The Filming of "Othello"

Paper Summary:

The final scene of Shakespeare's "Othello" presents many difficulties for filming--even beyond presenting the resolution of the tragedy. It is set in a single room and features the ugly intimacy of the murder and then expands to include all the people who come tumbling into the room in its aftermath. The paper shows that the light must be low at the beginning and sufficiently bright at the end in order to distinguish various parts of the room at the same time. Nor does the scene present many opportunities for trimming the script. Most of what is said is exactly to the point and in Othello's speeches it contains some of the play's most famous poetry. The paper shows that in addition to the logistics, of course, it is the scene in which Othello must change once again and Iago must seal his lips so that people would still be speculating about his motives 400 years later.

From the Paper:

"Thus when he enters the bedchamber he is on the edge--delicately balancing his own threatened self-image against the new image of the unfaithful Desdemona. The very idea that Desdemona might not conform to his ideal of her tended to undermine his idealized self-conception and the question of killing her becomes a matter of delivering justice. He must kill her "else she'll betray more men" (5.2.6). In this way he attempts to retain his idea of himself and is, once again, performing a civic duty when he kills. The act needs to be filmed so that Othello more or less finds himself apart from the others--to his surprise. Yet even though he berates himself for his stupidity and regrets his crime he has begun to restore Desdemona to her old idealized role."

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