Trivia / Chimes at Midnight

• Dyeing for Your Art: Despite portraying Falstaff as a grossly obese man, Orson Welles actually had to diet to slim down for the role.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: For a while the only way to see this movie was on bootlegs until 2016, when all the legal red tape surrounding it got cleared up, and The Criterion Collection announced they were in the process of restoring the film for Blu-Ray and DVD, set for an August 2016 release.
• Recycled Set: The film used sets from Anthony Mann's El Cid.
• Troubled Production:
  • Orson Welles had been pitching the idea of a play called Five Kings, a condensed adaptation of Richard II, Henry IV (Parts 1 and 2), Henry V, Henry VI (Parts 1, 2, and 3), and Richard III since 1939. By 1960, he had distilled the idea to a Falstaff-centric adaptation of the two Henry IV plays, with some additional dialogue from Richard II, Henry V, and The Merry Wives of Windsor. However, his Spanish backer, Emiliano Piedra, didn't think a Shakespeare adaptation was marketable, and persuaded Welles to shoot an adaptation of Treasure Island alongside the film that became Chimes at Midnight. Welles agreed, but it is believed he only did so to placate Piedra, and never so much as shot a single frame of Treasure Island. Hilariously, Welles did end up starring in a version of Treasure Island in 1972.
  • The cast members' availability meant that many scenes had to be shot using stand-ins, and any scenes featuring their faces had to be shot all at once; John Gielgud, as King Henry IV, was only available for ten days, while Jeanne Moreau, as Doll Tearsheet, was only available for five days, and Margaret Rutherford, as Mistress Quickly, was available for just four weeks. Welles joked that in one scene that featured seven principal characters, every one was played by a stand-in shot over their shoulder.
  • Filming began in September 1964, and, inevitably, ground to a halt when the money ran out three months later. Welles was adamant that the film be shot in black and white, scuppering potential offers of funding that were contingent on the film being shot in colour. He was finally able to secure funding from Harry Saltzman in February 1965, and shot the hitherto missing scenes, which included many of Keith Baxter as Prince Hal's longer speeches, Hal's coronation scene, and all of Welles' own scenes as Falstaff (growing stage fright meant that he waited until the end of production to shoot Falstaff's solo scenes).
  • The film's limited budget had an especially adverse effect on sound recording, both on set and in post-production. The rapid camera movements and editing further clouded the dialogue, and dubbing was made even more difficult by Welles' prolific use of long takes and shots of characters' backs to take advantage of actors' presence or compensate for their absence. Spanish actor Fernando Rey, as the Earl of Worcester, and French actress Marina Vlady, as Hotspur's wife Lady Percy, had such heavy accents that their roles had to be completely overdubbed by other actors in post-production.
  • The initial screening at the Cannes Film Festival in 1966 was a success, but Bosley Crowther of The New York Times took the film to task for the poor sound quality, the confusing editing, and Welles' performance as Falstaff. Saltzman lost confidence in the film in light of the early criticism and gave it almost no promotion, causing it to sink without trace at the box office. Its reputation has improved in the years since, with the Battle of Shrewsbury sequence still regarded as one of the greatest, most harrowing depictions of a mediaeval battle in the history of cinema, but legal wrangling over ownership of the film (by Saltzman's widow Adriana, Welles' daughter Beatrice, and the families of Piedra and fellow producer Angel Escolano) meant that home video releases were few and far between until 2015.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Welles wanted BRIAN BLESSED to play the part of Hotspur, but he refused due to his commitment to Z Cars.
  • At one point, Anthony Perkins approached Orson Welles to play Prince Hal, but Welles had already promised the role to Keith Baxter.

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