v.o.
Another project that Hollywood wasn't ecstatic about was Welles' 1948 version of Macbeth. Republic Pictures accepted it, but they only gave him 21 days to shoot it and a tiny budget.
OW
I thought I had a great success with it, and then I'll be allowed to do all kind of difficult things as long as they are cheap. But Life Magazine came out that day, Margaret always hated me anyway, she came out that week writing that I've murdered Macbeth. It was a big critical failure. It was the biggest critical failure I've ever had.
LM
You've said that it posses a great problem when you appeared in your film because of your presence or your personality?
OW
Yes, much more than in the theatre. I have the personality which requires me to play certain part. It was a kind of handicap. There used to be a form of division of actors, there are who are called king actors. They weren't necessarily the best actor, they were the actor who played the king. And I'm a king actor, maybe a bad one, but that's what I am. I have to play authoritative role. But Truffaut was quite right when he says about me that I always show the fragility of great authority and that that's the thing I do. I think it would be intolerable if I didn't.
v.o.
If making Macbeth in a very short time was some kind of a minor miracle, Welles next venture into Shakespeare was to prove the most torturous journey he ever undertook.
OW
A large company, the biggest company I've ever had as a director on location, about 70 people I think it was besides the actors and everything, came to Mogador on the west coast of Africa to shoot Othello. And we arrived and got a telegram, the day after we arrived, that Scalera, the biggest Italian movie studio, with whom I had the contract to make the picture, had gone bankrupt. We had no money, we were in Africa, and we had no costumes, nothing.
v.o.
But Welles refuse to give up. He began to pool his own money into Othello, and he gathered his cast and crew from all over Europe, Suzanne Cloutier from Paris, and his old boss, Micheal MacLiammore from Dublin. Welles got into the habit of suddenly leaving his crew on location, flying off to star in someone else's movie and rushing back weeks later with the money to shoot a bit more.
LM
The story has grown up that these unfortunate actors were left stranded while Orson Welles went off... I don't know what ... and joins...
OW
The actors love to tell that story because, of course they were stranded, but what they forget is that they were stranded in a four-star luxury hotel of Europe. They were stranded in Grand Hotel and the Europa in Venice, and in the Colon d'Or in Provence and so on. And they were stranded only to the extent that I didn't want to send them home. I want to keep them together, and I went off to get money and left them, at great expense, eating and sleeping in luxurious condition.
v.o.
During the 2 years it took to make Othello, Welles had plenty of opportunity to use what he called divine-accidents. The first sequence to be shot was the murder of Rodrigo. It's a brilliantly cinematic idea to set it in a steam bath. But in fact only Lago customus had arrived, others had been impounded when the Italian studio went bankrupt. So Welles decided to shoot the scene in a bath house, where the actors didn't need any clothes at all.
OW
I had a very good art director for that picture, Trauner, one of the best in movie history. But because of lack of funds we ended up shooting mostly in real places, and there wasn't much for him to do. But he designed a wonderful Othello which somebody should do someday.
v.o.
The invention continued all over Europe, with Welles art directing on the run and creating marvelous set pieces like the fight scene filmed in a sewer in Portugal. The long filming schedule cost other problems. Welles often has to shoot his pick-up shots on different location. This fight started in the street in Morocco. The final punches was shot two-thousand miles away in Italy.
OW
We were in about, I don't know, at least seven or eight different cities in Italy, just where there would be a little piece that would be right, you know. Didn't need something added to it. And that of course determined the kind of cutting, which I wouldn't have done otherwise. I would have played a longer scenes, but I had to, it had to be done in cuts because...
LM
I find the cutting early on a bit confusing.
OW
Yes, so do I. I don't like several bits there in Venice. I think the weakest thing in the picture is Venice. Some of it is quite weak indeed.
LM
Do you accept the label people have put on it? They called a flawed masterpiece because they've drawn attention to that and to the dialogue sound, which they find poor. That against these brilliant images...
OW
Yes, well, I don't know what happened to the sound. It was alright when we were done with it but something happened in making distribution copies or something. That did hurt it, so flawed to the extent that we were not able to control the quality of the release print. It was actually all rights as we did it. With awfully good music, wonderful music. I don't know flawed masterpiece, I don't know masterpiece either. I can tell you things I don't like in all my movies and if that makes it flawed, then it's flawed; and I don't think I've ever made a masterpiece.
v.o.
But there are wonderful things in Othello, in its marriage of film and theatre, in Welles' use of real life film set, and in his own performance.
(Othello's playing)
OW
I see that Othello is not one of your favorite movies. After one of those questions, "Would you agree that it's a flawed masterpiece?" We then, after a slight pause, say could we go on.
LM
Could we go on to something else?
OW
I think we'd better.
LM
Mr. Arkadin?
OW
That's the real flawed one. That's a disaster.
v.o.
Mr. Arkadin is another story of an investigation into a man's past. A mysterious and powerful stranger has hired a small-time investigator to inquire into his past.
(end of part9)
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