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Licensor Information
Mr. Bongo Worldwide Ltd.
Directed by: Orson Welles
The crowning achievement of Orson Welles’s extraordinary film career, Chimes at Midnight was the culmination of the filmmaker’s lifelong obsession with Shakespeare’s ultimate rapscallion, Sir John Falstaff. Usually a comic supporting figure, Falstaff—the loyal, often soused friend of King Henry IV’s wayward son Prince Hal—here becomes the focus: a robustly funny and ultimately tragic screen antihero played by Welles with looming, lumbering grace. Integrating elements from both Henry IV plays as well as Richard II, Henry V, and The Merry Wives of Windsor, Welles created a gritty and unorthodox Shakespeare film, one that he intended, he said, as “a lament . . . for the death of Merrie England.” Poetic, philosophical, and visceral—with a kinetic centerpiece battle sequence that rivals anything else in the director’s body of work—Chimes at Midnight is as monumental as the figure at its heart.
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Technical Specifications
Format:
DVD
Discs:
DVD-9 (2 Discs)
Total: 2 Discs
Regions:
1 (DVD)
Aspect Ratio:
1.66:1
Audio Options:
English Dolby Digital Mono 1.0
Resolution:
480p/29.97
Subtitles:
English
Supplements
Types of Supplements Included: Audio Commentary, Interview, Theatrical Trailer
- Audio commentary featuring film scholar James Naremore, author of The Magic World of Orson Welles
- New interview with actor Keith Baxter
- New interview with director Orson Welles’s daughter Beatrice Welles, who appeared in the film at age seven
- New interview with actor and Welles biographer Simon Callow
- New interview with film historian Joseph McBride, author of What Ever Happened to Orson Welles?
- Interview with Orson Welles while at work editing the film, from a 1965 episode of The Merv Griffin Show
- Trailer
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Release Credits
Producer: Issa Clubb
Artwork: Sterling Hundley
Release Notes on Restoration
Chimes at Midnight
Chimes at Midnight is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.66:1. On standard 4:3 televisions, the image will appear letterboxed. On standard and widescreen televisions, black bars may also appear on the left and right to maintain the proper screen format. Based on the 1009 restoration supervised by Luciano Berriatúa at the Filmoteca Española, this high-definition digital transfer was created from the 35mm original camera negative and a 35mm optical soundtrack element. Additional image and sound restoration was undertaken by the Criterion Collection. Dirt, debris, scratches, splices, and warps were removed using MTI Film’s DRS, while Digital Vision’s Phoenix was used for jitter, flicker, small dirt, grain, and noise management. Clicks, thumps, hiss, hum, and crackle were manually removed using Pro Tools HD and iZotope RX 4.