A good idea - the tragedy of Othello reflected in the lives of the actors - is ruined here by the direction of August Blom, which is disappointingly flat and primitive for 1912.
4 Reviews
Desdemona review
JoeytheBrit26 June 2020
Very Interesting Story Idea, But Doesn't Make the Best Use of the Possibilities
Snow Leopard6 March 2006
This Danish short feature has a very interesting story idea that offers all kinds of possibilities, but then it does not make use of the best of those opportunities. It ends up being at about the level of the many routine melodramas of the era, but it's still interesting for the imagination of the film-makers in trying to combine the story and themes in a different way.
The setup has a husband and wife acting team preparing to play the roles of Othello and Desdemona, while in 'real life' the wife pursues an extra-marital romance. The actor playing Iago has his own advances to the wife refused, so he decides to take revenge accordingly. From there, the story follows the characters both on-stage and off-stage as events develop further, with the occasional use of props and other details to develop some of the parallels.
The parallel between play and reality was an imaginative and ambitious idea for the time, and even though it does not work as well as it could have, they deserve credit for trying to make what would have been something like a more serious counterpart to the "Kiss Me Kate" plot. The stage sequences also preserve a brief record of the kind of costumes that the characters would have worn in a stage production at the time.
In Shakespeare's plot, Desdemona is completely innocent and sympathetic, but here the audience's identification with the wife is dissipated by her deceitfulness and coldness. Likewise, in Shakespeare, you can admire Iago's evil brilliance even as you are repulsed by the character, but here he's just a mean-spirited tattle-tale. So, unfortunately, the way it is set up limits or prevents much of the tension and suspense that could have been developed. In the end, it's more interesting for what it could have been, rather than for what it is.
The setup has a husband and wife acting team preparing to play the roles of Othello and Desdemona, while in 'real life' the wife pursues an extra-marital romance. The actor playing Iago has his own advances to the wife refused, so he decides to take revenge accordingly. From there, the story follows the characters both on-stage and off-stage as events develop further, with the occasional use of props and other details to develop some of the parallels.
The parallel between play and reality was an imaginative and ambitious idea for the time, and even though it does not work as well as it could have, they deserve credit for trying to make what would have been something like a more serious counterpart to the "Kiss Me Kate" plot. The stage sequences also preserve a brief record of the kind of costumes that the characters would have worn in a stage production at the time.
In Shakespeare's plot, Desdemona is completely innocent and sympathetic, but here the audience's identification with the wife is dissipated by her deceitfulness and coldness. Likewise, in Shakespeare, you can admire Iago's evil brilliance even as you are repulsed by the character, but here he's just a mean-spirited tattle-tale. So, unfortunately, the way it is set up limits or prevents much of the tension and suspense that could have been developed. In the end, it's more interesting for what it could have been, rather than for what it is.
Life Reflecting Theatre
Cineanalyst30 October 2005
"Desdemona" is a conceptually interesting film, although, as to be expected, it's very dated, especially in its static camera positioning--taking the proscenium arch stance throughout most of the picture. Additionally, the Kino print is of poor quality. In the film, Valdemar Psilander, the major Danish screen actor of the day, plays an actor who's preparing to play Othello on stage. In his off-stage life, he becomes enraged with Othello-like jealousy, which explodes on stage. The idea is that life is reflecting theatre and vise versa.
Mise-en-scène gets much more attention than camera-work in "Desdemona". Especially interesting is the use of mirrors, which take on an associative nature with cinema in Scandanavian films during this period. In this film, they nicely underscore the point of life and theatre reflecting each other. In another film from 1911, "Temptations of a Great City" (Ved Fængslets Port), the same director, August Blom, used mirrors to show action out of frame, which compensated some for the lack of camera movement and editing in the film. Anyhow, there are some good ideas within this short film, although they're better exploited in later incarnations with the benefit of advanced film-making.
Mise-en-scène gets much more attention than camera-work in "Desdemona". Especially interesting is the use of mirrors, which take on an associative nature with cinema in Scandanavian films during this period. In this film, they nicely underscore the point of life and theatre reflecting each other. In another film from 1911, "Temptations of a Great City" (Ved Fængslets Port), the same director, August Blom, used mirrors to show action out of frame, which compensated some for the lack of camera movement and editing in the film. Anyhow, there are some good ideas within this short film, although they're better exploited in later incarnations with the benefit of advanced film-making.
when a mise en scène is not a mise en scène
kekseksa19 December 2016
This is perhaps a good opportunity to try and deal with a whole bundle of misconceptions concerning mise en scène, editing and camera movement that still hold sway.
I agree with other reviewers regarding the "static" nature of this film. It is a poor film (compare it for instance with Blom's later Atlantis and the difference is enormous) but it is not necessarily poor for the reasons supposed.
Take the opposition suggested by one reviewer between "mise en scène" and "camera-work". This is an entirely false opposition. Good mise en scène in a film (in general the great strength of European films of this period = and arguably ever since - and the principal weakness of US films)is all about camera-work just as in the theatre (where the term originates) it is all about lighting and movement.
Mise en scène is not just the assemblage of thiings on the screen, it is the way those things are assembled, the way the camera focuses on that assembly and the way the performers are directed to interact with it. It required (as the Lumière operators already understood in the 1890s) not merely that the scene be correctly set but that the camera be correctly angled to reflect it and that the development of the scene, even if lasted just a minute, be correctly directed. The work of the Lumière "star" operator, Alexandre Promio constitutes a virtual textbook on how to make films in this respect.
Editing, to this way of thinking, was supposed to be minimal. The purpose of editing is essentially remedial and, given good mise en scène, it should not be necessary. So the European tradition of filming tended to avoid editing (this was a choice not a failing)and instead emphasised depth of shot, angle of camera and camera movement, panning horizontally and gradually, after Cabiria in 1914, movement of camera on a dolly towards and away from the action. When European cinema later interested itself in Griffith an in the cross-cut, it was to use it for a quite different purpose(the kind of montage associated with the films of Gance or the Russian masters of the late twenties).
The difference is important because the Griffith mode of editing produces a certain kind of cinema (the "action" film basically and what would later be regarded as the standard realistic US format with its obsessive concern with continuity and limited field of view). The European mode was (and still, at its best, is) associated with another kind of cinema, designed, if you like, to empower the viewer and provide context for the action rather than continually direct his or her attention and restrict it to the foregrounded stars (a process both of sentimentalisation and glamorisation).
To see how beautifully the European system could work, one should ideally watch the films of Yevgeny Bauer but there are good examples also in the Scandinavian cinema (Sjöstrom obviously or Stiller or Christensen but also Blom in his later films). It would be quite wrong to imagine that the European films (sometimes described rather unsatisfactorily by US critics as a "tableau style" which does indeed make it sound a s though it is both old-fashioned and static) was in some sense ignorant of editing. The same editing devices available to Griffith were actually developed simultaneously everywhere and were equally available to European film-makers. Sjöström at one point introduced rather too much editing into his films, somewhat mitigating the effects of the very fine cinematography, but later find a better balance. Bauer uses quite a bit of editing in some films (and is also a pioneer of camera movement) but uses virtually none in other films. The object was for editing to be an option not a necessity (because of poor mise en scène or inadequate cinematography) nor an obligation (as it would become increasingly in US film).
That said, one of the reasons why the "editing/continuity" method caught on in the US was because ti was relatively simple. Follow the rules and almost any idiot can make a film that will pass. The "contextual" method associated with European cinema (a far better description than "tableau") requires a great deal more skill. And the object of good mise en scène is precisely to prevent the scene from appearing static.
There are many ways of doing this none of which necessary involve "editing" in the crude Griffithian sense of the word. One is altering the angle of the camera. Another is ensuring activity on different planes (in width or in depth), another "flanking" the screen to reduce the view, another placing the actors to one side or the other of the screen or making imaginative use of the possibilities of "off-screen" in their various entrances and exits. Watch the films of Bauer and how all these things work becomes immediately clear. All of this is what constitutes "mise en scène", not just the props and costumes and furnishings.
The problem with this film is that Blom does none of these things and a s a result his sets are completely dead and hardly in fact made use of at all by the characters. One reviewers talks of mirrors, but the use of mirrors (in any case one of the simplest and most obvious devices associated with mise en scène in the cinema) is her absolutely pathetic. To see what could be done in this respect, gain see the wonderful mirror scene in Bauer's Mute Witness.
So this film is not poor because ti lacks editing (there is no real editing necessary) or because it privileges mise en scène. It is poor, in its own terms, because the mise en scène is completely ineffectual and because the camera never enters into the necessary relationship with the set or the performers. In other words it is the work of a still very inexperienced director who does not yet know what he is doing.
I agree with other reviewers regarding the "static" nature of this film. It is a poor film (compare it for instance with Blom's later Atlantis and the difference is enormous) but it is not necessarily poor for the reasons supposed.
Take the opposition suggested by one reviewer between "mise en scène" and "camera-work". This is an entirely false opposition. Good mise en scène in a film (in general the great strength of European films of this period = and arguably ever since - and the principal weakness of US films)is all about camera-work just as in the theatre (where the term originates) it is all about lighting and movement.
Mise en scène is not just the assemblage of thiings on the screen, it is the way those things are assembled, the way the camera focuses on that assembly and the way the performers are directed to interact with it. It required (as the Lumière operators already understood in the 1890s) not merely that the scene be correctly set but that the camera be correctly angled to reflect it and that the development of the scene, even if lasted just a minute, be correctly directed. The work of the Lumière "star" operator, Alexandre Promio constitutes a virtual textbook on how to make films in this respect.
Editing, to this way of thinking, was supposed to be minimal. The purpose of editing is essentially remedial and, given good mise en scène, it should not be necessary. So the European tradition of filming tended to avoid editing (this was a choice not a failing)and instead emphasised depth of shot, angle of camera and camera movement, panning horizontally and gradually, after Cabiria in 1914, movement of camera on a dolly towards and away from the action. When European cinema later interested itself in Griffith an in the cross-cut, it was to use it for a quite different purpose(the kind of montage associated with the films of Gance or the Russian masters of the late twenties).
The difference is important because the Griffith mode of editing produces a certain kind of cinema (the "action" film basically and what would later be regarded as the standard realistic US format with its obsessive concern with continuity and limited field of view). The European mode was (and still, at its best, is) associated with another kind of cinema, designed, if you like, to empower the viewer and provide context for the action rather than continually direct his or her attention and restrict it to the foregrounded stars (a process both of sentimentalisation and glamorisation).
To see how beautifully the European system could work, one should ideally watch the films of Yevgeny Bauer but there are good examples also in the Scandinavian cinema (Sjöstrom obviously or Stiller or Christensen but also Blom in his later films). It would be quite wrong to imagine that the European films (sometimes described rather unsatisfactorily by US critics as a "tableau style" which does indeed make it sound a s though it is both old-fashioned and static) was in some sense ignorant of editing. The same editing devices available to Griffith were actually developed simultaneously everywhere and were equally available to European film-makers. Sjöström at one point introduced rather too much editing into his films, somewhat mitigating the effects of the very fine cinematography, but later find a better balance. Bauer uses quite a bit of editing in some films (and is also a pioneer of camera movement) but uses virtually none in other films. The object was for editing to be an option not a necessity (because of poor mise en scène or inadequate cinematography) nor an obligation (as it would become increasingly in US film).
That said, one of the reasons why the "editing/continuity" method caught on in the US was because ti was relatively simple. Follow the rules and almost any idiot can make a film that will pass. The "contextual" method associated with European cinema (a far better description than "tableau") requires a great deal more skill. And the object of good mise en scène is precisely to prevent the scene from appearing static.
There are many ways of doing this none of which necessary involve "editing" in the crude Griffithian sense of the word. One is altering the angle of the camera. Another is ensuring activity on different planes (in width or in depth), another "flanking" the screen to reduce the view, another placing the actors to one side or the other of the screen or making imaginative use of the possibilities of "off-screen" in their various entrances and exits. Watch the films of Bauer and how all these things work becomes immediately clear. All of this is what constitutes "mise en scène", not just the props and costumes and furnishings.
The problem with this film is that Blom does none of these things and a s a result his sets are completely dead and hardly in fact made use of at all by the characters. One reviewers talks of mirrors, but the use of mirrors (in any case one of the simplest and most obvious devices associated with mise en scène in the cinema) is her absolutely pathetic. To see what could be done in this respect, gain see the wonderful mirror scene in Bauer's Mute Witness.
So this film is not poor because ti lacks editing (there is no real editing necessary) or because it privileges mise en scène. It is poor, in its own terms, because the mise en scène is completely ineffectual and because the camera never enters into the necessary relationship with the set or the performers. In other words it is the work of a still very inexperienced director who does not yet know what he is doing.
See also
Awards | FAQ | User Ratings | External Reviews | Metacritic Reviews
