Plenty of praise is heaped on this film so I'm not going to go over what's good about it. We know Welles can point a camera, everyone loves the big battle scene. But I have several major gripes with this film. First and I believe foremost, the characters are incredibly unlikable. Our hero is an obese, alcoholic criminal who lives in a brothel. He finances his hideous disease-ridden lifestyle as a lying flim-flam man and cheap highway robber. He is a sociopath manipulator who uses his ways to facilitate his constant quest to garner respect which he does not deserve and obtain money he did not earn.
He manipulates young men including the prince of Wales himself. The prince gleefully partakes in criminal shenanigans as he shirks the duty of getting ready to be one of the most powerful and important men in Europe, only to act like a victim when daddy dies and the grown up world forces him to grow the heck up. Our main characters everyone, give them a hand.
I have to admit, the language is pretty. You've got to be a poet to write this kind of thing but I wouldn't judge a person's intellect for not enjoying it. It's Shakespearean after all. But listen folks, no one speaks this language. No one ever spoke this language. "I'll be a potters tuffet if not my spoils do taint the barleycorn that in the morning, ah thou! Be if that not though thy this then... But what then verily?" God, shut up. Shakespearean English is bad and this is bad.
While others may describe the direction as exciting and energetic, in my opinion the sheer amount of prancing about and pawing at each other surpasses all reason. Everyone everywhere, prancing prancing prancing. Twirling and jumping, randomly French kissing prostitutes, sweating like pigs all over each other... I know this is theater but I can't suspend disbelief well enough to accept the sheer level of frantic absurd motion portrayed in this film.
Then the battle scene happens. We have an epic battle, gorgeous and brutal and fairly realistic. It also has Sir John in giant armor looking like a cross between the Black Knight and the Kool-Aid man being a total coward, ruining the battle with comic nonsense in the same way Gimli ruins the battles in Lord of the Rings. Showing the depth of his character he helps Prince Hal into battle with a demoralizing speech to about the uselessness of honor. I could not have hated him more when he tries to take credit for slaying Hotspur. Hal might have won some favor with his dad that day but instead he instilled more disgust as the disgusting company he keeps rears its head.
Other notably dislike-able characters, and thus failings of the film, include Justice Shallow, a whinnying rambler with a voice like a caricature who keeps in his company a stutterer who can only ever speak the first consonant of a word. Shallow will call upon him for information, the stutterer would say "Buh" and Shallow would complete the thought. That gag didn't get freaking old the 20th time it happened. Then there's Pistol, so dopey and hammy that he seems to only be there in order to give us someone to hate more than Falstaff.
This movie is a dopey, pretentious, melodramatic goofball comedy done in the style of the world's most overrated playwright. I feel like people claim to like Chimes at Midnight for the same reason they claim to like conventional Shakespeare; they don't want people to think they're stupid. In my case, that strategy backfired.
I have to admit, the language is pretty. You've got to be a poet to write this kind of thing but I wouldn't judge a person's intellect for not enjoying it. It's Shakespearean after all. But listen folks, no one speaks this language. No one ever spoke this language. "I'll be a potters tuffet if not my spoils do taint the barleycorn that in the morning, ah thou! Be if that not though thy this then... But what then verily?" God, shut up. Shakespearean English is bad and this is bad.
While others may describe the direction as exciting and energetic, in my opinion the sheer amount of prancing about and pawing at each other surpasses all reason. Everyone everywhere, prancing prancing prancing. Twirling and jumping, randomly French kissing prostitutes, sweating like pigs all over each other... I know this is theater but I can't suspend disbelief well enough to accept the sheer level of frantic absurd motion portrayed in this film.
Then the battle scene happens. We have an epic battle, gorgeous and brutal and fairly realistic. It also has Sir John in giant armor looking like a cross between the Black Knight and the Kool-Aid man being a total coward, ruining the battle with comic nonsense in the same way Gimli ruins the battles in Lord of the Rings. Showing the depth of his character he helps Prince Hal into battle with a demoralizing speech to about the uselessness of honor. I could not have hated him more when he tries to take credit for slaying Hotspur. Hal might have won some favor with his dad that day but instead he instilled more disgust as the disgusting company he keeps rears its head.
Other notably dislike-able characters, and thus failings of the film, include Justice Shallow, a whinnying rambler with a voice like a caricature who keeps in his company a stutterer who can only ever speak the first consonant of a word. Shallow will call upon him for information, the stutterer would say "Buh" and Shallow would complete the thought. That gag didn't get freaking old the 20th time it happened. Then there's Pistol, so dopey and hammy that he seems to only be there in order to give us someone to hate more than Falstaff.
This movie is a dopey, pretentious, melodramatic goofball comedy done in the style of the world's most overrated playwright. I feel like people claim to like Chimes at Midnight for the same reason they claim to like conventional Shakespeare; they don't want people to think they're stupid. In my case, that strategy backfired.