Opera
Otello (Cannon Films)
Quite pretty frocks
Rodney Manes
Even in the face of fierce competition, I think the single most depressing thing about Zeffirelli's film of some of Otello has to be the fact that anyone has taken it seriously for ten seconds. Even film critics for whom one has respect have thought it worthy of a paragraph or two and found something nice to say about it — which has not been the case, I understand, in Europe, where on the whole it has been torn to shreds. Hence, maybe, an air of panicky over-hype in its marketing here. The only nice thing I can find to say about it is that some of the frocks are quite pretty. But one does not go to Verdi's Otello to look at frocks.
The production values are roughly those of the Hollywood of The Sea Hawk, that is to say based on vulgar, dated, swashbuck- ling spectacle, and they are imposed from outside on the drama that Verdi wrote (witness the ghastly 'wedding feast' com- plete with exotic dances that is inserted arbitrarily into the first act). I suppose this is not really unexpected: after all, Zeffirelli has already turned La traviata into a cross between a 1930s film-musical weepie and a television commercial for lavatory paper. Fine — he is of course entitled to make crass movies of Othello and La Dame aux camelias if he wants to, but I wish he would commission music from some hack instead of hijacking Verdi's and coupling it to his own base vision.
And I wish that he could accept that a film of an opera is a film of an opera, and that some people viewing it might actually want to hear the music. Here, the sound effects added to the soundtrack are simply farcical. Not even the cinema insists that when someone walks across the screen `clump, clump, clump' noises liavd to be tacked on, as they are here — the result is sheer Tom and Jerry. The opening orches- tral storm is drowned by the taped sound of the real thing, and thereafter no scene is allowed to develop without meaningless multilingual rhubarb burbling away off- screen, or gulls mewing, or waves lapping, and the sight and sound of Cassio sobbing is not the sort of thing calculated to concentrate the mind at the moment of Otello's death.
The score is of course cut, by about half an hour. According to the Times news- paper, Zeffirelli finds the `Fuoco di gioia' chorus boring; so it is replaced by some of the dance music that the composer wrote for Paris, which not even Julian Budden, Pierluigi Petrobelli and Andrew Porter rolled into one (now there's a thought) could swear is the least boring music that Verdi wrote. The Willow Song is cut, and is replaced by shots of Otello reverting to his Moorish roots in preparation for the murder — a curious apergu that might be noted with interest by the mandarins of the race relations industry. The concertato in the third act is cut, replaced by more ballet. Now it could be argued by someone who is operatically tone deaf that this is all tedious music that holds up the action, and fit only for the cutting-room floor; what is beyond argument is the snipping and tampering with the boring recitative in the third scene of the second act, which makes absolute nonsense of the motivation. This is sheer illiteracy.
And how about what is left? Again, let the uncomfortable words of Sig. Zeffirelli himself, enshrined in a television documen- tary, speak for themselves: the love duet 'is very beautiful but a little bit too long they sing too much' (God save us all, what is this man doing making a film of Otello?). So, lest we all die of boredom, the duet is filmed as a series of flashbacks — to first meetings in Venice, the wedding and, ludicrously, baby Otello being captured by slave traders and his poor mother expiring (witli added sound effects, of course).
That seems to be the principle through- out: words and music are boring, and we must be distracted from noticing that fact. In 'Era la notte' we are not allowed to see the effect of lago's narration on Otello, but instead have to watch a nude, pretty-boy Cassio fondling himself in (mercifully) soft focus. The shots are throughout cut to needlessly, destructively distracting effect. The only scene that works up any head of steam vaguely worthy of Verdi is 'Dio ti giocondi', simply because it is more or less left alone. Nor is this musico-dramatic butchery justified by technical excellence: the film is tattily put together, and we didn't need to be told by the television documentary that 'Esultate' was shot at a different time and in a different place from the preceding storm (the sequences don't begin to match) because, apparently, the dubbing didn't work first time round. It doesn't work in the final version either.
There is no need to comment on the music 'produced and conducted' by Lorin Maazel. The publicity blurb proudly in- forms us that he recorded 'whole sequ- ences at different tempos so as to allow Zeffirelli plenty of leeway in shooting the scenes'. This is not the way to go about conducting Otello. Nor is there anything useful to be said about the performances. We know Placido Domingo to be a fine exponent of the title role, but he is defeated by the restless cutting: the charac- ter is not allowed to develop. Katia Ric- ciarelli looks ravishing in her pretty frocks and sings what is left of Desdemona's role very well. Justino Diaz, an interesting performer, has to play Iago at the level of Hammer Films, complete with echo- amplified demonic laughter.
It will doubtless be said, as musicians fall upon this appalling farrago, that they are ignoring the Great Public at large, who may never see Otello in an opera house and who may be drawn to opera as a result of seeing this film. But they are not seeing Verdi's Otello, they are seeing a gross trivialisation of it that is condescending to composer and audience alike, and anyway for the Great Public only the best will do. The best will come next February, when they will have a chance to see Otello performed properly in Peter Stein's film of his brilliantly perceptive production for WNO (5 February, the work's centenary, is the television transmission date for your diary). It will be worth the wait. Mean- while, treat this vulgar drivel with the contempt that it deserves.
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