Been on a bit of an Orson Welles film binge this weekend. Having been very impressed with "Chimes at Midnight", I watched both Othello and The Trial and they are both very good.
I think "Chimes" is probably the best of the three, mainly cos the other two are quite straight adaptations, so a bit more limited in terms of story.
But those two also excellent and highly recommended.
He uses a lot of odd/striking shots in all three, for example big close ups shot from below, but what I liked most was this thing he does where he "chops" up the frame by having a lot of bars/windows, sometimes trumpets/arrows/crosses and the like. Gives a good bit of noise to the square frame and also emphasises the trapped nature of the characters.
eg from Othello
from The Trial:
And cos of the stark black and white he favours, he gets this brilliant shadow going on as well, so he gets a very painterly feel, for example:
I also love how he uses smoke/fog/mist - he's well into it like Shakespeare, Dickens, Pynchon.
In this scene from The Trial, he's playing a shady guy who is getting a sort of face massage off his nurse, and there's steam rising off the mask, mingling with the bedhead ornament.
I love how in this scene from Othello, there's mist at top left, but nowhere else. Very deliberate.
And good clouds everywhere as well
The Trial is probably the wackier of the three, the story is very loose and the whole thing very surreal, but it gives him the opportunity for lots of good set pieces
Only issue is that maybe Anthony Perkins wasn't the right choice of actor.
I'm gonna get hold of all his other bits - think he did Macbeth and even a bit of Quixote.