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Shakespeare
Online
The Hollywood
Bard
Othello
The Internet Movie Database lists
twenty-seven different versions of this play: twenty theatrical
releases, in various languages, plus five made-for-TV versions,
and two straight-to-video versions. Unfortunately, only two of
those versions are available from Amazon.com, and only one is
available in VHS format.
 The
1995 Oliver Parker
version features Laurence Fishburne as Othello and Kenneth
Branagh as Iago. I haven't seen this one yet, but I plan to soon,
and I'll let you know what I think about it when I do. In the
meantime, the reviews look fairly positive: it's given four and
a half stars (out of five) on Amazon.com's user reviews, and
7.1 stars out of ten on IMDB's similar rating system. One thing
I wonder though: why is it that whenever Kenneth Branagh appears
in a movie he doesn't direct, he's always cast as a villian?
Actually, I've never seen him in anything he hasn't directed,
but in Swing Kids
(where he's uncredited, but listed elsewhere as "SS Officer"),
Wild Wild West,
and in this one, he's the villian. Maybe he does it particularly
well.
 The other version that's available from
Amazon.com is the 1952
Orson Welles version, and it's only available in DVD format.
However, I know that it's out there on VHS, even if it isn't
available for purchase, 'cause I just rented it at Blockbuster
about six months ago. This is a rather unusual version, in that
a lot of the dialogue is missing: whenever a character, in the
play, describes somethig that he has done or is going to do,
Welles usually just shows them doing it, rather than talking
about it. It's kind of quirky, too, probably because of all the
budget problems Welles had while making the film. (Roger Ebert
has written an interesting article
about those problems.)
Other interesting versions of
note include the 1981
BBC-TV version, which features Anthony Hopkins as Othello
and Bob Hoskins as Iago; a 1980
version with Yaphett Kotto as Othello; the 1965
British theatrical release with Laurence Olivier as Othello,
Maggie Smith as Desdemona, and Derek Jacobi as Cassius; a 1979 straight-to-video
version with Raul Julia as Othello and Richard Dreyfuss as
Iago; and a 1989 version
directed by and starring Ted Lange in the lead role. (And, yes,
that's the same Ted Lange who was the bartender Isaac on "Love
Boat"! Hey, if Fred "Gopher" Grandy can graduate
from Love Boat to become a Congressman, Ted Lange can go on to
do Shakespeare, right?)
One thing that kind of disturbs
me about a lot of these productions is the fact that they feature
a white actor in blackface makeup playing the lead role. I'm
not saying that a white man can't play Othello, I'm just saying:
what, were there no competent black actors available? And why
the blackface? Even if you're going to have a white man play
a Moor, at least do it without the makeup; it distracts from
his performance and stirs up disturbing images from American
vaudeville. Besides which, it just looks ridiculous.
And there are other ways to go
about it, as was proven by a 1997
theatrical production of Othello at the Shakespeare Theatre
in Washington, D.C., starring Patrick Stewart as the Moor. In
this version, rather than painting him up in blackface to make
him appear an outsider, Stewart was the only white member of
the cast; all the other cast members were black. In his interview
about it, Stewart calls it a "photo-negative" production.
This is one version that I really wish was on video.
If you happened to see it, please e-mail
me and tell me about it. |
