Among the thousands of artists who have adapted Shakespeare, Welle's movies still are the least appreciated and estimated of them. Welles repeated Verdi's task in turning Macbeth, Othello and Falstaff, but in films rather than operas.
We can only imagine what it is to adapt the pinnacle of the English comic literature, the huge hill of flesh Falstaff into a film knowing that you're at risk of being an heretic to loosel'd one of the masterpieces of the greatest author that ever left their mark on literature. But here we can say that welles really turned Shakespeare and inevitably into an loss of complexity. First of all like many artists (Verdi one them) that have the mistake of thinking that Falstaff is the main figure of Henry IV's plays, Welles adapts the historic tragicomedy in a melancholy comedy, political issues are ignored or comixed, Hotspur is transformed into bad comic scream-ever character. Shakespeare play is not really about Falstaff, despite that he dominate the stage, nor is a comedy in the basic term sense. Falstaff's quartet friends (Pistol, Bardolph, etc) lose all power. The play is all about politics, Hal and Hotspur, honor and kingdoms. That's the thing and to adapt such a corpus of literary complexity Welles wrong itself connecting the two plays parts when the first part works excellently alone.
To escape the literary aspect of the review. Chimes at Midnight It's an excellent entertainment, a must view for those who want to see one of the three greatest comics characters (the others being Don Quixote and Pantrugel) in the cinema. Highpoints are Shrewsbury Battle, Falstaff's welles performance and direction as always. But not exaggerating in the purism, Chimes at midnight does not have the psychological depth of Macbeth (1948) or the beauty of performances of Othello (1952) and in my opinion he's the minor of the three Shake-welles films.
