dauphindelune First of all, for those who have trouble following the full-on flowing Shakespearean dialogue, get the newly restored DVD from Criterion (2017) with subtitles. Plus many extras. Fans have waited decades for the delays caused by legal wrangling with the estate and other interlopers to finally be settled. I have a few of the earlier bootleg versions which were tolerable if you just had to see Chimes, but the Criterion is what so many fans have been waiting for. Beautiful.The image shown here is from an old bootleg. It would be nice if IMDb updated it from the Criterion release.At last, the movie Welles said he was most proud of, that he would present at the Gates of Heaven should he need make a submission for entering! I somehow landed in London 1969 and in the first weeks I was there we landed on the moon, people were gathered in little crowds around the old black and white tellies; and, Chimes at Midnight was showing. I was so overwhelmed I went back twice, and for decades it haunted me.Shakespeare on stage or in formal style movies seems so distant in time or across a distant divide; but Welles has culled out the meat from the various plays and joined them. The love between the youthful capricious Prince and the wise, vulnerable scoundrel fool is one I could put myself longingly into. How I wanted to share their adventures! Finally the Prince must become the King and put away childhood excess, even lose part of his heart. I always felt I had never grown into a man most of my life, longing for my own lost "Merrie England" of the soul. Ironically, only this year, in my 72nd year could I say that I had finally felt like I was now the man, the King. Yes it took that long! But the joke was on me! Before the year was out I had gotten excessively drunk or high, and twice pratfallen upon my face.This was the final sweetness to the tale: in one year I had gone from the Prince to the King (in my own mind of course), but the droll truth was that I had become Falstaff, the old fool! May your journey with the masterpiece be as special.

bkoganbing When I saw the BBC productions of Henry IV both parts it became my favorite work of the Bard. Anthony Quayle was really great as Falstaff in both of those plays. So I was anxious to see how Orson Welles did in the part, especially as in his Chimes At Midnight it was Falstaff who became the centerpiece. I was not disappointed in the slightest.As Welles grew heavier and heavier as he grew older there were many jokes about his corpulence, Robin Williams started his career on them in Mork And Mindy. But the man who played Charles Foster Kane really grew into the role of Falstaff in two decades and a half. Quayle probably needed padding. I'm informed in Citadel Film series book on The Films Of Orson Welles that Welles actually had to diet.Way back in the day when Master Will Shakespeare wrote Henry IV and Falstaff proved so popular that he was brought back for The Merry Wives Of Windsor he did not have the advantage of movie closeups. Welles the director made very good use of his camera in his closeups of the main characters of Falstaff, Henry IV played by John Gielgud and Prince Hal played by Keith Baxter. I think the Bard would have approved, he had to write descriptive words to get his points across.Chimes At Midnight started as an edited play done by Welles condensing Shakespeare's work. The play never found an audience, but Welles believed in it and took a lot of roles in a lot of mediocre work as was his fashion to get his work filmed. The results paid off beautifully.Welles filmed this in Europe and it became an 'international' film in that overused word. Most of his cast was British and that also included Margaret Rutherford. She plays Mistress Quickly and that's a role far different from Miss Jane Marple. The most popular courtesan in Mistress Quickly's bawdy house is Jeanne Moreau from France. The work was mostly shot in Spain which was becoming a favored location for filming and they also contributed Fernando Rey in the role of Worcester, leader of the rebellion against Henry IV.Welles hits all the right emotions in the audience playing Falstaff. He's at once lovable, outrageous, and exasperating. Gielgud is also wonderful as the patient father waiting for his older son to just grow up and stop hanging around with disreputable types like Falstaff. That the father just happens to be King of England and the son the Crown Prince is almost an incidental to a universal story. That the story is universal is proved by the wonderful adaptation Gus Van Sant did with this same material in My Own Private Idaho. A chance to see Orson Welles intoning the Bard's words is never to be passed up.

Hidup_bisa_aneh This movie, which is very nicely filmed, very cinematic, as we'd expect from it's director, has one very big problem with it. Falstaff, in the Shakespeare plays, is no hero. In the plays he symbolizes everything wrong with England. He is an adulterous, corrupt, criminal, even stooping so low as to become a common thief, he is a congenital liar and manipulator. In the plays, while we have a certain amount of fun with him for a while, in the end he is acknowledged for what he is: evil. The director of this film had a different idea, he had a strange romantic vision of the age of chivalry, and felt that this was somehow embodied in the character of Falstaff. Film buffs can read the interviews. This interpretation is at logger-heads with Shakespeare's Fallstaff. The director, of course, felt that you can play Shakespeare any number of different ways, and all will be well and good. But you can't turn the criminal, the embodiment of evil, into the good-guy. That's a little too "Hollywood", in the worst possible way. Personally, I don't feel any sympathy for Hal's rejection of Falstaff. He got what was coming to him. The Prince grew up, developed a sense of moral character when it was needed of him. He rose to the occasion and met that which was demanded of him for the good of his country. The sad coward Falstaff could never change. The director, self-confessedly, is on Falstaffs side. Makes you wonder about his view of life in general and understanding of Shakespeare in particular.Very disappointing.

gavin6942 The career of Shakespeare's Sir John Falstaff (Orson Welles) as roistering companion to young Prince Hal (Keith Baxter), circa 1400-1413.Who can say bad things about Orson Welles? His work was often neglected in his lifetime, both by audiences and critics. Looking back now, I wonder how they could have missed the genius of "Citizen Kane". But yet, they did for many years.This film is considered to be Welles' favorite of his own (I am unsure of the source for this claim) and has been influential. Yet, it is hard to get a decent copy (the one I have was a Portuguese import). There was no actor with such a presence as Welles, so Shakespeare is natural for him. He has successfully brought the stage to screen.