Othello

Here we have Olivier at the summit of his vaulting art. Although this is a play I do not usually watch on account of the depressing plot, Olivier is so compelling that I find it cannot be ignored. Also it includes some of Shakespeare's greatest lines. In addition, the supporting actors are really good with special mention to Frank Finlay as a subtle and convincing Iago

I was and still am a great fan of Laurence Olivier's. I FIRST SAW HIM ON TV IN THE EARLY 60'S in his film version of Richard 111. I was only a young schoolgirl at the time. I became an instant fan I thought his performance was amazing and I decide to find out more about Olivier and Shakespeare's plays. There was a season of his films showing in the West end of London Richard 111 Hamlet and Henry V which I went to see. I wrote to Olivier at his offices in London and asked for two photos one of him as Richard 111 and one of him out of character. He kindly sent me the photos with two very charming letters. I still have the letters but the photos sadly where lost in a move some years after. One comment on this site says that they saw him in Othello at the Old Vic London. This was the base for the National theatre in the 1960's before the NT was opened Olivier was its first artistic director. I tried to get in to see his Othello but unfortunately it was booked up for months in advanced. I did buy the video version some years later but it is not a very good copy. Olivier did get some stick regarding his performance as Othello from some of the critics like his Othello was like a west Indian bus conductor on a bad day. Othello is a play with great pathos it contains human frailty such as envy which Othello has so much of. And poor Desdemona pays the price for Othello jealousy. She is a pawn in the relationship between Othello and Jago who sows the seed of Othello's jealousy in the first place. This production has a good supporting cast Maggie Smith Derek Jacobi Frank Finlay all NT actors at the time. Highly recommend this DVD for anyone interested in Shakespeare or an Olivier fan.

Arrived on time and as described. Excellent copy.

This is, by some way, one of the finest screen performances of 'Othello' you can lay your hands on. Though horribly awkward to watch for a modern audience (blacking up to play the Moor just hit a nerve that didn't settle throughout my viewing), I must say all the performances are masterly handled. A bleak set (this is literally a film of the Theatre production), and limited sound effects make it somewhat rough in places, but what you have here is performance over substance! For anyone studying the play, or wanting to grasp the story, this is a good starting place, and there are very few alterations to the original script. Otherwise, if you can hunt down a copy of the performance featuring Ian McKellen, I would highly recommend that too. It is nicer to look at, and (in my opinion) a superior work.

I never tire of recommending this version of Shakespeare's tragic portrayal of the consequences of jealous passion pushed to the breaking point as the greatest production of Shakespeare ever put on film. Olivier is at the peak of his immense powers of interpretation and brings a physicality and athleticism to the role that only a few years later would not have been possible for him, given the problems with his health that were soon virtually to overwhelm him. He has surrounded himself with the same superb cast that were in the National Theatre production on the London stage for years before the play was committed to film. One cannot exhaust the superlatives necessary to describe Olivier's performance--there are moments when one is inclined to avert one's gaze, as it is like watching an animal caught in a trap to witness the helplessness of a formerly great soldier caught in the fatal throes of jealousy. There really is no further need ever to make another version of this great play, since Olivier seems certain to dwarf any other version. Tommy Richardson

It was fashionable to mock Olivier for 'blacking 'up' and many harsh words were written by contemporary critics - one even going so far as saying he expected the actor to burst into 'Sonny Boy'.. Time, as always, washes away the indefensible and purifies the truth. This is greatness. Othello lives before our eyes and with a young Maggie Smith as Desdemona and a consummate Iago from Frank Finlay this makes a miracle. Two friends of mine on seperate occasions, one Ghana born and one African-American have been astonished and vouched for the validity of Olivier's Moor. Forget the critics and watch the subtleties of Olivier's performance and the masterpiece that is Shakespeare's 'Othello'.

Othello [DVD] [1964]wallow in the spoken word...Maggie is still a beauty, then she was divine,...Olivier?..is it racist to black up?..I dont know, I love the play, and his makeup ?.. black straw hair and boot blacking, surreal red lips?..BUT when the play was originally shown, must have looked like that?..whatever...just wallow in the play , the text, clear and delivered with passion...no cgi, no 21c...the Shakespeare play...love it..

This is a stupendous performance by Laurence Olivier as Othello in Shakespeare's play of that name. The supporting cast is very good on the whole. Olivier performed it only on the stage, though some close-ups were later shot in the studio for this film version. Olivier was determined to devote the remaining good years he had left to acting on the stage, and would regret spending a year or thereabouts to make a full film version.

Laurence Olivier as Othello!!!! Well, I loved him in Hamlet too... classic Olivier...Of course, the frequent comment is, is that Othello playing Laurence Olivier, or Hamlet playing Laurence Olivier,... or... ?Nonetheless, a classic production that shares shelf space with Hamlet and Richard III.

Leider gibt es bisher einige überragende Shakespeare-Verfilmungen mit Laurence Olivier (Othello, King Lear, Merchant of Venice) immer noch nicht mit deutscher Audio-Spur (oder wenigstens deutschen oder englischen Untertiteln)auf DVD.In den 80er Jahren wurde einmal der Olivier-Othello auf Englisch mit deutschen Untertiteln im Fernsehen ausgestrahlt. Ich glaube es war im ORF. Davon habe ich noch eine VHS-Aufnahme.Später habe ich mir dann diese DVD mit (nur) englischem Ton gekauft, weil ich von dem Film so fasziniert war. Da ich sowohl eine englische als auch eine deutsche Buch-Gesamtausgabe aller Shakespeare Dramen habe, kann ich ggf. entsprechende Stellen nachlesen, wenn ich etwas nicht verstanden habe. Aber nennenswerte Schwierigkeiten hatte ich bei diesem Film auch ohne Untertitel(leider nicht einmal englische)nicht. Besonders eindrucksvoll ist bei diesem Film allein schon Oliviers Stimme: Sie klingt tief und voluminös, wie die eines Gospel-Sängers! In anderen Filmen hatte Olivier ganz andere Stimmlagen. Diese Variabilität des Stimmausdruck ist ein weiterer wichtiger Aspekt seiner Schauspielkunst. Auch seine Körpersprache (Gesten, Mimiken) überzeugen als die eines temperamentvollen Schwarzen.Und wie er sich von Jago (sehr gut gespielt von Frank Finlay) nach und nach immer mehr in die Eifersucht gegenüber seiner treuen Frau Desdemona (Maggie Smith, auch exzellent) hineinmanövrieren lässt: Man kann es beim Zusehen kaum ertragen, zumal man ja auch weiß, wie total unberechtigt diese Eifersucht ist. Ein Lehrfilm für jeden (Mann), der zu (übertriebener) Eifersucht neigt.Der Film ist in Widescreen (16:9) Technicolor auf der DVD, mit gut verständlichem Ton (6-Track Audio). Als Bonus-Features gibt es unter anderem einen Interview-Ausschnitt mit Anthony Hopkins, in dem er erzählt, wie es ihm bei einer Bewerbung (Audition) mit Olivier ergangen ist, als dieser Leiter des National Theater war (gut, natürlich ;o)). Später hat Hopkins den Othello selber gespielt, erhältlich in der BBC Shakespeare Collection von 1981. Außerdem gibt es noch Hintergrund-Infos zu Shakespeare's Othello.Dieser Film ist meiner Meinung nach unentbehrlich für jeden, der Shakespeares Dramen und/oder Oliviers Schauspielkunst zu schätzen weiß.

I had the great fortune to see the Olivier "Othello" twice at the Old Vic, once seated middle stalls, once seated in first row mezzanine. It was titanic . . . mythic, poetic, incredibly athletic, primal. Every muscle of his legs, arms and chest suggested a huge prowling panther; his feet were the paws of a great clawed cat, an uncaged magnificent wild beast moving over a savannah. There is nothing in Shakespearean stage history to equal the emotional physicality, operatic scope and Olympian power of Olivier's stage performance. I saw it happen not once, but twice: absolutely Himalayan each time, different each time. Nothing but legendary, thrilling Grand Opera performances by the likes of Chaliapin or Olivero match Olivier's display of "fire from heaven."As Ian McKellen does today with his world tour of "King Lear," Olivier alternated "Othello" with Chekov "comedy," in his case "Uncle Vanya" with Michael Redgrave, Joan Plowright, Max Adrian, etc.The most important thing to realize about this film, therefore, is that it in no way captures the actual theatrical experience which set the stage aflame in London and St. Petersburg in 1964. The camera is always too close. Always. Olivier in general, and his "Othello" in particular, needed to be seen on a stage at a distance of at least 30 feet to get the full scope and power of what he did. This filming is utterly unfair. We need many, many more sustained long shots; we need to see his legs and feet as he prowls, which is half the characterization; we need the resonance of a huge theater to get the operatic oratory Shakespeare composed for Burbage. Othello on stage is not spoken: he is sung. Just study the text. Listen to Verdi's incomparable "Otello." There is not one minute in this film that is fair or representative of what Olivier actually achieved theatrically. Yes, many of the gestures, the blocking, the delivery of lines are techniques he employed in his performance. His "tricks." But we see them from too close a vantage. They seem overdone, ham, over the top -- precisely because his interpretation and performance are scaled for an arena, not a camera.I have never understood why he approved the release of this film. Of all classical actors, Olivier knew the necessity to scale back, reinterpret and nuance a close-up filming of his acting. Remember Archie Rice? Why he didn't insist on distance and long shots, given the nature of his interpretation of Othello, is inexplicable. It is the worst disaster in filming a great stage performance that has ever been released. It requires alert and constant memory of his performances to "know what he was doing" as I watch the film. I have shared it with students of Shakespeare for years, and none of them sees what I KNOW is or was there. My memory is a far, far more honest representation of Olivier's characterization of Othello than can be seen in this film. I'm embarrassed by it, to the point of listening to the full length recording put out at the time rather than watching this desecration of arguably the most fiery, extraordinary physical stage performance of the 20th Century.All this said, however, TRY to see through the film to the performances. Piece out his imperfection with your thoughts. Use your imagination. Watch it as if at a distance. Add the torso, legs and especially the feet. Release his arms, gestures and faces from the screen into an arena. To watch this film and even comprehend it, let alone enjoy it, you simply must use your active imagination. If you have not been to great theater and opera all your life, you are going to have a tough time telling what the universal international acclaim is about. The only performance of a Shakespearean tragic hero that is comparable these days is McKellen's world tour of "King Lear." But there again, you have to be there in the theater to get it - at $3000 a ticket on the scalper's market. The DVD he will put out will not be the performance he is giving 160 times this year. He will never make the same mistake Olivier did, and try to "capture" the scope of his theatricality on film. Unlike Olivier, who was less than ordinarily intelligent, McKellen is a man with a mind who knows we expect Gandalf Redux at the movies. He will reinterpret, scale down, look for an entirely new vocabulary of gestures, looks, and vocal powers that match the medium. We who miss his stage performance miss his Lear - even if we get a truly wonderful DVD with Ian McKellen as Lear when the tour ends. Incidentally, Olivier failed continually in attempts at "King Lear," whom he finally interpreted for DVD (in his dotage and his own words) as "just an old fart."Incidentally and in closing, the VHS and DVD release have been significantly altered by pan-and-scan from the original filming. The original film was shown at the National Theater in London, and though the vantage was far too close, there was indeed more widescreen and distance. I was at least satisfied after seeing the original film on the large screen in a great theater, even with its faults. But what we have in the video and DVD release is unconscionable. See if you don't agree, after watching this ruined treasure, that Frank Finlay's Iago is much more effective and real than Olivier's Othello. Then reflect that on stage together, Finlay was totally eclipsed, to the point where he received uniformly poor reviews for his "colorless acting." It's all a question of the medium. Live theater can be filmed perhaps, but never captured - especially as in this case where it films a proud and fearsome panther ranging over hundreds of miles as the actor walks dozens of feet.

My students liked it

Hier ist beispielhaft zu sehen, dass dies ein gestaltender Beruf ist und nicht - ein Job für Typbesetzungen, >Du siehst, was Du kriegst< worüber sich schon Dustin Hoffmann so mokiert hat. Olivier ist in den Zoo gegangen, hat den negroiden Gang der Schwarzen an Raubtieren gelernt, hat sich die Lippen künstlich vergrößert, hat eine "andere Stimme" gelernt und angenommen (Shakespeare beschreibt sie mit "velvet carpet" und ist ein ganz anderer Mensch geworden für diese Figur. Große Schauspielkunst ist hier zu sehen. Im Vorspann erzählt er privat als <britischer Lord< die Umsetzung zum Film und da ist sichtbar, welche Verwandlung er als Othello (Maggie Smith ist die Desdemona) gemacht hat.