Othello on Screen: A Comprehensive Film-Bibliography (Version 2.0)

An expanded online version of the film-bibliography published in Sarah Hatchuel and Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin (eds.), Shakespeare on Screen: Othello (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). Current length: 28,051 words. Updated in April 2016.

This thesis explores the “dialogue” between the text of William Shakespeare’s Othello, the Moor of Venice in the 1998 Cambridge U.P. edition and the 1995 film Othello, directed by Oliver Parker, in particular, some of the ways in which Parker has used images to highlight his interpretation of the text. Chapter one is a rationale of what I will be attempting to do in exploring how a modern film renders a contemporary “criticism” of Shakespeare’s Othello, as well as the implications for the classroom. The next two chapters focus upon the history of Othello in performance. Chapter two focuses upon a selective history of the stage performances from the 18th century to the present, indicating how interpretation has inevitably and necessarily changed over time. Chapter three is a selective history of Shakespeare’s plays on film, especially Othello, drawing on how critics and the public have responded to some of these presentations. Additional attention is paid to the special grammar and language of film and how it differs from that of the stage. Chapter four is an analysis of the differences in structure between Parker’s film of Othello and the canonical text version. In harmony with chapter five, the emphasis is on how the structural differences in the film as contrasted with those in the printed text add to the viewer’s understanding of the tensions of the play. Chapter five continues this analysis with a focus upon the thematic interests of the film. In particular, the animal imagery, race relations, and direct addressing of the audience by the antagonist provide modern audiences with a version of Othello that is a pseudo-sexual thriller relevant to modern times. The final chapter focuses upon this film’s use as a tool for pedagogical purposes.

Contemporary Issues in Indian Society, ISBN 9788192291321, 2014

According to Michelle Foucault, truth, morality, and meaning are created through discourse. Every age has a dominant group of discursive elements that people live in unconsciously. (Stuart, 2001) In 'Othello', Shakespeare represents society in many ways fundamentally different from his own, and rather than minimizing or obscuring these differences he explores them in a politically creative way. He portrays a strong concept of Italian city-state instead of a feudal monarchy or a renaissance court. As a whole, the play is a fascinating example of Shakespeare's Republicanism. Here two cities Venice and Cyprus play a symbolic shift in the attitude and the general mood of the play.

Shakespeare Bulletin 39.2 (2021): 286-90. Print.

The aim of this article is to offer a comparative scene analysis of two films, one by Orson Welles and another by Oliver Parker, that were adapted from William Shakespeare's Othello. The analysis mainly concentrates on aspects of mise-en-scene and cinematography, focusing on the particularities related to the character Iago and his manipulative strategies. Welles presents an innovative use of deep focus cinematography that highlights Iago's manipulative skills by offering an intense view of his multiple facets. This characteristic is portrayed in a distinct way in Parker's film with the management of different settings and character interaction based on close proximity.

Shakespeare on Screen in Francophonia, 2016

Prévert's cinematic masterpiece Les Enfants du paradis [Children of Paradise] (1945) is a film about theatre. It also is a film that may not have been made if it were not for the unusual and precarious situation of Occupied France during World War II. As it happened, Carné, the master of poetic realism, was forbidden by the occupying German forces to make films focusing on the present state of affairs in his besieged nation. As Ben McCann avers, during the Occupation, "Realism — poetic, social, magical or otherwise — was out". Therefore, Les Enfants du paradis, which explores the ineluctable convergence of art and life, is set in Paris in the 1820s on the Boulevard du Temple, which, by 1827, the year the film opens, had come to be known as the Boulevard du Crime [Crime Street], where all walks of life thronged to find diverse entertainments, from carnival acts to "respectable " theatre. Perhaps more brilliantly than any other film in the history of French cinema, Les enfants du paradis explores the ever permeable and mercurial boundaries between theatrical art and life. Rémi Fournier Lanzoni writes, “The multilayered contemplations of the different natures of theatrical performances — mime, comedy, vaudeville, romance, melodrama, and tragedy, extending from a glowing image of conflicting dramatic modes and a reflection of the interchangeability of theatre and life — was at the heart of the project”. This intense focus on the relationship between the stage and life clearly allies this film with Shakespeare’s oeuvre. Furthermore, Jacques Prévert, writer of the screenplay of Les enfants du paradis, particularly makes Shakespeare’s Othello a major focal point throughout the film. As noted by Russell Ganim and John C. Tibbetts, Les enfants makes significant use of direct and indirect references to Othello. Film scholar Brian Stonehill argues that the film presents itself “as a set of variations on the theme[s] of Othello”. Indeed, the film shares many of its central themes with the play: obsessive love, corrosive envy, deceit and illusion, betrayal and fidelity, the drive for power, the importance of social roles and role-playing. Moreover, one of the actor protagonists, Frédérick, is obsessed with playing Othello and is shown rehearsing and performing key scenes from the play. Othello is a crucial touchstone in the film. Prévert’s relentless mise-en-abyme of performances within performances also reminds the film’s audience that during the time of the German Occupation the French people often had to adopt roles that required masking, roles their very lives depended upon. Access online at http://shakscreen.org/analyses/

Interfaces Image Texte Language, 2022

Early film theorist Ricciotto Canudo equated cinema with music because of the Seventh Art’s inherent plasticity; in the 21st century, plasticity extends to the soundtrack. In this article, I explore the fusion of cinema with the musical genre of opera. By considering that film is a performative medium, beyond the actors’ agency, I confirm music’s importance in it as part of the structure and style of opera. Unlike Franco Zeffirelli’s adaptation of Verdi’s opera Otello, Orson Welles’s adaptation of William Shakespeare’s play conforms to Jacques Aumont’s concept of “operatic film” in that it engenders a coexistence of the verbal and the non-verbal, balancing drama and music with a performative intention. However, this film is so musicalized and operatically rendered, especially through its soundtrack, that it exceeds Aumont’s intention and becomes what I call a “cinematic opera”: a film that is operatic in its artificial and ritualistic nature as well as in its well-woven soundtrack of music, sound effects and voice working together in a common musicalized pattern.

The present article reviews the stage history of Othello in Spain and, in particular, it focuses on two performances of the play staged at the Español theatre during Franco’s dictatorship, in 1944 and 1971 respectively. Othello was one of the Shakespearean plays programmed by the regime to give cultural prestige to the “national” theatre. By comparing both productions, this paper explores how the performance of Othello evolved during the dictatorship. Furthermore, it shows how the repressive force of state censorship was exerted to promote certain theatrical conventions and to prevent theatre directors and translators from offering new readings and updatings of the plays, in the case of Othello, for almost thirty years.