Event

Othello

May 02 - May 08

(Orson Welles, U.S.A., 1952, DCP, 90 min)

New digital restoration!

Friday, May 02 at 07:00PM
Friday, May 02 at 09:00PM
Saturday, May 03 at 07:00PM
Saturday, May 03 at 09:00PM
Sunday, May 04 at 07:00PM
Sunday, May 04 at 09:00PM
Monday, May 05 at 01:00PM
Monday, May 05 at 03:00PM
Monday, May 05 at 07:00PM
Tuesday, May 06 at 07:00PM
Tuesday, May 06 at 09:00PM
Wednesday, May 07 at 07:00PM
Wednesday, May 07 at 09:00PM
Thursday, May 08 at 07:00PM
Thursday, May 08 at 09:00PM

When historians discuss the blighted career of Orson Welles, they generally hone in on the meddlesome studio mutilations of Magnificent Ambersons or Touch of Evil, but there is no more star-crossed Welles work than his 1952 adaptation of Othello.

A veritable perfect storm of impediments cursed this international production (too little money, too little time, etc.). Even after winning the Palm D'Or at Cannes in 1952, it took two years for Othello to find wide distribution, where it then flopped unceremoniously.

This masterpiece, which we are screening in a pristine digital restoration, is absolutely essential viewing, and a rare chance to admire Welles' astonishing visual corollary to Shakespeare's themes of race, trust, jealousy, paranoia. Unlike most film adaptations of Shakespeare, this is unmistakably Cinema instead of Theatre.

With Welles in fine form, brilliant as the Moor (he also supplied the post-synchronous voices of many minor characters), and Michael McLiammore as the venal Iago.