Othello Reviews

The main players deliver capital-A ACH-TING! in this adaptation of the Bard’s tale of revenge and racism, but it’s all undercut by a flatlined directorial job. This isn’t a movie. This is a filmed stage play in an almost literal sense as there’s one set with rotating parts and acts walking in and out from the wings. I swear you can nearly see the actors waiting for their cues to walk in and deliver their lines. If this were a PBS Great Performances entry, I wouldn’t feel so conflicted about the proceedings.

And all of this was before talking about the giant elephant in the room, which Laurence Olivier’s blackface. No, it’s not blackface, it’s something far worse. He looks nearly blue his makeup is so extreme. It is so distracting that it takes quite a while for the sight to settle in so you can notice his performance if you can ever get over the hump at all. Olivier gives one of his most grandiose and energetic performances in any of his Shakespearean films. Not quite the rival of his brooding, tortured Hamlet, but a layered work that comes wrapped in a horrifying relic of the theatrical past.

So, this Othello is no match for the Orson Welles version, or even the Laurence Fishburne one from decades later, but it is a chance to see several great British thespians give round tones to exhaustive monologues. Maggie Smith makes for a fine Desdemona, and Frank Finlay gives his Iago a forked tongue. The movie is a largely a bloated affair with only the three leads fiery work to give it some semblance of mobility and life.