by Brendan Foley
It is safe to say that Chimes at Midnight (also known as Falstaff), now available on a pristine Blu-ray and DVD courtesy of the Criterion Collection, is the movie that Orson Welles spent his whole life building towards.
Welles staged a version of what would become Chimes back in his thirties, remixing and reworking elements of Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 and Henry V into a supposedly new and revitalized form.
It was a disaster and closed almost immediately.
A couple decades later, Welles took another stab at it a theatrical production of the same story. He retrofitted multiple plays to now center around the beloved, doomed figure of merriment and mischief, Falstaff. With Welles identifying strongly with the central role, he believed that he had finally cracked the story and the play was now properly dubbed Chimes at Midnight.
It was a disaster and closed almost immediately.
By now most people would’ve given the thing up for a crapshoot, but Welles was fixated on bringing Chimes to the screen. This involved a good deal of trickery (and by trickery we of course mean “flat out lying”, as Welles apparently told investors he was actually producing a new Treasure Island, even going so far as to construct sets that could conceivably double as pirate locales) and the end result was a film that was dismissed by contemporary critics and relegated to a footnote in Welles’ career. Chimes at Midnight‘s reputation has grown in the years since, but legal disputes kept the film from most home media, and the prints that circulated theatrically were often damaged (the sound was already cruddy enough, due to low budget and trouble with actors). Thanks to Criterion and Janus Films, Chimes at Midnight can now be seen in all its glory.
And such glory it is. For all that Welles suffered and struggled to complete the film, Chimes at Midnight is one of the most profoundly affecting films to ever be made from The Bard’s works, digging deep into the broken heart beneath the dense passages and convoluted politics.
For those unfamiliar with the plays Welles was playing with (which includes yours truly) Chimes opens with Merry Old England in a state of turmoil. King Henry IV (John Gielgud) has usurped the throne by killing his predecessor, and the dead king’s family members (led by Norman Rodway as the fiery Hotspur) are, you know, they’re not thrilled. While schemes are schemed and armies mass, the heir apparent, Prince Hal (Keith Baxter) prefers to spend his days far away from the intrigue of the castle. He fills his time with drinking, whoring, and random acts of theft and sabotage, led on all the while by Falstaff (Welles himself) a rotund, disheveled lord who delights in vice and frivolity.
Falstaff is a liar, a crook, a thief, a fool, and a cheat. In the hands of Orson Welles, he is one of the most endearingly human characters to ever leave Shakespeare’s quill, and his destruction one of the great unsung tragedies of The Bard’s long body of work.
Chimes at Midnight makes no secret of where it is heading, from the title on down. There is a sense even from the first scene that we are witnessing the end of an age. Welles’ black and white photography reduces even the spring days to winter pallor, and all throughout the film bells sound in the background, unheeded by the characters but to us serving as an intractable countdown.
While the film was notoriously threadbare and somewhat slapped together (Welles had to Shemp almost the entire cast throughout production because the schedule was so tight), everything in the film feels of a piece and carefully considered. Every member of the cast feels attuned to the same tone, with the younger cast members like Baxter and Rodway giving everything they have in their attempts to keep up with legends like Welles and Gielgud. Welles eschewed nearly all make-up for the film, allowing these nearly archetypal figures of legend and story to feel human in a way that the costumes and lyricism of Shakespeare’s work usually don’t allow for.
That humanity is what sets Chimes at Midnight apart, and it may be why the film took so long to catch on. Welles spent much of his life damned to be too far ahead of everyone else, and his idea to treat William Shakespeare’s text not as iron clad gospel but as something alive, as human and humane may have been too much for some folks.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the centerpiece of the film, the Battle of Shrewsbury. Welles takes you inside the battle, stripping away all the romantic notions one might have for war and warfare. Welles never tries to establish things like geography or which knights belong to which side. Shrewsbury is a cacophony of chaos and madness, breaking down into a rapidly-cut montage of pure movement and barbarism. There’s no way to establish geography or who belongs to which side. There’s just death; ugly, cruel and random death reaching out of the mud to rip men down and stomp them into the filth.
Since its release, there has been a great deal of debate over what, exactly, Welles intended Chimes to be a dirge for. Some critics said the story was a parable of Welles’ own relationship with his father, which mirrored Hal and Falstaff and shared a similar tragic end. Others pointed to Welles’ own fraught relationships with his (supposed) children and saw in Chimes an old man attempting to make peace with the mistakes he could never take back. Still others read the film as an extended metaphor for the heartbreak and disappointment that Welles felt towards Hollywood, that beguiling city and industry that sapped him of his youthful energy and repaid him in nothing except disappointment and frustration.
Welles himself contended that he intended Chimes at Midnight as an elegy for the Merrie Old England of story, with Falstaff as the totemic embodiment of those halcyon days, betrayed, rejected and left to rot in memory.
But ultimately, it doesn’t matter what specific thing Welles was mourning, what matters is that his Falstaff’s downfall stands for so many other falls from grace and youthful hope. For as much joy and lively comedy as Chimes at Midnight contains, it remains a bitterly sad film, a film that reminds you that these joys in life are endlessly fleeting.
You laugh with and at Falstaff, but always that laughter is cut by those bells, those endlessly ringing bells. At film’s end, they ring for Falstaff, but they sound throughout the movie, and even after.