Othello by Orson Welles and by Sergei Yutkevich: The Moor’s Tragedy Interpretations in the USA and the USSR

Abstract

The following article examines the characteristics of two film adaptations of William Shakespeare’s tragedy Othello shot by Orson Welles in 1951 and Sergei Yutkevich in 1955. The article analyzes the sociopolitical and historical context of the period in which both interpretations of Shakespeare’s tragedy were filmed, as well as its influence on Welles’ and Yutkevich’s direction: their methods of adapting the original text for the cinema screen, working with actors and creating an artistic world of their adaptations. For both directors, Othello became a film summarizing their careers, views, and ideas about creative and human freedom. Both adaptations of the tragedy reflected the years of searching, toiling and persecution that Welles and Yutkevich went through, one in the USA, and the other in the USSR. The goal of this article is to show how directors with similar creative biographies, interpreted the same text to create two fundamentally opposite worlds of ideas, images and characters; how they engaged all the artistic means available for them to express through this work of their beloved author their own ideas of justice, society, choice, love, faith and freedom.

Keywords

• shakespeare
• othello
• cinema
• theater
• soviet cinema
• american cinema
• orson welles
• sergei yutkevich
• existentialism