SOURCE: Buchman, Lorne M. “Orson Welles's Othello: A Study of Time in Shakespeare's Tragedy.” Shakespeare Survey 39, (1987): 53-65.

[In the following essay, Buchman contrasts Iago's view of time as changeable with Othello's perception of time as an eternal, orderly continuum, and remarks that the Moor's underlying fear of time's power to destroy love and honor makes him particularly vulnerable to Iago's treachery. Buchman also demonstrates how Orson Welles, in his film adaptation of Othello, used various cinematic techniques to underscore the significance of time in the play.]

With the recent wave of scholarship on Shakespeare on film there is at least one important line of questioning still to pursue: can the film medium serve as a critical tool for interpreting or reinterpreting Shakespeare's work?¹ Is there something to learn, to rediscover, to see in a new light when, to borrow Walter Benjamin's phrase, we have ‘the ingenious guidance of the camera’ leading us through the text?² If, as Benjamin suggests, the camera opens up ‘a new field of perception’ in this age of mechanical reproduction, how can we apply his notion to the specific instance of a Shakespeare play adapted to the screen?³

One film that provides a particularly exciting opportunity for a critical analysis of Shakespeare's work is Orson Welles's Othello.⁴ Of Welles's three Shakespeare films—Macbeth (1948), Othello (1952), and Chimes at Midnight (1965)—Othello has received the least critical attention and continues to be one of the most rarely seen of all cinematic adaptations of the plays. But careful study of this film illuminates a thematic aspect of the text that leads to a fresh reading of the play as a whole. Through his use of cinematic technique, Welles has produced a work that emerges as a study of time in Shakespeare's Othello. The insights to be gained from the film concerning this element of the play are of considerable importance for, and can contribute significantly to, scholarship on Shakespeare's great tragedy.

I

Welles spent four difficult years producing an Othello that, despite its technical flaws, can be placed with the finest of Shakespeare films.⁵ The director's commitment to the cinema as a unique vehicle for producing Shakespeare is a key to his success. After completing the film he remarked,

In Othello I felt that I had to choose between filming the play or continuing my own line of experimentation in adapting Shakespeare quite freely to the cinema form … Othello the movie, I hope, is first and foremost a motion picture.⁶

The visuals of Welles's Othello attest to his considerable talents as a film-maker. His mise-en-scène brings important thematic concerns to the fore and is scrupulously based on ideas inherent in the text. His presentation of Venice with its stately buildings, its calm and channelled waterways, and its solid appearance, reflects well the sense of order achieved—temporarily—in the first act of Shakespeare's drama. Moreover, the visuals of the Venice world serve as a harmonious complement to the nobility and stature of the hero before he is overwhelmed by the ‘green-eyed monster’ of jealousy. Juxtaposed to the ordered world of Venice is Cyprus, with its jungles of arcades and pillars, its seamy underground, its narrow and winding streets, its stairways, its high and frightening cliffs and battlements, and its roaring ocean shore.⁷ If Venice is the setting that corresponds to the hero, Cyprus is the complement to Iago. Within this world the villain reigns supreme, and he uses the twisted and confusing dimensions of the Cyprus environment to create an unrelenting hell for his victims.

But what is perhaps the most interesting aspect of Welles's film is the way in which he exploits the concept of time inherent in the text. Consider, for example, the prologue. The film opens with the funeral processions of both Othello and Desdemona silhouetted against the sky. Othello is carried on a bier followed by a long line of monks in black, while Desdemona is carried and followed by a line of monks in white. Although the processions are clearly separated (physically and through colour), the rhythm of the two lines is synchronized. Bells chime in a regular beat throughout the prologue, suggesting a firm and cohesive sense of time. The pace of the processions and the repetition of the accompanying chimes yields the sense of unity through compatible rhythm. Like many of Welles's films, Othello opens with visual images taken from the very end of the film not because the director wants to remove all suspense, but because he wants to establish a unified sequence for the whole work. In other words, the way the plot unravels takes precedence over the surprises of narrative. Moreover, by using the dominant rhythms of the processions to establish a sense of coherence and order early in the film, Welles can then illustrate how Iago shatters this tight temporal structure to bring chaos into the world of the play and its hero. Indeed, when one sees the processional image again at the end of Othello, one recognizes how the rhythm of time is broken and restored through the course of the tragedy.

In the opening sequence, Welles intersplices the funeral processions of Othello and Desdemona with shots of Iago dragged by chains through a crowd of screaming Cypriots. Guards throw him into an iron cage and haul him to the top of the castle walls. We witness the world momentarily from Iago's perspective; the cage spins as it hangs, the crowd screams, and, as long as we are with Iago, the stately rhythm of the processions is lost. In the prologue, Welles develops his temporal theme by realizing the opposing rhythms of Othello and Desdemona on the one hand and Iago on the other. The critic William Johnson sees the entire film as a structure of contrasting rhythms, and his sensitivity to this aspect of Welles's work is rare; in the following passage he seems to scan the rhythms of the film.

Welles sets the whole tragedy in perspective with an opening sequence that interweaves the funeral cortèges of Othello and Desdemona and the dragging of Iago to his punishment … [But] the staccato rhythm associated with Iago gradually imposes itself on Othello's stately rhythm, and the increasing complexity of the film's movements suggests the increasing turmoil of doubt in Othello's mind.⁸

Welles uses the rhythms of time to guide the spectator through Othello. The film conveys an objective sense of time in the regular pattern of beating drums or chiming bells heard through a large part of the film. With this use of the soundtrack, the characters of the drama appear contained within the ordered passage of time. For example, at certain key moments in the film the spectator hears the footfalls of characters in a regular and constant rhythm, yielding the sense of the individual's participation in time's inevitable passage. Like the ticking of a bomb about to explode, however, these regular patterns erupt in corresponding sounds and images of chaos as realized by the tempest, the crashing waves of the Cyprus shore, the sudden explosion of cannon fire, the wild break of seagulls in the sky, and the uncontrolled and chaotic revels after the defeat of the Turks. In an objective sense, one recognizes an ambiguous sense of time—ordered and chaotic, constant and fragmented.

I have used the term ‘objective’ only to differentiate the presence of time as a force in the film as distinct from individual relationships to that force. For it is in Welles's development of the ‘subjective’ experiences of time that he works out his thematic concern most effectively. On the one hand, we understand time through Othello's experience; what is clear and chronologically sound in the first part of the film eventually becomes distorted and irregular as the drama progresses. As Othello's pain and jealousy increase, we lose a sense of coherence in the film. Through the unique resources of the cinema—montage, cinematography, and the soundtrack—Welles realizes the hero's experience as he is overcome by jealousy. Early in the film the director shoots Othello in clear light, but as the film progresses we see him increasingly in shadow; through the use of montage, our sense of space disintegrates; harsh dissonant sounds eventually replace the regular and even sounds of the first part of the film. As jealousy and madness overwhelm the hero, we watch him traverse the spectrum from order to chaos, from light to shadow, and, as a result, we understand how Iago has set out to destroy his victim. He causes Othello to see only the dark, chaotic side of time—something that the hero fears and that is fundamentally against his character. ‘And when I love thee not,’ he says of Desdemona, ‘chaos is come again.’ Chaos represents a movement backwards for the hero, a state without love, a destruction of his sense of the eternal.

By contrast, Iago perceives time as an agent to control. He emerges as the master of time in the film, and the ‘success’ of his scheme relates to his ability to manipulate not only the ‘objective’ force of time but also Othello's relationship to that force. Welles develops this idea early in the action. Still in Venice, Iago is working on his gull, Roderigo, when he comes forward to the camera and says to the audience, ‘I am not what I am.’ Immediately following his words the scene dissolves to a close-up shot of mechanical figures striking the bells of the clock in St Mark's Square. In perfect mechanical order, these human impressions (the figures are human in shape but not in substance—i.e., not what they are) strike. Welles's use of the dissolve here forces the spectator to associate these figures with Iago as one who will hammer upon Othello's emotional balance as the figures hammer upon the chimes. But the specifics of the image also suggest that he will achieve his ends through a controlled use of time. As the ‘Jack of the clock’—to borrow the trope of Richard II—marks time, so too will Iago orchestrate his destruction of Othello. To make this metaphor clear, Welles follows the shot of the mechanical figures with a dissolve to the bed-chamber of Othello and Desdemona. Othello parts the curtains surrounding the bed and, in a high-angle shot, we see Desdemona lying on the bed with her long blonde hair spread out underneath her. Othello then speaks his lines from act 1, scene 3:

Come Desdemona. I have but an hour
Of love …
To spend with thee. We must obey the time.

(1.3.301-3)⁹

Eventually, one recognizes Othello's words, ‘we must obey the time’, as highly ironic because an obedience to time, in this film, translates into an obedience to the one who controls time—Iago. The hero bends down to kiss his bride followed by a dissolve to black. In this sequence of images Welles encapsulates the entire drama: Othello and Desdemona ‘obey’ time as it is orchestrated from without but, ultimately, this obedience leads to an overwhelming blackness, consuming beauty and love.

II

The question now arises as to how we can begin to use Welles's cinematic treatment of this play as a critical insight into Shakespeare's text. How does time function as a thematic device in the play? Welles's film inspires at least two important questions. Is Iago's success in destroying the hero connected to his ability to master the ebb and flow of time's rhythms? Moreover, what is Othello's sense of time and can we specify it as something that makes him particularly vulnerable to Iago's tactics? Because the major focus of this essay concerns the insights gained through seeing the play in a new medium, I pause here to return to the text to examine the theme of time. For purposes of coherence, I delay a detailed treatment of how time works as a focal point in the film to clarify the function of time in the text.

Iago's words to Roderigo in the second act reveal his skill in manipulating time:

Thou know'st we work by wit, and not by witchcraft;
And wit depends on dilatory time.

(2.3.366-7)

A review of Iago's speeches demonstrates that they are filled with the word ‘time’ and that his language is often constructed around temporal imagery. For example, in the very first scene he is angry because time has failed to bring about his expected promotion. He begins by speaking of his frustrations in Othello's service and of his jealousy of Cassio:

                                                            This counter-caster,
He [Cassio], in good time, must his lieutenant be,
And I—God bless the mark!—his Moorship's ancient.

(1.1.32-4)

Iago believes that he has proved himself in time but still has lost the promotion. Preferment seems to have nothing to do with loyalty in time:

Preferment goes by letter and affection,
And not by old gradation, where each second
Stood heir to the first.

(1.1.37-40)

Like Richard II, Iago believes that he has wasted time; but unlike the king, he will not allow time to waste him. He will not be like

Many a duteous and knee-crooking knave
That, in his own obsequious bondage,
Wears out his time, much like his master's ass …

(1.1.46-8)

Iago then calls for the bell to wake Brabantio (an image akin to the mechanical figures who mark time in Welles's film). He begins here to use time actively to achieve his ends.

Iago's perception of time is close to Machiavelli's notion of Fortune in The Prince.¹⁰ For Machiavelli, Fortune is like a river that fluctuates between extremes of chaos and peace. But, he says, one can take precautions by building ‘floodgates and embankments’ in quiet times so that the violent times can be controlled. One of Machiavelli's central points in The Prince is his call for an easing of the control of Fortune in human affairs. If one exercises the highest Machiavellian virtue of prudence, one can learn to take control over much of one's destiny.

Iago emerges as a figure who works with time in the manner that Machiavelli prescribes. In the first scene of the play Iago tells us that he had waited for time to give him his promotion but was ultimately frustrated. Now, however, he will conquer time by taking control. Machiavelli's metaphor of the river is akin to Iago's use of images associated with pregnancy, gestation, and birth. For example, in a discussion with Roderigo towards the end of the first act, Iago tells his gull that ‘There are many events in the womb of time which will be delivered’ (1.3.371). In the soliloquy that ends the scene, he concludes,

                              It is engendr'd. Hell and night
Must bring this monstrous birth to the world's light.

(1.3.404-5)

Indeed, Iago fertilizes time so that it will give birth to his desires. At a propitious moment, he will inject his poison into Othello with tales of Cassio and Desdemona: ‘After some time to abuse Othello's ear / That he is too familiar with his wife’ (1.3.396-7). From this point in the play he will work so that, to use his words, ‘Time shall … favourably minister’ his ends.

When next we hear of Iago we discover that he has indeed begun to conquer time. On the shores of Cyprus, the Second Gentleman remarks that Iago has fought his way through the tempest and has landed safely. Cassio remarks on how the ancient has had ‘favourable and happy speed’ (2.1.68). He comments approximately ten lines later that Iago has defied the expected time of his arrival. Desdemona was ‘Left in the conduct of the bold Iago, / Whose footing here anticipates our thoughts / A se'nnight's speed’ (2.1.76-8). It is interesting to note that at this point in the play Shakespeare juxtaposes Iago's victory over time with Othello's corresponding delay.

As I mentioned earlier, Iago's speeches are filled not only with many utterances of the word ‘time’ but with images of temporality as well. Curiously, Iago's victims use this word and corresponding images with increased frequency as the villain gains control. G. Wilson Knight points out that Othello eventually enters Iago's ‘semantic sphere’ and Jan Kott argues, ‘Not only shall Othello crawl at Iago's feet; he shall talk in his language.’¹¹ But it is in their specific concern with issues of time and their use of temporal imagery that Iago's victims interest us here. For example, when Othello discovers Cassio, in Iago's words, in a ‘time of his infirmity’, he dismisses the lieutenant from his post. Interestingly, Cassio confides in Iago that what bothers him most is not that he has disillusioned the general but that his reputation will suffer. He defines that reputation as ‘the immortal part of myself’. In a sense, Cassio perceives that he has lost time by losing his post. Iago ‘comforts’ Cassio by telling him that nothing is final—that, in time, he can gain his lieutenancy back. After all, ‘you or any man may be drunk at a time, man’ (2.3.307). What is most significant here is that Shakespeare expresses Iago's control by showing him to be the master of time. It is when his victims are concerned, somehow, with issues of time that they are most vulnerable to him.

Shakespeare also represents vulnerability through temporal concerns in Desdemona's plea for Cassio. The former lieutenant asks Desdemona, in essence, to redeem time for him. She promises that she will speak with her husband and ‘tame and talk him out of patience’ (3.3.23). When she makes her request to Othello, she insists on knowing the time when he will restore Cassio.

DESDEMONA.
I prithee, call him back.
OTHELLO.
Went he hence now?
DESDEMONA.
Yes, faith, so humbled
That he hath left part of his grief with me
To suffer with him. Good love, call him back.
OTHELLO.
Not now, sweet Desdemon; some other time.
DESDEMONA.
But shall it be shortly?
OTHELLO.
The sooner, sweet, for you.
DESDEMONA.
Shall't be tonight at supper?
OTHELLO.
No, not tonight.
DESDEMONA.
Tomorrow dinner, then?
OTHELLO.
I shall not dine at home;
I meet the captains at the citadel.
DESDEMONA.
Why, then, tomorrow night, or Tuesday morn,
On Tuesday noon, or night, on Wednesday morn.
I prithee name the time, but let it not
Exceed three days.

(3.3.51-67)

Ironically, Desdemona's insistence on naming the time is a tacit victory for the one who conquers time—Iago. She becomes an unwitting accomplice in the villain's scheme. Shakespeare's clear emphasis on naming time is a comment on the vulnerability of Iago's victims. Moreover, the great ‘temptation scene’ follows this sequence; now that his victims are working on his terms and using his language, Iago finds the appropriate moment to strike.

Iago's mastery over time manifests itself in a more fundamental and obvious way in Shakespeare's Othello. Simply put, he has superb timing and knows exactly when to strike. Like Machiavelli's brightest examples of political success (Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, Theseus), Iago receives nothing from Fortune but the occasion; and when that occasion arises, he makes optimum use of it. Emilia happens to pass by when Desdemona drops the handkerchief. Bianca conveniently arrives when Iago is with Cassio as Othello secretly watches and receives the ‘ocular proof’. Roderigo happens to be in love with Desdemona and is stupid enough to abide by Iago's demands to achieve his desired ends. But, in each instance, Iago is able to exploit to the full the opportunities that his good fortune provides. Whether one is directing the play for the stage or for film, one must create situations that reveal Iago's understanding of how to take the greatest advantage of the circumstances of the moment. One can imagine the myriad ways of staging Iago's famous ‘Ha, I like not that’, which subtly sets off the spark of destruction in Othello's consciousness. But, in whatever way it is performed, a director must present Iago's brilliant sense of timing at that moment. And as we witness Iago's clever machinations, we are watching one of the keenest manipulators of time in the history of drama. He knows when to push and when to hold back. He knows when to further his wretched lie and when to keep silent. He knows how to build his ‘evidence’ and how to bring his victim to the point where he perceives what Iago wants him to perceive. And he does all this by recognizing when the opportune moments occur. Iago knows how to work with time so that time works for him.

Iago's perception of time is thus one that assumes constant change and mutability. It cannot be trusted to bring about one's desires because, like Machiavelli's river, it is fickle and erratic. For Iago, time is the ‘fashionable host’ that Ulysses speaks of in Troilus and Cressida. Indeed, to the villain of Shakespeare's Othello, ‘Beauty, wit, / High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service, / Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all / To envious and calumniating time’ (3.3.171-4). But Iago uses the fickleness of time to his own advantage; his skill lies in his ability to exploit ‘calumniating time’ through dissembling, plotting and Machiavellian prudence.

In contrast to Iago's perception of time as something that fluctuates and that ultimately must be conquered is Shakespeare's presentation of Othello's perception of time. For the hero, time has meaning and significance in its range and continuity. Unlike Iago, Othello perceives the world in terms of the eternal. His speeches resound with repeated use of the words ‘never’ and ‘forever’. He asserts that he received his ‘life and being / From men of royal siege’. He invests a great deal in a handkerchief given him by his mother because it represents history and links him with his past and his heritage. Othello's world is based on loyalty, history, and a sense of being rooted in time. When he vows anything, from his marriage to his vengeance, his words have an everlasting implication. To Iago he swears, ‘I am bound to thee forever.’ In the words of G. Wilson Knight, ‘from the first to the last he loves his own romantic history’.¹² His association with the grand spectrum of time in human history also leaves one with the impression of an integrated man whose nature, to borrow A. C. Bradley's phrase, ‘is all of one piece’.¹³ Iago, who knows his target, refers to Othello as one with a ‘constant, loving and noble nature’.

At a key moment in the play, Othello becomes so overwhelmed with Desdemona that he expresses a desire to immortalize his love for her. As Derek Traversi points out, when the hero arrives in Cyprus and is reunited with Desdemona, ‘his one desire is to hold this moment to make it eternal’.¹⁴

                                                  If it were now to die,
'Twere now to be most happy; for I fear
My soul hath her content so absolute
That not another comfort like to this
Succeeds in unknown fate.

(2.1.186-90)

But Othello's belief in the possibility of absolute happiness through love also reveals his greatest point of vulnerability. Implicit in his words is a restless awareness that, until death, time has the power to destroy present emotion. Traversi clarifies the paradox:

This precarious moment of happiness will never find its fellow, for the temporal process is … one of dissolution and decay. Only death can come between this temporary communion and its eclipse; but death, of course, implies the annihilation of the personality and the end of love.¹⁵

Unlike the realistic and sensible Rosalind, Othello reaches for the ‘ever’ and not the ‘now’ of human love. As is so often the case in Shakespeare's dramas, one's greatest desire is also the point of one's greatest vulnerability. In a way similar to Maria's exploitation of Malvolio, Iago pinpoints the spot where his revenge will ‘find notable cause to work’ (Twelfth Night, 2.3.152). Othello's statement on the manner by which he could attain eternal happiness through love exposes, by implication, his fear of the power of time's mutability; this fear becomes Iago's primary target. The villain exploits the hero's hidden anxiety and shatters his greatest hope.

Iago destroys Othello by altering his perception of the nature of time. At a number of moments in the play, Desdemona is associated with images of the divine. For Othello, she becomes ‘a symbol of man's ideal, the supreme value of love …’¹⁶ When Iago shows Desdemona false, Othello's sense of the eternal decays in turn. As Othello succumbs to Iago, he speaks in terms of shattered time, of a broken sense of that which holds his world together. Let us return, for a moment, to that key passage early in the ‘temptation’ scene:

Excellent wretch! Perdition catch my soul
But I do love thee! And when I love thee not,
Chaos is come again.

(3.3.92-4)

Othello's reference to ‘chaos’ obviously foreshadows the disintegration of his being. Chaos is time with neither order nor coherence; and by destroying Othello's sense of the constancy of experience, Iago brings chaos into his life. The concept of marriage, by its very definition, is something based on the notion of eternity. It is a gift of heaven, sanctioned by the eternal. As Othello says: ‘If she be false, O, then heaven mocks itself.’ When his marriage is destroyed, everything in the hero's existence seems lost in the timelessness of chaos. Iago, by contrast, thrives in chaos because he understands how to work within it, how to build the floodgates and embankments, and, therefore, how to use it to his advantage.

The emotion of jealousy is one that necessarily suggests a sense of time shattered. As that ‘green-eyed monster’ ‘mocks the meat it feeds on’, one becomes enraged because one's sense of continuity is broken. Instances of the link between jealousy and chaos are not unique to Othello. A similar relationship is suggested in A Midsummer Night's Dream when, in act 2, Titania attributes the disorder of the natural world to the dissension between the king and queen of fairies; moreover, that dissension, in her view, ultimately stems from ‘jealous Oberon’ and, in a larger sense, from the ‘forgeries of jealousy’. Similarly, Leontes' jealousy leads to a sense of time broken as he loses the rhythm of sleep and rest: ‘Nor night nor day no rest’ (2.3.1). The only antidote to the poison of his jealous rage is sixteen years of penitence and faith; time in The Winter's Tale is restored. Jealousy belongs in Iago's domain because it is part of the capricious time of which he is the master. Othello's time—constant and ordered—is one where jealousy cannot reign. As a result, he is spoken of as ‘one not easily jealous’; ‘his whole nature was indisposed to jealousy’.¹⁷ When asked whether Othello is jealous, Desdemona replies:

Who he? I think the sun where he was born
Drew all such humours from him.

(3.4.29-30)

It is made clear in the first half of the play that Othello's nature is ‘made of no such baseness / As jealous creatures are’. He confirms that jealousy is part of changing time and that his sense of constancy has always kept him from such dis-ease. As Desdemona associates constancy with the reference to the sun, the hero associates jealousy with the changing moon:

Think'st thou I'd make a life of jealousy,
To follow still the changes of the moon
With fresh suspicions?

(3.3.183-5)

When time loses its scope and becomes changeable like the moon, the result, for Othello, is madness and chaos:

It is the very error of the moon;
She comes more nearer earth than she was wont,
And makes men mad.

(5.2.113-15)

As ‘Iago time’ takes over the play, men are made mad. Shakespeare's persistent use of temporal imagery suggests that Iago's victory is one in which he uses time to break time. In other words, his ability to manipulate time in order to achieve his ends amounts to a shattering of the constancy at the base of Othello's nobility and Desdemona's virtue. Ironically, as Othello first becomes enraged with jealousy, Iago remarks:

My Lord, I would I might entreat your honour
To scan this thing no further; leave it to time.

(3.3.251-2)

Leaving it to time is tantamount to leaving it to Iago. Indeed, Iago's use of the term ‘scan’ signals once again that the villain recognizes situations by their temporal organization and examines them in terms of their rhythm. As the ‘temptation’ scene progresses, he maps out exactly what will ensue as time goes by. Finally, one recognizes Iago's victory as Othello, like Desdemona and Cassio before him, completes the pattern of all Iago's victims by demonstrating a concern with time in his lamentation of lost history and reputation:

                                                            O, now, forever
Farewell the tranquil mind! Farewell content!
Farewell the plumed troop, and the big wars
That makes ambition virtue! O, farewell!
Farewell the neighing steed, and the shrill trump,
The spirit-stirring drum, th' ear-piercing fife,
The royal banner, and all quality,
Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!
And, O you mortal engines, whose rude throats
Th' immortal Jove's dread clamours counterfeit,
Farewell! Othello's occupation's gone.

(3.3.352-62)

Although Iago destroys Othello's sense of time, the hero still speaks in terms of the everlasting when he vows his revenge. The villain's success, therefore, can be understood by the way in which he uses Othello's unswerving will to his own advantage. He causes the hero to translate momentary circumstance (of which Iago is the master) into terms of the eternal. Othello becomes a kind of dynamo through which Iago wreaks destruction. Once he shatters the hero's sense of time through the circumstance of the moment, Othello, in turn, translates the instant into a matter for all eternity:

                                                            No! To be once in doubt
Is once to be resolv'd;

(3.3.184-5)

Shakespeare has thus remained constant in his presentation of the hero even when the foundation of Othello's life has been destroyed: ‘thwarted in love, his egoism will be consistent in revenge, decisive, irresistible …’¹⁸

Othello is clearly a man of action. The logistics of his elopement with Desdemona as well as his success as a soldier speak to this. He recognizes the calling of a moment and does something about it. But his action is always informed by his sense of time. This idealism is the key to the kind of nobility that defines Othello: he is a man of action but always has a sense of the relevance of that action to the greater order of the world. He is the opposite of a character like Hotspur even in his raving jealousies, because he believes that he will redeem time through his violent deed. Having shattered Othello's sense of the eternal, Iago spurs the man of action to wreak the most horrible vengeance on the one who supposedly precipitated the fall—Desdemona. But, in his brutal act, he is always conscious of ‘the cause’ as he tries to restore time. Indeed, Othello does not ‘chop her into messes’ as he vowed earlier in the play. Such an act would only further the victory of chaos. Othello smothers Desdemona.

Othello kills Desdemona in order to save the moral order, to restore love and faith. He kills Desdemona to be able to forgive her, so that the accounts be settled and the world returned to its equilibrium … He desperately wants to save the meaning of life, of his life, perhaps even the meaning of the world.¹⁹

In the terms I have discussed in this essay, Othello wants to restore eternity. Facing the horror of his deed, however, he speaks of all time lost—both of the constant sun and the changing moon:

Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse
Of sun and moon, and that th' affrighted globe
Should yawn at alteration.

(5.2.103-5)

And in the simultaneous eclipse of sun and moon we have the death of Othello and the end of Iago's terrifying reign. Time ultimately catches up with both men in one huge eclipse.

III

I have concentrated on Shakespeare's text in some depth because I believe Welles's film, in its concern with temporal matters, inspires a fresh insight into the play. What remains is to return to the film itself in order to discover how the unique resources of the cinematic medium illuminate Shakespeare's development of this theme.

After Othello arrives in Cyprus, the Herald stands on the battlements of the castle to announce the general's order for feast and celebration (2.2), and it is within the context of the revels that Iago begins his work. Meanwhile, Welles takes us to a second bedchamber scene, where he depicts the embrace of the lovers through projected shadows on a wall. While their bodies merge in shadow we hear Othello's ‘If I [sic] were now to die, / 'Twere now to be most happy.’ The moment, as Welles presents it, is fundamentally ambiguous and realizes the paradox suggested above. The words express Othello's belief in the possibility of eternal happiness through his absolute love for Desdemona, but the shadows undercut the hero's sentiments and remind us of the ephemeral nature of their love and of its vulnerability to time. Through the contrasting juxtaposition of things seen and things heard, Welles represents the mutability of a love that the hero wishes to immortalize.

The film juxtaposes the peace and calm of the two lovers with the revels occurring outside. Welles uses the resources of the cinema to present a wild and raucous celebration, the disorder of which becomes a perfect environment for the manipulations of Iago. The montage of the celebrations forces one to feel lost in a maze of drunken revelling. After Iago encourages Cassio to drink, we watch Bianca unwittingly further the villain's plan by tempting the lieutenant to indulge again. We see dancing crowds, musicians, close-ups on the instruments as well as on the bottles and the flying goblets of the drunken crowd. Welles then uses montage to present people turning and dancing as we see face after face moving about in a dizzying sequence of images. The celebrants laugh uproariously. Welles intersplices all this action with the only definable, rooted element—Iago. We see Iago subtly manipulating the quarrel between Roderigo and Cassio. When the fight breaks out, the celebrants seem to get even wilder, and their shouts and laughter serve as the backdrop to the encounter. A menacing feeling pervades all of this, a sense of people out of control—except for Iago, who works efficiently amidst this disorder.

At the culmination of the sequence, we follow the fighting men as Cassio chases Roderigo down into the underground of the castle, where a jungle of revellers is replaced by a jungle of vaults and pillars. In fact, Welles uses images of depths in his film to enforce a sense of a fallen world; he also contrast such images by placing his characters in dangerously high places when they are particularly vulnerable—Iago in his cage, Cassio and Desdemona on top of the battlements after the war with the Turks, Othello and Iago on a huge cliff overlooking the sea at the culmination of the ‘temptation’ scene. By shooting the encounter of Cassio and Roderigo in the underworld of Cyprus, Welles creates a visual hell: a concrete net to ‘enmesh them all’. The screams and laughter of the celebrants now echo off the walls of this underworld, increasing the eerie sense of a world gone mad. Chaos is unleashed on Iago's inspiration. All coherence is gone.

When Othello enters, he dismisses Cassio and apparently restores order. As the gathering breaks up, Cassio laments his dismissal by focusing on his lost reputation. As mentioned earlier, Cassio's main concern is that, with his loss of reputation—‘the immortal part’—he has also lost time. Immediately before Iago urges Cassio to work for his reinstatement through Desdemona we hear the crowing of the cock—a sign that the order of time is, temporarily, restored. In Machiavelli's terms, the river of Fortune will have its wild moments and its corresponding quiet times. When things are settled one must build the floodgates and embankments necessary for the inevitable chaotic times to come. This practice is the key to mastering time and Fortune. Thus, with the signal of the crowing cock calm is restored and Iago begins to build. Significantly, Welles uses the camera to distort Iago's shape with a low-angle shot, causing the villain to loom (as a physically exaggerated form) over Cassio. The ‘huge’ Iago persuades Cassio to appeal to the ‘real’ general of the times (‘Our general's wife is now the general’). The scene concludes with the regular beating of a drum.

Welles's treatment of the ‘temptation’ scene (3.3) reinforces Shakespeare's representation of Iago's ability to manipulate time. Whereas we have just witnessed Iago incite chaos within the celebrations, we now witness the master of time creating chaos within Othello himself. Interestingly, Welles shoots the entire episode with a long travelling shot of the two men walking up the battlements to establish a sense of constant movement. Welles exploits the cinema's unique capacity to perform scenes in motion, and the effect of his presentation is to feel that Iago, the manipulator of time, works best on the move. Moreover, on the sound-track we distinctly hear the regular pattern of the footfalls of the two men as they walk in perfect synchronization. When they reach the top they are, significantly, on the edge of an enormous cliff as Iago leads his victim to a state of precarious balance.

The ‘temptation’ scene continues as the two men go inside the castle and below. Again, Welles takes us into an underworld as Othello becomes more and more enraged at the prospect of Desdemona's infidelity and as his world loses its equilibrium. During the ‘I see you are moved’ section of the dialogue (ll.207.ff), Iago actually helps Othello take off his armour. What must sound like a banal and obvious image when described in words is actually a very powerful moment. Iago disarms Othello, physically and spiritually, and Welles succeeds in accomplishing a strong visual statement to support this subtextual aspect of the scene. Moreover, the shots become more and more tilted as Iago tips the balance of Othello's world.

As Iago continues to work on Othello we see, at approximately line 234 (‘And yet, how nature erring from itself—’), the Moor examining himself in a mirror that seems to distort his image. As Iago shatters Othello's sense of coherency and estranges the Moor from himself, we witness the hero confront a ‘shadow’ of his being. But it is Iago who stands behind the mirror, making the unmistakable statement that the villain is the device through which Othello perceives not only the world but himself as well. The man who was once able to say ‘My parts, my title, and my perfect soul / Shall manifest me rightly’ is now beginning to confront the possibility of ‘erring nature’ and its distorted shadows. Othello's ‘parts’ are no longer integrated and the man whom Bradley saw at the beginning as ‘all of one piece’ is now coming apart.

Shakespeare uses images of fragmentation in his play to create a sense of a world that has lost cohesion. This idea is especially apparent in Othello's repeated references to destroying Desdemona by ripping her apart. Because Iago has destroyed the hero's sense of constancy and eternity, it follows that Othello responds with vows of revenge that are associated with disintegration. Welles echoes these images of fragmentation in his film through montage, a quick-moving camera, and the contrasting rhythms of the soundtrack.

Towards the end of the ‘temptation’ scene, for example, Iago gains ground in his deception by telling Othello that he ‘lay with Cassio’ and that the latter, in his sleep, spoke of his love for Desdemona. Othello believes Iago's tale and becomes enraged. At this juncture, he first speaks of revenge in the short line, ‘I'll tear her all to pieces’ (3.3.436). Here Welles employs a powerful counterpoint to Othello's statement. During much of the ‘temptation’ scene the waves of the sea rhythmically beat on the fortress walls. When Othello speaks his first words of revenge, a sudden boom of the crashing sea punctuates the wrath of his exclamation. To support Shakespeare's imagery of fragmentation, Welles uses the soundtrack to suggest a break of rhythm and order with the fierce explosions of the sea. Similarly, after Othello is deceived by the ‘ocular proof’ that Iago provides in the contrived discussion with Cassio and Bianca, the hero vows ‘I will chop her into messes. Cuckold me?’ (4.1.199). Here Welles uses montage as he cuts to cannon after cannon firing to announce the arrival of Lodovico's ship. As Iago destroys his sense of order, Othello responds with images of disintegration in his vows to revenge, and Welles uses cinematic techniques to emphasize a corresponding transition from order to chaos in the world outside.

Following the exploding cannons that announce the arrival of the Venetian ships, Welles cuts to a shot of Iago and Othello walking rapidly along the battlements, and a sequence representing the hero's trance then follows. As the dialogue of act 4, scene 1 is spoken, Welles uses quick cuts from one speaker to the other to produce a sense of approaching hysteria through the speed of the shots and the rapid gait of the characters. When Iago speaks the words ‘Lie with her? Lie on her?’ Othello runs into the concrete jungle below the castle; we see shadows of jail-like bars projected on his frantic body and hear frenzied electronic music sustained on the soundtrack. Suddenly, we are with Othello on top of a watchtower. Our sense of space is completely disoriented. The following shot then yields a low-angle perspective on the tower as we are now transported to a new location below. On the soundtrack we hear the heavy rhythmic breathing of Othello which, in the context of the film, yields the sense of the hero's desperate attempt to hang on to the rhythm of his life with the very air that sustains him. The next shot shows seagulls wheeling in the sky followed by a close-up of Othello's face as he lies on his back. We then assume his perspective and another low-angle shot of the tower reveals a number of people looking down and laughing at the hero. With the use of a reverse zoom, the faces of these frightening spectators appear tiny and extremely far away. Othello mutters something about the handkerchief during which we also hear the sound of Iago's voice crying ‘My Lord’ as he searches for his master. The next shot is of the tower once again but this time the haunting faces are gone. Iago arrives on the scene, revives the hero, and the sequence ends with Othello's ‘farewell’ speech transposed from act 3, scene 3. In this sequence, Welles converts Shakespeare's stage direction ‘Falls in a trance’ into cinematic values that create a sense of spatial and temporal disorientation. Through this, one identifies with Othello as his world comes apart and as Iago destroys him by sabotaging his sense of order and coherence—all culminating in Othello's farewell to his own history and occupation.

Finally, Welles works with time in one more sense that has its seed in Shakespeare's text but is developed by the film-maker in a way that adds a further dimension to his interpretation. It is the concept of time that is ultimately responsible for restoring order to the world. It is a redeeming force of time beyond human manipulation. It is the kind of time that Viola speaks of in Twelfth Night, time which unties the complicated knot of that comedy. It is ‘the old common arbitrator’ that Hector refers to in Troilus and Cressida. In short, it is a form of time that is ultimately triumphant in Othello.

At the end of Othello Lodovico speaks to Montano of the incipient punishment for Iago:

                                                  To you, Lord Governor,
Remains the censure of this hellish villain,
The time, the place, the torture. O, enforce it!

(5.2.376-8)

Welles takes this reference at the end of Shakespeare's text and develops it into a motif apparent throughout the film. It will be recalled that the film begins with the funeral procession of Othello and Desdemona and that Iago is simultaneously dragged by chains through the crowd, thrust into an iron cage, and hoisted to the top of the castle walls where he is left to hang. From the opening of the film, therefore, we are aware of his ultimate punishment. At four key moments during the course of the film Welles shoots the empty hanging cage, reminding the audience of how Iago will eventually be punished in time. Welles lingers with a shot of the cage during the Herald's announcement before the celebration, has Iago exit directly below it at the end of act 2, scene 3 after the line ‘Dull not device by coldness and delay’, pans to reveal it immediately after the villain murders Roderigo, and cuts to a shot of it at the moment Desdemona dies. The moments Welles chooses are significant. The first two occur immediately before Iago takes a major step in his attack: i.e., before the set-up of Cassio and before the ‘temptation’ scene (Welles places the ‘temptation’ scene directly after act 2, scene 3). The last two instances take place immediately after we witness the tragic consequences of his deeds in the deaths of Roderigo and Desdemona. Thus we are reminded of Iago's ultimate punishment both in the preparation and in the culmination of his evil machinations. Of course, there is a neat symmetry to Welles's choices as well: the attempt to destroy Cassio ultimately leads to the death of Roderigo (shots one and three), while the manipulations of the ‘temptation’ scene culminate in the death of Desdemona (shots two and four). But what is most important to stress here is that the director exposes an aspect of time that even Iago cannot control. By opening the film with the visuals of the final moment and by demonstrating Iago's eventual doom with recurring shots of his cage, Welles suggests that even though Iago works in time to destroy time, ‘the old arbitrator time’ eventually triumphs and exposes his treachery.

The cinema has the capacity to inspire a fresh series of questions into the complexities of Shakespearian drama. The film medium gives the play a unique context for performance and, with its aural and visual resources, can serve as a vehicle for the examination of central thematic issues in a new light. Orson Welles's Othello is only one of several cinematic adaptations of Shakespeare's work. Clearly, the approach of this chapter can extend to the films of such directors as Kozintsev, Kurosawa, Polanski, Olivier, Zeffirelli, and Reinhardt. The cinema has emerged not as a ‘better’ way of looking at Shakespeare—it is not a question of competition—but as a means of attaining a fresh look at one of the greatest playwrights of all time. The achievement of the film medium for a study of Shakespeare is considerable, and the insights it can reveal are significant for an ever-expanding field of criticism. As foreign as the cinema was to a man writing four centuries ago, it is a peculiarly fertile medium for an investigation of his plays.

Notes

1. To date, the most valuable and comprehensive study on Shakespeare films is Jack Jorgens's Shakespeare on Film (Bloomington, 1977). Other major studies include Robert Hamilton Ball, Shakespeare on Silent Film (New York, 1968), Roger Manvell, Shakespeare and the Film (New York, 1971), and Charles W. Eckert, ed., Focus on Shakespearean Films (New Jersey, 1972). The questions as to what the cinema can tell us about the plays is not the point of enquiry for any of these works.

2. ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, in Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn, ed. Hannah Arendt (New York, 1969), p. 236.

3. A survey of articles on Shakespeare films written in the last few years does indicate a growing concern with what the cinematic medium can reflect about Shakespeare's dramaturgical design. See, especially, Samuel Crowl, ‘The Long Goodbye: Welles and Falstaff’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 31 (1980), 369-80, and Barbara Hodgdon, ‘Kozintsev's King Lear: Filming a Tragic Poem’, Literature/Film Quarterly, 5 (1977), 153-8.

4. Othello, Mercury Productions, released by United Artists, 1952.

5. Although free of the many production problems caused by the 23-day shooting period of Macbeth, Othello is not without the kind of technical negligence typical of all Welles's Shakespeare films. As with Macbeth, there is a serious dubbing problem in Othello that at moments becomes so severe one has great difficulty understanding the dialogue. The director ran out of funds during production and had to stop shooting at many points in order to raise enough money to complete the film. For an eloquent account of the erratic nature of the making of this film see Micheál MacLiammóir, Put Money in Thy Purse (London, 1952). MacLiammóir played the part of Iago.

6. Quoted in Peter Noble, The Fabulous Orson Welles (London, 1956), p. 215.

7. Most of the film was shot in Morocco (except for the first act, which was filmed mainly on location in Venice) in the west-coast town of Mogador, where Welles ably used a castle built by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century.

8. ‘Orson Welles: of Time and Loss’, Film Quarterly, 21 (1967), p. 21.

9. David Bevington, ed., The Complete Works of Shakespeare, 3rd ed. (Glenview, Illinois, 1980). All subsequent quotations are from this edition.

10. Translated by Mark Musa (New York, 1964). See especially Chapter 25.

11. Jan Kott, Shakespeare Our Contemporary, translated by Boleslaw Taborski (New York, 1966), p. 112.

12. G. Wilson Knight, The Wheel of Fire (London, 1960), p. 107.

13. A. C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy, 2nd ed. (1905; rpt. London, 1963), p. 155.

14. Derek Traversi, An Approach to Shakespeare, 2nd ed. (New York, 1956), p. 138.

15. Traversi, Approach to Shakespeare, p. 138.

16. Knight, The Wheel of Fire, p. 109.

17. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy, p. 151.

18. Traversi, Approach to Shakespeare, p. 146. Emphasis mine.

19. Kott, Shakespeare Our Contemporary, p. 123.