Drama
American
1952 · Directed by Orson Welles · 93 min
A Moorish general in Venetian service marries in secret and is sent to defend Cyprus, while his ensign Iago quietly plans his ruin. Orson Welles turns Shakespeare's tragedy into a film of shadow, stone and sea, shot in black and white across Italy and Morocco.
Why it matters in cinema history
A landmark of Shakespeare on film and a key post-Kane work by Welles. It also shows independent, itinerant European filmmaking in the early 1950s, assembled shot by shot.
Watch with intention
Watch it as a film in which space, light and editing do the work that poetry does on the stage.
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