Ocular Proof: Three Versions of Othello

C H A P T E R T W O ᨰ Ocular Proof: Three Versions of Othello OTHELLO: Be sure of it. Give me the ocular proof, Or by the worth of mine eternal soul Thou hadst been better have been born a dog Than answer my waked wrath. IAGO: You would be satisfied? OTHELLO: Would? nay, and I will. IAGO: And may; but how? How satisfied, my lord? Would you, the supervisor, grossly gape on? —Shakespeare, Othello It may have been inevitable that Othello be one of the most frequently filmed of Shakespeare’s works. For Western audiences especially, the play is inherently spectacular in its explorations of race: Shakespeare imagines the passionate conjunction of black with white and stages it in ways guar- anteed to captivate and disturb not only his earliest audiences (Maus 574–78), but many to follow. The story can be very simply outlined. Othello, a Moorish general who now serves Venice, marries Desdemona, daughter to one of the city-state’s leading citizens. Through the machina- tions of Iago, a disaffected officer, Othello is convinced that his new bride has been unfaithful and murders her. One of Iago’s most effective tactics Copyright © 2002. State University of New York Press. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. 11 EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 1/1/2016 12:57 PM via UNIV OF FLORIDA - MAIN AN: 82191 ; Buhler, Stephen M..; Shakespeare in the Cinema : Ocular Proof Account: s8987351 12 SHAKESPEARE IN THE CINEMA is to persuade Othello that his very blackness—as well as his older years, his lack of “gentility,” and his status as foreigner—makes him an unnatu- ral mate for the white, young, genteel Venetian. Shakespeare adapted the story from a novella by Giraldi Cinthio that indeed stresses the unsuit- ability of the match; one of the remarkable changes wrought in the play is the problematization of that idea (McPherson 56–68). The sight of the fair Desdemona with her new, dark lord can both inspire and challenge a number of visceral, but culturally conditioned responses to race. Other forms of cultural conditioning—those deeply affecting our notions of dramatic representation—have shaped later audiences’ response to the play. The ascendancy of illusionistic approaches first on the stage and later in film and video, with their emphasis on the impres- sions of realism or (paradoxically) naturalism, has profoundly compli- cated the process of mounting a production of Othello, whether for stage or screen. If Othello himself is figured as a black African, illusionistic productions must endeavor to make the racial embodiment believable. To avoid facing such challenges, several critics (and not a few directors, including Jonathan Miller) have denied that race is a major factor in the play. One rather evasive way to justify such a claim is by proposing that Othello is classified, after all, as a Moor, a term that could describe any number of peoples from the Mediterranean and beyond. The North African Othello was popular on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century stages, in part reflecting Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s assertion that “to con- ceive this beautiful Venetian girl falling in love with a veritable negro” was in itself “monstrous” (qtd. by Newman 143). A white performer impersonating a “blackamoor”—the term appears in Queen Elizabeth’s edict expelling African slaves from England (McDonald 296)—could, at times, be deemed too much. The nineteenth century also witnessed, however, the first black performer to adopt the role: Ira Aldridge enacted Othello to consistent acclaim throughout Europe (Hill 17–27). The list of his successors includes other pioneers such as Morgan Smith and, in the early twentieth century, Edward Sterling Wright; it bears no greater name than that of Paul Robeson, who portrayed Othello on a London stage in 1930 and, after unconscionable delays, appeared in the role on Broadway in 1943. Robeson’s legendary runs elicited both admiration and, from some observers, revulsion. Some critics and commentators in London com- bined both reactions (Vaughan 188–90); observers of the trial runs at Harvard and Princeton in 1942 and of the very successful New York pro- Copyright © 2002. State University of New York Press. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 1/1/2016 12:57 PM via UNIV OF FLORIDA - MAIN AN: 82191 ; Buhler, Stephen M..; Shakespeare in the Cinema : Ocular Proof Account: s8987351 OCULAR PROOF 13 duction in 1943–44 were generally positive. A larger audience was also involved, though, and the notices from people who would not have permitted themselves the opportunity to attend were, not surprisingly, nega- tive. Errol Hill notes that after Life magazine ran a photo feature article about the New York Othello with Robeson, its editors received letters of outrage, one of which decried “the horrible, indelible, undeniable and ter- rifying fact that there are white men with so little respect for themselves that they would cause to be printed the picture of a Negro man with his arm around a white woman in a love scene” (129). The intensity of such a reaction helps to explain how slowly U.S. theater practice changed in the wake of Robeson’s triumph. It would take decades—along with the tireless efforts of civic rights activists on a variety of fronts—before actors such as Moses Gunn, William Marshall, and James Earl Jones would be accepted as Othello. Now, in the early dawning of the twenty-first century, it is difficult for audiences to accept a non-black performer in the role either on stage or on screen. The naturalistic approach that has dominated commercial theater and film contributed to this striking reversal. Once black performers had confirmed Othello’s kinship with them, it became more difficult for white performers first to elide questions of race (although the “North African” interpretation was regularly revived) and ultimately to address them. On stage, the attempt to impersonate blackness culminated in Laurence Olivier’s performance for the National Theatre in 1964. In recalling his characterization, Olivier insists that he “had to be black... had to feel black down to [his] soul” and so underwent a three-hour makeup job for each performance, appearing on stage with what he considered the appro- priate wig and with burnished, dark-brown skin (Olivier 1986, 153). He aimed at “verisimilitude”—and, remarkably, at least one critic praised him for it (Spoto 330)—also by assuming a Caribbean-inflected voice that owed its basso profundo qualities in part to recollections of Robeson. Only Olivier could get away with it and perhaps only at that time and place: certainly no other white actor has since attempted such an imper- sonation. If the goal in realizing the play is a naturalistic study of Othello’s blackness in relation to white society, then it would be advantageous to cast in the role black performers who have far more extensive experience in, to paraphrase Olivier, being and feeling black. But performative strategies that go beyond naturalism have also insisted on Othello’s blackness. Even the film version of Othello featuring Olivier is self-consciously theatrical in its effects—and such theatricality Copyright © 2002. State University of New York Press. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 1/1/2016 12:57 PM via UNIV OF FLORIDA - MAIN AN: 82191 ; Buhler, Stephen M..; Shakespeare in the Cinema : Ocular Proof Account: s8987351 14 SHAKESPEARE IN THE CINEMA works against filmic naturalism. I will examine that film in greater detail when considering the documentary approach to cinematic Shakespeare (see chapter three; see also Buhler 1999, 18). Here, I want instead to focus attention on the interrelation between modes of presentation and the issue of blackness in three film versions of the tragedy of the Moor of Venice. Two of them, films directed by Buchowetzki and by Yutkevich, are decidedly non-naturalistic in approach; the third, directed by Oliver Parker, inconsistently but intriguingly breaks away from naturalistic con- ventions. A central component to non-naturalistic filmmaking is its acknowledgment of artifice. As Colin MacCabe astutely observes (64), “realist” filmmaking in all its forms hastens to conceal that art by means of an imposed continuity and coherence; so, for that matter, does the kind of traditional film theory advanced by André Bazin. Disruptions in pre- sentational mode and abrupt shifts in both cinematic and acting tech- nique can break the realist illusion and thereby allow space for envision- ing specifically how social realities are constructed. Such cinematic practices suit the complexities of Othello very well. Dimitri Buchowetzki’s film Othello was made in Germany in 1922 and combines the period detail that retains considerable appeal in today’s “heritage” filmmaking with unabashedly expressionistic acting styles. The title role is played by Emil Jannings, already an established performer—having honed his craft with the Deutsches Theater and its influential director, Max Reinhardt—but still anticipating his appear- ances in F. W. Murnau’s The Last Laugh (Der letze Mann, 1924) and Josef von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel (1930). (See chapter four for Reinhardt’s collaboration with William Dieterle for the Warner Brothers 1935 A Midsummer Night’s Dream.) Iago is Werner Krauss, another product of the Deutsches Theater.

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