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.

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.

I won't go into a long review here. Several of you have done admirably in recreating this marvelous presentation. It's Shakespeare but then it is not. Orson Welles did a masterful job of taking a favored comic character, Falstaff, and putting him on the screen as the center of attention, rather than a peripheral supporting character. The language sparkles all the way through. We manage to see his underlying power all the way through. He is a braggart and a bumbler and a real control freak. If you ever doubted that Orson Welles was one of our most magnificent actors, take a look at this. It is he who controls every scene while deadly battles and significant in-fighting occurs in the post Richard III era. I had never heard of this film. Excellent.