came to pass that

we entered the lists at
the Cannes film festival

under a Moorish flag...

appropriately enough I'd say for
a movie on the Moor of Venice.

But this, like so much else
was not a clever plan of mine,

but a mere whim of fortune.

We started off, by losing the French
part of our official nationality,

at the end we had no nationality at all.

Othello was a movie without a country.

Which meant of course that there was
no legal way to export or import it

from anywhere to anywhere.

At the festival,
it meant that pile of film cans

that I'd come lugging into
town with had no status,

And thus no chance of joining
the festival, much less of winning it.

Morocco then was a flag of convenience,
like Liberia for a ship owner.

I guess it's the first film, Othello,
certainly the last entry to the Cannes

that had no national delegation.
There was just me and those film cans.

And we did well anyway.

And here is how I found out
that we'd won the grand prize,

a little sooner than one is supposed,
I mean, found out sooner.

Because officially that sort of news
is broken the way it is with Oscars,

only when the winner is publicly named.

But several hours before the big event,
when I was up in my room

in the Cannes hotel

sweating it out, waiting alone,
there came to me somewhat breathlessly

the big boss of the festival
himself and he looked distracted.

He wasn't there to give out
any information, but to get it.

"I don't know who else to
turn to," he said, "My God!"

"Can you tell me what is
the Moorish national anthem?"

The winner, you see, gets his anthem
played for him when he takes his bow.

That's how I learned
that Othello was the winner.

I didn't know Morocco's anthem
any more than anyone else,

so the band played
something vaguely oriental

from one of the French operettas.

The audience stood solemnly to attention

and with the international
propriety that's observed,

festival officials
could breathe once more.

Well...

That's an anecdote, but not, I think, of

not of a degression because the deal
was straight, the sort of contrary which

changed, not just the lives of
those who assumed made the picture,

but changed the style,

character and the picture itself.

Maybe that has something to do
with what we were praised for,

in other words, mere chance,
losing as we did,

more than one nationality and forced
as we were to adapt ourselves

to a whole series of sudden
alterations and violent retreats,

all sober planning had to be scuttled
and the making of the film...

whenever there was
money enough to continue

was pure improvisation.

Trauner's beautiful paintings had to
be abandoned right at the beginning,

by the end he made me a couple of
walls and three pieces of furniture.

We were never able to afford to build
anything, so nothing was designed,

everything had to be found,

hence all that globe-trotting.

Iago steps from the portico
of a church in Torcello,

an island in the Venetian lagoon,

into a Portuguese cistern
off the coast of Africa.

He's crossed the world
and moved between two continents

in the middle of a single spoken phrase.

In Othello that happens all the time.

A Tuscan stairway
and a Moorish battlement

are both parts of, what in the film,

is a single room.

Roderigo kicks Cassio in Mazagan
and gets punched back in Orvieto,

a thousand miles away.

And that jigsaw,

pieces were separated not just by
plane trips, but by breaks in time.

Nothing was in continuity.
I had no script girl.

There was no way for the jigsaw picture
to be put together, except in my mind.

Over a span, sometimes, of months,
I had to hold each detail in my memory.

Not just from sequence to sequence,
but from cut to cut.

And I had no cutter!

I had a whole series of cameramen,

because of the delays while
I went searching for money, or

took on jobs to earn it.

The cameramen themselves found work,
so I'd be picking up,

in the middle of a scene,
even a sentence, with a new cameraman,

who'd seen nothing of what
we'd done before. Well,

of course all that was bound to

to affect the shape and form and
stylistic substance of the film, itself.

half a year of careful
planning had to be thrown away

and a whole new conception built up,
virtually over night.

I was already in rehearsal of
the actors when the news reached us.

You see, working together hard
over all those months, we designed

a physical production in such a way

that the entire picture would've been
photographed in a relatively small

number of camera set-ups.

A whole scene,

sometimes several scenes would've
been played without a single cut.

But that method of shooting,

absolutely requires the full
resources of a movie studio.

You need sets that break invisibly
apart, to allow for camera movement.

You need... well, why go into it all?

Enough to say that everything
that sort of filming calls for

belongs to the discipline
and technology of the sound studio.

But don't think I'm speaking
against real locations.

No, stone... is better than cardboard.

And our new real locations were
just fine, as far as they went.

Let me tell you about the Turkish baths.

I don't need to be told that there's
no Turkish bath in Shakespeare.

But there is in Micheal
MacLiammoir's fascinating book

on the subject of our making the movie,
which is called, Put Money in Thy Purse.

A quotation from the play and very apt
indeed it is and very funny the book is.

Tells a lot of our troubles, and it
tells for one thing how it happened that

we found ourselves at the beginning...

of shooting, that is,

in the fascinating city of Mogador on
the coast of Africa, Atlantic coast.

Why were we there? We were there
because we had to have real locations

and the best one we could find for
Cyprus was, naturally not Cyprus,

movies being what they were,
it was Mogador, way down there,

with the marvelous long battlements,
on which a lot of

important material was photographed.

But when we got to Mogador

with our large Italian crew,
it was an enormous one,

under the distinguished Anchisi Brizzi,
one of the greatest of Italian cameramen

and heaven knows how many people.
There must be 35 or 36 other men.

Our full complement of actors, there
we were in Mogador, arrived by plane,

checked into our modest lodgings,
and they were indeed very modest,

because that's all there was in those
days, in that town, and started to wait.

We waited for our costumes,
and they didn't come.

Why didn't they come?
They didn't come because

as it turned out,
Montatori Scalera was broke!

Mr. Big of the Italian movie
industry had gone bankrupt

while we were in a plane on
our way from Paris to Mogador.

We found that out after a while,

and we had no costumes. We had a lot
of actors, we had an enormous crew and

obviously the thing to do was
somehow to make the movie.

Well, I had a little money,

So I could keep us going for
a week or two, and in the meantime

some people scuttled around
Europe looking for ways to sell

portions of the movie to Cyprus or...

or Venice, or more likely
Japan or Turkey or something,

and get a few thousand dollars advanced.

While that kind of frantic
operation was going on,

hoping to get more money, hoping to
be able to put money in our purse,

and to be able to continue the movie.

While we were sitting there in Mogador,

the idea came to us,
that maybe we could make our costumes,

which had never been made in Rome,
or if they had,

they were being held by the Sheriff.

But we could make our costumes by
using the local Jewish tailors,

of which there were several.

There was a big Jewish
quarter in Mogador,

and they lived, incidentally,
very happily with the Arabs

in those happy by-gone days.

So the Jewish tailors were hired

then pictures of Carpaccio gentlemen
and ladies were shown to them,

and pretty soon the costumes
slowly began to be made,

but they wouldn't be ready for ten days.
And what could we shoot?

Well...

there was the big scene
of the murder of Roderigo,

And what can you shoot in
a costume movie without costume?

There's only one place
you could possibly be,

that is with a lot of people.

If there's just two people,
there's an obvious solution.

But when there's a crowd of people,

there's only one possible place
where people could be nude,

and that's a Turkish bath.
So we invented the Turkish bath.

No reason why not.

There were Turkish baths then,
rather more than there are now.

And all we had to do was put towels
around the heads of our characters

and photograph them from the waist up.

We borrowed a lot of incense
from the local cathedral,

filled up the Turkish bath with steam,

and the Turkish bath itself wasn't
a Turkish bath, it was a fish market.

So to the sound of puffing incense
and to the smell of decaying fish,

we made that,

overture,
runs more than a reel and a half

that very involved and adventurous
sequence of the murder of Roderigo.

After that the costumes began to get
ready and we had a big Army of people

gathered all in armor.

And you can't see because of
the way it's photographed,

but all the armor is
made out of sardine cans.

Hammered out and hung around the necks,
believe it or not.

The banners were homemade, too.
Everything was homemade.

Anyway, we got going,
but after a little while,

the little money we had saved and were
able to raise ran out and we had to stop

and then run to another part of the
world and make some more. So it went.

And the history of it all,
as I say is very divertingly,

to be found in Micheal MacLiammoir's
book, he's Iago in the movie.

And his book has been reprinted,
and I commend it to you.

Now...

I have some footage here,
not from Othello, but about it.

A few excerpts from a luncheon party,
a reunion really,

between three old friends.

Micheal MacLiammoir on the left,
and Hilton Edwards next to him.

Edwards played Brabantio,

in the film that's Desdemona's Father.
MacLiammoir, of course was our Iago.

Some time has passed since then.
A quarter of a century.

More we've been friends
a lot longer than that.

We've heard the chimes at midnight.

I should explain
that Edwards and MacLiammoir

are together the founders and directors
of the famous Gate Theater in Dublin.

If you love the theater, then you know
all about the Gate. If not, there's not

much I can say about it,
so I'll just begin,

because there's too much to say,
and I wouldn't know where to stop.

Let me just say, that these
two men together, have written,

and as I speak these words,
are still writing, theater history.

Then, having dismissed their immense
achievement with a single phrase,

I'm going to take a bit longer
on the subject of myself.

The subject of this program,
being as it is, my own film of Othello,

there's no way I can think of to avoid

these lapses into autobiography.

I'm obliged to tell you
that the Gate Theater's

where I started my professional life.

I was just a boy, and Hilton
Edwards was still a very young man,

but he was already...

a master.

Since then as an actor in theater, radio
and films, I've worked for what must be

hundreds of directors. Some were good,
some middling good, many of course were

mediocre, if not downright bad
and a few, two or three perhaps,

could be called great.

Of these, Hilton Edwards

was easily the first,
and certainly was the best of teachers.

God only knows, that asking him
to play Brabantio in the picture

was a feeble enough
indication of my gratitude.

Hilton was also a distinguished actor,
and Brabantio,

God only knows,
is an undistinguished part.

The truth is

that he came along with
Micheal to keep us all company,

and help out with the crowd scenes.

He kept a sharp director's
eye on just about everything,

and after the day's work was over,
we'd hash it all out together,

burning the night away with talk.

Here 25 years later,
it's a bit more of the same.

Some 46 years ago,
when I first joined his theater,

Micheal MacLiammoir was
playing his first Hamlet.

By general consensus one of
the finest in living memory,

surely the best I've ever seen.
He's played it often since,

I once produced him in America,
and he's played Iago since

since he did it in my film and played
it very differently. He's also played

Othello,
and that often and differently, and with

Hilton Edwards as his
Iago and as director.

I mention these things...

so you will appreciate how
well our two luncheon guests

are equipped for this discussion.

I also believe that in
every Shakespeare play,

there was ones over other theme,
so it's simpler one.

And I kept the feeling that in Othello,

it was the question of the black man,
and the white woman.

But although we know
that the Moors were really Arabs...

Yes, but they were Blackamoors.

To my mind,

it was a black man in Shakespeare's
mind, and the white woman...

But...

Does Shakespeare give us
the ordinary jealous husband?

No, he gives us
an extraordinary outsider.

In other words, he gives us a foreigner,

a glamorous and strange savage,
however he's played.

And there are thousand ways of playing.

- You were too young, and I was too old.
- Oh no. You weren't too old.

You weren't old at all.
You weren't 28 years old,

but Shakespeare says Iago is.

That doesn't matter at all. Othello...

The age of Othello, I'll admit that's...
that's a fault of the film.

It's a fault of my performance. I should
have been older when I made the film.

'cause I would have known more
about the part, and I should have

seemed older,
I should have played it older,

I think it's true that Othello's
in general, should play Othello

as older than they usually do,
because age is,

first of all, it's indicated
in the text, and secondly,

it distances... Othello and Desdemona,

and anything that does that - age, race

or culture - any of those things
are very important to the film.

But Iago...

if I'd let the fact that you weren't
precisely Shakespeare's age for the role

be a consideration, I...

ridiculous, I would have denied
myself an extraordinary performance.

But, no, that...

That isn't flattery, it's the truth.

But we come to Iago's character,

And...

and the whole question
of what Coledridge called

`the motiveless malignancy of Iago'.

We played him, in my head had
that idea of the impotence.

It was really not so much a key for the
audience as a clue for our performance.

A way to justify a certain
reading of the role.

My idea was that he was impotent.

There's nothing in the script
to contradict your theory...

Therefore we're free to do it. That's
the great thing about Shakespeare.

And it's a darn good motive.

I don't know but I have a theory
in myself, that Iago was evil,

as I think we won't,
any of us can argue about that,

but evil like art in [?]
period was for its own sake.

But there was evil as we see,
when we see a cat catching a mouse.

Or a cat playing with
a rabbit or something.

What looks evil to us,
but it's nothing to them.

It's quite natural.

And that's what's so terrifying.

In other words, you are saying

that it is possible to have
an unmotivated villain.

We don't need Dr. Freud at all. There is
such a thing as a natural born villain.

The true love of evil.

Yes. He has a natural pleasure of evil,
a pleasure in it.

And all the efforts of the theorists,

all the head doctors
who've written the books

and all the directors like myself
who've tried to find reasons

are probably wasting their times

I'm quite happy with that

I think that although
there's the question that...

Don't be polite to us,
come right after where you're going.

There's feeling that there's
a motiveless feeling of evil

but I've got a kind of feeling
that there's nothing without a motive.

In spite of what the scholars may say,
I have a great fate in Shakespeare,

having, as you say,
your great instinct in acting

is that it's even greater
for to learn classically,

I think that Shakespeare built a much
more direct person not a simpler person

that we knew already on
these unconscious mind,

and I think the theme of jealousy
was supposed to throw this argument.

We have Othello being
made jealous of Cassio.

Now who is he made jealous by? He's
being made jealous, by a jealous man.

We have Iago who is jealous of Othello,
being in a superior position to him,

and being a black man,
whereas he's a white Venetian.

He's also jealous of Cassio.
There's no question about that.

Cassio is given the superior position,

and in Cyprus he sees to it that Cassio
is stripped of his... Lieutenancy.

To me the great thing is jealousy,
jealousy, jealousy.

How does that apply to Brabantio,
the part you played.

I think Brabantio is
jealous of anybody who

should be loved by his
daughter more than he.

I get the impression of a whole
community which is poisoned by a

a neck sting or a bee sting of jealousy,

in varying degrees, to everyone of them.

This is why I would say,
as you originally suggested,

the main theme of Othello is jealousy,

which motivates all the action,
throughout the play.

Iago is the mystery of that play,
but you know they say,

many people I know who've
read Shakespeare say,

and seen those Shakespeare
and sometimes acted in the Shakespeare,

"there's no such person
as Iago," I have met him.

three times in my life...

- I have met him.,, - Your
lucky if you've only met him twice.

One real life Iago is enough in any one
life, because we've all met several.

I guess we're all agreed that

this noble play, this noble...

tragedy is...

essentially concerned with the most...

ignoble of all passions.

Isn't that what jealousy is?

The most humiliating,
the most agonizing and the most piteous

I think it's self-pity,

That isn't a passion, is it?

it's a disease.
It's a result of a passion, yeah.

It's also more terrible
now by being after passion.

Do you really think
that in this permissive age

we're going to do away with jealousy?
I don't think so.

But why do we laugh at jealousy?

- Do we? I don't.
- No, I don't either, but people do.

Ah, but who are people? The public.

Those are harsh words, sir.

Thank God for them.

Thank God for fun.

We don't think as they do,
or we wouldn't be up on the stage,

painting our faces pretending
we were somebody else.

The hardhead we are not, the hardhead
with it would be all assertive.

the longing to be somebody else,
that drives us up on the stage.

- Of course, it's that.
- Or it's a cockerel with the dragging

plumes that everybody else has
been dying to avenge himself upon

it seems the plumes dragged in the mud

had all come kicked
down on him like that

That's a part of it,
nothing with jealousy,

there, but for the grace of God, go I.

- You don't laugh at jealousy? - Oh no,
I don't even laugh at seasickness.

I would draw jealousy is
the seasickness of passion.

Not just like this biter to admit,

the feeling of jealousy
being not a comic

reaction, in my mind, but a tragic one

When I think of women being jealous,
I'm so curious,

it less moved. I'm ashamed of this.

And it's never been treated as a tragic
subject in dramatic literature.

I don't think so.

I would say the reason for that, is that
all dramatic literature we know about,

has been written under patriarchal
male dominated societies,

for males, in which the final decision
in all matters belongs to the male.

What can be the problem of a woman?

If she is jealous or not,
since she's owned.

Therefore, I should be sympathetic
with the public attitude

of laughing at the trouble.

Because the public is partly female,
and the public sees the essential comedy

in the situation...

of...

of jealousy.

Because of other females?

Yes, because women when they're jealous,
and we just asked one now between takes

and she said,

"yes, I would be jealous, but I would
translate it immediately into hate."

Othello is a perfect male type,

kills Desdemona adoring her.
Now isn't that male?

Isn't that enormously masculine,
to murder this girl, adoring her.

No woman would do that.

She would forgive the man,
or forget his crime, or kill him,

but she would never kill him loving him.

the hypocrisy, the poetry, and the
absurdity of the male condition.

The man kills where he loves,
the woman only kills what she hates.

Remember this is,
it seems off the beat, maybe it is.

Jean Cocteau said, "whereas
the blind man is a tragic figure,

on the stage,
the deaf man is a comic one."

You know that

Oedipus, tragic,

- How wonderful!
- What? What? What? is funny

- And there's no difference.
- But

But you meet a blind man,
and meet a deaf man,

and the deaf man is much
more tragic in real life.

Of course he is.

He's cut away entirely, he can see
everybody, and he can't communicate.

It proves the point very well.
It shows that the point of absurdity,

which is the difference
between comedy and tragedy,

and the question of jealousy, between
the woman and the man's attitude,

is in itself,
without any logic, whatever.

As long as the woman
is any form of slave,

her role in drama is always
going to be very limited.

I'm not speaking about whether
she should have it or not.

Yet all the best parts,

in plays about lovers,
with lovers, it is the woman part.

Why? Because there is nothing more
fascinating to play that of a slave,

and get more sympathy from the audience,

because the man is responsible for
the pleasure in physical lovemaking.

She is not,

he's responsible.

His failure is the tragedy,
comic and otherwise,

there's nothing funny
about a woman's feeling.

Speaking of Othello's own view,

about what made him
jealous of Desdemona.

But he was poisoned by Iago,

He must've been poisoned more than Iago,

but he had an overwhelming passion for
the beauty and purity of this girl.

inseparable from his mind.

And he denies that he's going
to be made jealous by these

little drops of minor poison of Iago,
dropping in to him.

And he says "Tis not to make me jealous,
to say my wife is fair, feeds well,

loves company," "sings,
plays, and dances well.

Where virtue is,
these are more virtuous."

And then he gets his nightmare
again that she's Cassio in her arms.

Haven't you put your finger on the whole
thing? We're dealing with a puritan.

Over and over again,
Othello speaks of her virtue.

The fact that she's fair,
or the rest of it is secondary.

It's her virtue. That's very much
a puritan preoccupation, isn't it?

And Shakespeare understood
that preoccupation

he was anything but a puritan,
but he understood them,

after all they're the people
who closed his theater eventually.

I don't mean to say that Othello was
one of those fellows in a funny hat.

But the

The puritan idea, the puritan strain
runs through the English character

from the early days,
long before the puritans ascendancy and

That kind of...

Englishness is in the Moor's character.

That preoccupation with...

purity,

as an abstract idea.

Another thing he can't give her, is what
the 19th century theater always forgot.

In her, Desdemona, who is one of
the most interesting characters to me

in the whole wonderful, terrible play,

is that she is not the little pious,
obedient drip

as she is conceived of in
the 19th century particularly.

She is anything but. A Venetian girl,
who would walk out with a negro,

and marry him.

And certainly Desdemona is no cringing
blonde. She's not a born loser,

and if she dies a loser,
it's no fault of hers. But

Just a little quibble here,

we've been returning
constantly to the idea that

jealousy is the centric theme of the
play, but isn't there another nuance?

perhaps something else entirely,
close to, but different.

What about envy? Don't you think
there's perhaps easy distinction?

But to me there's a great distinction.

And that what Iago feels for
Othello is envy of his position.

And Othello was tortured by jealousy.

So envy is what?
Something you wish you could have,

and jealousy is something
you fear you are losing.

Almost I think I heard you
express it once, and saying that

envy was a desire of having,
and jealousy was the pain of losing.

Or a fear of losing,
you could be jealous for no reason.

And yet the curious thing is,

Maybe one loses something
the minute one is jealous.

even though there's no infidelity.
Isn't that perhaps the moral?

And I'm certain [?] used
a terrible word of Othello.

There could be, there's an ignoble
feeling about being envious,

but there's not the same ? heart-rending
humility as there is in jealousy.

- That awful feeling.
- Demeaning...

It lowers one to where [?]

- That's a feeling of self-unworthiness,
a feeling of inadequacy. - A failure.

The pleasure of the pain.

The pleasure of putting
the tongue upon the painful tooth,

you know, that hurts one.

And doesn't Othello
express itself with that?

With self-pity.

I wish I could agree with
you that there's some

evil faint, perverse pleasure
in the feeling of jealousy.

I've known it.

I didn't say that is,
because I don't, I have never...

You're wondering was there.

But isn't worse that that is?

Isn't there a kind of
self-love involved in jealousy.

There is self-love involved
in every human emotion.

That's how it begins
and that's how it ends.

We're all ignoble savages,

I think, really enough...

whether we're black or white,
or Moorish, or

or Blackamoor or Spanish or Venetian...

Self-love is the beginning and the end
of the human tragedy, I think.

- I agree entirely with you.
- You do agree? Then I must be wrong.

I was only wondering...

I have been terribly jealous
in my life, and you? - I have been.

And isn't it about the worst experience?

I agree and yet without mentioning
names, the person I envy most,

I have no feeling of bad
pain about it at all,

I envy, not mentioning any names at all,

I can pick up two people that I envy.

Not very wrong, you know, it can be.

If you go on like that, I might even
tell you and that'll ruin everything,

- however
- Who?

I envy Michael, his languages,

I envy you, your capacity,

you described it to me many years
ago about another actor who said,

he had a wonderful capacity
for displacing air.

Believe you me,
no greater cubic capacity of air

has ever been displaced by any human
being, as is being displaced by you

at this moment.

You said something of the sort to me,
when I auditioned for you 300 years ago

at the Gate Theater.
That I was a bloody bad actor.

I always knew you were
a potentially good actor.

If you're a politician,
you're in Congress

and you wish you were in
the White House, that's envy.

If you think the President is
making love to your wife, that's...

jealousy.

But he cannot be just the lie from
a desire for possession, he's all for

All for desire to entirely possess
the whole and justify what is,

if I might quote the phrase,
'Each man kills the thing he love.'

Yes, and if you dare as Othello did.

I was just...

going back in my mind to that

that business of Othello's age,
and wondering how many other

mistakes, how many other
misinterpretations I was guilty of,

that you were too nice to
mention during the shooting.

There was never one direction you gave
me which I disagreed with personally,

never one.

- Oh, that's very nice.
- Never one single... one except...

"take the cloak and go!"

Oh, yes...

I think I'd better explain. That's a
family joke. There was a scene in which

you were supposed to
take up your cloak and...

yes, and go!

And I disagreed passionately.
I wanted to make the most of that.

Well, yes, whenever I wanted to

to simplify the action or the business,
or whatever it was, to eliminate

superfluous declaration, I'd just
repeat that privately famous line.

"Will you take the cloak and go."
That's all you had to do, you said.

Which you did it eventually, and
very nicely too. Let's drink to that.

And here

our luncheon party comes to an end.

We didn't run out of food or wine,
and we certainly didn't run out of talk.

We just ran out of film.

Why, I wonder, does MacLiammoir
say that Iago is a mystery?

What he means, I think, is that,

the Shakespeareans often call him that

and what worries them,
I think what worries all of us,

is the mystery of evil itself.

Now there's a tendency today

to deny the existence of evil,
not to believe in it,

to call evil a sickness.

And you'll say, I suppose,
that our notion of

playing Iago as sexually
impotent is a very

modern sort of trick.
Well if it is a trick,

and I hope it isn't,

at least we didn't impose it
very heavily on the film itself.

Now I do believe

quite fervently in the existence of
evil and certainly Shakespeare did.

and just as certainly Iago
is the embodiment of evil,

more so even than Richard III,
whose actions were evil,

but who was motivated by ambition.

Iago has no ambition.

He hates Cassio,
that's due for having been given a

military title, that he might have had,
but he would have hated him anyway.

His envy, all of his brand of jealousy

is an excuse.

Of Cassio he says,

"there is a daily beauty
in his life, which

makes me ugly."

You see,

Iago is a slave.

He has the heart of a slave,
he has the special

cunning and all the artful
hypocrisy of the slave who revels

in the condition of slavery.

Dostoyevsky says,

"the secret consciousness of power

is more

insupportably delicious,

than open domination."

And Iago says,

"we cannot all be masters,

nor all masters cannot
be truly followed."

The irony is... satanic.

The whole key to his character,
and another key,

comes again from Iago himself, who says,

"I am not what I am."

All the other people in
the story are people of feeling.

Iago is the intellect.

He is pure intellect,
and as Emerson says,

"Pure intellect is the pure devil.

Pure and cold."

Iago's is the terrible
alliance of pure intellect

and hate and this is damnation.

The worst of all Hells
in Dante's Inferno,

is the Hell of ice.

Iago, of course, is incapable of love.

He's forever protesting his
love for Othello, to Othello.

And Othello believes him,
he is after all, honest... honest Iago.

Those words,
honest Iago are heard often.

The word honest is
heard even more often.

Everybody speaks in the play,
describing Iago as honest.

Desdemona does, Cassio does, Othello
does, and Iago does, interminably.

The point is that Othello believing
Iago, believing him honest,

believes his blameless
wife is dishonest.

It's the supreme irony.

But I think it's easy enough to
understand, when you think about it.

Desdemona, after all,

comes from the gilded, pleasure loving,
luxurious world of Venetian aristocracy,

about which Othello knows absolutely
nothing, except that it's morals

are notoriously loose.

He is a professional army man,
after all.

A stranger in the society of high-born,
high-spirited noblewomen.

He's married one of them, they've just
married. Now that's very important.

They're just married.

He scarcely knows her at all.
Indeed, he never comes to know her.

She dies in his hands... a stranger.

Strangers to each other. Well, Othello
knows, or thinks he knows Iago very well

and before anything remember,
Iago is honest.

His slandering of Desdemona
is done with great subtlety.

There is nothing,
apparently to gain by it.

So there really isn't any reason,
to speak of Othello, as

as some critics do,
as childishly gullible.

No, Desdemona, for Othello

is the bride in a romance. A dream,
he scarcely had time to discover what's

flesh and blood,
before Iago's poisons have begun the

work in to turn
the dream into a nightmare.

Iago is a trusted officer in Othello's
commandery, a companion under arms.

Othello's soldier, Othello male
and Othello is monumentally male.

His story is monumentally
a male tragedy.

Small wonder that the doubt falls
where it usually does in life.

Not on the slanderer, but on
the innocent object of the slander.

There's certainly a huge
simplicity about Othello,

but in trusting Iago, he does no
more than anyone else in the story.

They all trust him, as we've seen.

No, the commander of the armed forces

of the great Venetian
Republic is no stupid child.

He is no Venetian sophisticated, either.
I think he must feel

something close to awe,

in his love of Desdemona,
the Senator's daughter, who

fled from the palace in the dead
of night, to marry a black man.

Black Othello, the outsider,
the mercenary, the foreigner,

and the older man, must feel a certain

insecurity when he contemplates
this curious conquest of his.

He has married her, as if by a miracle,
but can he keep her?

Might she not turn away from him,
as suddenly as she ran away with him?

Now, just for a moment,
I'd like to quote from the play itself.

Othello,

along with Iago,

as he's first beginning to doubt, says,

"I swear

"'tis better to be much abused

Than but to know't a little.

What sense had I

of her stol'n hours of lust?

I saw't not, thought it not,
it harm'd not me:

I slept the next night well,

fed well,

was free

and merry;

I found not Cassio's kisses

on her lips.

By the world,

I think my wife be honest

and think she is not.

I'll have some proof.

My name,

that was as fresh as Dian's visage,

is now begrimed and

black

as mine own face.

I would be satisfied
but Iago says, 'how?

how satisfied, my lord?'

Would you,

the supervisor, grossly gape on,

behold her topped?

It is impossible you should see this,
were they as prime as goats,

as hot as monkeys.'

'Give me a reason,' says Othello,
'Give me a living reason she's disloyal'

'I do not like the office' says Iago,
'But, sith

I am enter'd in this cause so far,
prick'd to't by foolish honesty and love

I will go on.

I lay with Cassio lately; and,

being troubled with a raging tooth,
I could not sleep.

There are a kind of
men so loose of soul,

that in their sleeps will
mutter their affairs:

One of this kind is Cassio:

In sleep I heard him say

'Sweet Desdemona, let us be wary,

let us hide our loves;'

And then, sir,

would he gripe and wring my hand,

cry 'O sweet creature!'

and then kiss me hard,

as if he pluck'd up kisses by the roots

that grew upon my lips:

then laid his leg

over my thigh,

and sigh'd, and kiss'd;

and then cried

'Cursed fate that gave
thee to the Moor!'"

And then at the beginning of the play,
the beginning of the love between

Othello and Desdemona,
there's the famous speech to the senate,

which, I think, explains a good deal and

tells us a lot about Othello himself,

as well as that love.

He's brought to the senate,

charged by Desdemona's father with
the crime of having seduced Desdemona

by magic spells and this is
what he says to the senators:

"Most potent,

grave, and reverend signiors,

My very noble and approved good masters,

That I have ta'en away this old
man�s daughter, it is most true.

True, I have married her.

The very head and front of
my offending hath this extent, no more.

Rude am I in my speech, and little
blessed with the soft phrase of peace,

For since these arms of
mine had seven years' pith

till now some nine moons wasted,
they have used their dearest action

in the tented field,

And little of this

great world can I speak,

More than pertains to
feats of broils and battle,

and therefore little shall I grace
my cause in speaking for myself.

Yet, by your gracious patience,

I will a round unvarnished tale
deliver of my whole course of love.

What drugs,

what charms,

what conjuration and what mighty magic�

For such proceeding I am charged withal�

I won his daughter.

Her father loved me, oft invited me,

Still questioned me the story of my life

from year to year,

the battles, sieges, fortunes,
that I have passed. I ran it through,

even from my boyish days,
wherein I spoke of most

disastrous chances,

Of moving accidents by flood and field,
of hair-breadth �scapes

in the imminent deadly breach,

of being taken by the insolent
foe and sold to slavery,

of my redemption thence

And portance in my traveler�s history.

Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle,

rough quarries, rocks,
hills whose heads touch heaven

It was my hint to speak

�such was my process�

and of the Cannibals
that each others eat,

the Anthropophagi,

and men whose heads do grow
beneath their shoulders.

These things to hear would
Desdemona seriously incline.

But still the house affairs
would draw her hence,

which ever as she could with
haste dispatch, she�d come again,

and with a greedy ear
devour up my discourse,

which I, observing, found good means to
draw from her a prayer of earnest heart

that I would all my pilgrimage dilate,
whereof by parcels

she had something heard
but not intentively.

I did consent,

And often did beguile her of her tears

when I did speak of some distressful
stroke that my youth suffered.

My story being done

she gave me for my pains

a world of sighs.

She swore, in faith, �twas strange,

�twas passing strange,

'twas pitiful,

�twas wondrous pitiful.

She wished she had not heard it,

yet she wished that heaven had
made her such a man. She thanked me

and she bade me,
if I had a friend that loved her,

I should but teach him
how to tell my story

and that would woo her.

Upon this hint I spake.

She loved me for
the dangers I had passed,

And I loved her

that she did pity them."

That's the speech.

Now...

Last winter,

Last winter they invited me to Boston,

for a special showing
of the film of Othello,

the audience stayed on
after the screening.

A movie has to have a great opening.

It must command attention.

The opening of Othello is written for
an audience that's just getting quiet.

And Like all openings in a play,

because you don't ever want to open
a play at the top of your bent.

But a movie should open at
the top of it's bent, it must,

because this damn thing is dead.

The only living thing are the people
sitting out here. It's a projected image

and you cannot bring the thing alive

unless you seize
the people at the beginning.

The riderless horse has to come in.

The funeral of Othello and the lynching
of Iago, is the riderless horse.

Just as simple as that.

May I ask a question which at
first blush may sound silly?

Is Roderigo's dog a terrier?

- The reason I ask, well,
- Yes, why are you asking?

Well, if you consult the Jan van
Eyck's The Arnolfini Marriage Portrait,

you'll find in addition to the circular
mirror which you used in this film,

that a terrier is
a symbol of marital fidelity

and it seems to be at
the heart of the film

and I was wondering if
that was why you selected

- such a dog.
- I like your opinion.

This is a kind of a question I love,

because if I'd known about the question
before, I would've been able to pretend

that I had indeed used a terrier

because it is a classic
symbol of marital infidelity.

Oh, fidelity. That's just what I said.

But since I didn't have notice of this
question, I haven't got time to con you.

I'll have to tell you the truth.

The terrier was not a terrier.

It was a Tenerife,
which is a very rare kind of dog,

because it is the lapdog used by the
dandies in all the Carpaccio paintings,

and Carpaccio was the source

of the costumes
and the general aesthetic of the movie.

That's the answer to that one.

I was wondering, sir,

in Olivier's production of Othello,

he seems to stress the vanity of the man
much more than in your production.

Would you comment on that?

You see, the themes of Othello
were set down first by Shakespeare,

and of course there's a difference

in every Othello, depending on who makes
the film, or theatrical production.

Because there are so many
ways of doing it, there isn't

one right way of doing it.

If I could make Othello
again - first of all

I've done it in the theater since then,

when I did it completely differently,
as an actor and as well as a director.

We took an entirely new

line on everything, because that's
the great opportunity that you have.

The minute you have a great piece of
material, like a Shakespearean play,

or any other thing of that kind,
you are free to make

almost anything you want with it.

You could go so many
directions and still be true to

the essential job.

Yes, sir.

The role of Iago in this production of
Othello seemed somewhat straightforward,

to be largely envy,
but in some of your other movies,

specifically "The Lady From Shanghai,"
the motives of Arthur Bannister

seem much more obscure.

Nobody ever works in a big organization,

whether it's military, or business, or

theatrical or anything else,
without running into a few Iago's.

Now,

there are all kinds of ways of doing it.

When Olivier did Iago with Richardson,

years ago, they did it
as a homosexual relationship.

When Othello were played by
Richardson and fell into his fit,

Iago kissed him
passionately on the lips.

I don't know how that worked,
but I know that they did it.

There are many different efforts.

In the case of this film,

I took the line that

Iago was impotent,

and that his malice

was the malice of impotence.

Something else,

Sir...

You took the set design from
your Harlem theater companies...

How do you know that?

Because I taught a course on
your films a few years ago.

You used the set design from
the Harlem theater company staging of...

Haiti.

Only the basic plan, not the set design.

You set it in Haiti, right,
and you eliminated the palm trees

from the film set.

It wasn't that simple, no.

Alright,
I was just wondering why you chose

to make that a one-shot experiment and
never repeat the effort of making a film

quickly, as you said, to inspire others,

- to tackle difficult projects
in a short amount of time. - exactly.

I don't know if you all
heard that in the back.

The point is that Macbeth,
which was made in a very short time,

it was actually, the actual principal
photography was nineteen days,

with two days more for

inserts and things like that,
so it was a real quicky.

And the basic set had the same plan
which I had used in the black Macbeth,

which I had done in Harlem,
in the theater, some years before.

It wasn't the same set.

but it had the same basic plan,
because it worked before

and we were in a great rush.

And the question was why

have I not repeated
the experiment of making quickly

serious or difficult subjects
like Shakespearian plays.

And the answer is that I was gambling
on Macbeth being a great success,

the American critical press for
Macbeth was very bad at the time.

The European press was very good.

When you've got the film shot,

and you're sitting in the editing room,
putting the film together,

can you tell us what

is the question that's going through
your mind as you select things?

What applicable questions for each scene
makes you select one shot over another?

or as you're having the camera pan
through a room or something you want

to cut to somebody's
expression or whatever.

I have done a great
deal of that editing,

while I am filming.

I visualize the editing,
while I am filming.

And when I change that idea,

it is a deliberate change.

What's the difference between that what
you preconceive in before you shoot

and that what you actually
do after you shoot.

The difference is bigger
than I'd like to admit,

and I do admit it, yes,
the difference is pretty great,

because actors teach you so much.

The scenery, the smell of a thing,
you come on a set

in the morning, whether it's Othello,
or a modern story, whatever it might be.

And...

If you have a master plan
for what you're going to do,

exactly where the camera is going to be,
exactly what the scene

is supposed to state,

if you are locked into that,
you are depriving yourself

of the divine accidents of moviemaking.

Because everywhere there
are beautiful accidents.

The actor

says something in a different way
than you ever dreamed it could be said.

She looks differently,

there's a smell in the air,
there's a look

that changes the whole
resonance of what you expected.

Then, there are the true accidents,

and my definition of a film director
is the man who presides over accidents,

but doesn't make them.

I'm going to stop just here,

not only because our time is almost up,

because at this point in the discussion,

the Boston film buffs veered
away from the subject of Othello.

If I've evaded any of their questions,
or any of yours,

it's not by design.

Maybe I should have read
into the record some of the

things that critics have
said against Othello.

You might have found that informative.

I would have found it depressing.

Then I'm very much afraid
that under the banner of fair play,

and the interest of what's
called a balanced judgment,

I couldn't have resisted reading
you some of the good stuff as well.

Anyway it's an argument
that still goes on and on.

I spared you both sides of it,
and I don't know if I was mistaken.

Maybe an anthology of critical
reviews might have been rewarding, but

after all this is supposed to
be my voice on the subject, so

that's what you've had.

I've tried to be as candid as I can.

You won't have expected
me to be objective.

I started by calling
this a conversation,

but I'm afraid what you've had most is
a scrambled, disjointed series of notes.

I've been coming at
our subject from every

conceivable direction of the compass,

There might have been a better
shape to this if I had relentlessly

pursued a single theme, but that

would have neglected all
the other themes. I just don't know.

Trying to say too much,
I may have said too little.

Now...

of course...

my film did not do justice to the play.

It is my film and

Shakespeare's play.

No film, indeed, no stage production
could ever do true justice to that play.

No actor ever did full
justice to the part.

I ask myself now, if I've done
justice here in my own movie.

Talking to you, I don't mean
in the value I may sometimes

rather coyly have placed upon it.
I just mean this discussion.

Let's try to sum it up.

how the picture was made. That story.

You remember, an Italian producer
dreaming of Verdi's Otello, and

neglecting to mention
that he was about to go into bankruptcy,

stranded our whole company in
a small town off the coast of Africa.

With a little money of my own,
all I had and absolutely

no costumes whatsoever,
we improvised our way for awhile,

and had to stop for awhile and I had to
go to work as an actor in other films,

earning money enough to continue
with my own and that went on and on,

and repeated itself several times,
and it meant

that Othello was made so to speak,
on the installment plan.

This and other circumstances did impose
a method and a style of shooting,

which was contrary to what
had been carefully planned.

And for a description
of the finished result,

I've drawn tonight on a few of
those critical appreciations, which

correspond fairly
closely to my own ideas.

Some thoughts on the interpretation

have come from a couple of the leading
actors, with some additions of my own.

All judgments having been avoided,

I leave you with this confession.

This hasn't been as easy
as I could have wished.

There are too many regrets,

too many things

I wish I could have done over again.

If it wasn't a memory,
if it was a project for the future,

talking about Othello would've
been nothing but delight.

Promises are more fun than explanations.

With all my heart, I wish that

I wasn't looking back on Othello,

but looking forward to it.

That Othello

would be one hell of a picture.

Goodnight.

Subtitles: coloraday @ KG