SUBJECTS

Falstaff, John, Sir (Fictitious character) -- Drama, Henry IV, King of England, 1367-1413 -- Drama, Henry V, King of England, 1387-1422 -- Drama, Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. King Henry IV -- Film and video adaptations

Chimes at Midnight

(Campanadas a medianoche)
(Falstaff)

Orson Welles
France, Spain, Switzerland, 1966

Digital Restoration

Chimes at Midnight . . . may be the greatest Shakespearean film ever made, bar none

Vincent Canby, New York TImes
featuring

Orson Welles, Keith Baxter, John Gielgud, Jeanne Moreau,

Drawn primarily from Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, with additions from other plays and Holinshed’s Chronicles, Welles’s interpretation of the life and death of “this great hill of flesh,” Sir John Falstaff, is both acutely personal and faithful to the language and spirit of Shakespeare. In a comic and stirring elegy that echoes the senile Shallow’s refrain, “Jesus, the days that we have seen,” Welles plays the canny fool Falstaff as a living emblem of a dying world. His Merrie England of jostling vulgarity is visually contrasted with the settings of stark majesty from which Henry IV (John Gielgud) uneasily reigns.

Juliet Clark
FILM DETAILS 
Screenwriter
  • Orson Welles
Based On

  • Plays by William Shakespeare

Cinematographer
  • Edmond Richard
Print Info
  • B&W
  • DCP
  • 116 mins
Source
  • Janus Films/Criterion Collection
CINEFILES

CineFiles is an online database of BAMPFA's extensive collection of documentation covering world cinema, past and present.

View Chimes at Midnight documents  

Orson Welles the unknown (program note), Harvard Film Archive, 2008

It's (not) all true: Orson Welles (program note), Cinematheque Ontario/a division of Toronto International Film Festival Group, James Quandt, 2000

Orson Welles 1915-1985 (program), Rocky Mountain Film Center, 1986

The fourteen nights of Orson Welles (program), Mayfair Repertory Cinema, Charles Higham, 1972

Falstaff (program note), San Francisco International Film Festival, 1968

Welles rings 'Chimes at midnight' (review), New York World Journal Tribune, Judith Crist, 1967

Falstaff (review), Independent Film Journal, 1967

Chimes at midnight (review), Sight and Sound, James Price, 1967

Welles on Falstaff (interview), Cahiers du Cinema in English, 1967

Welles in power (article), Cahiers du Cinema in English, Serge Daney, 1967

Displaying 10 of 19 publicly available documents.


View all Chimes at Midnight documentation on CineFiles.