Othello, having recently been given command of the Venetian armies on the island of Cyprus, is too powerful a military commander and too popular a man to take down openly however, he has a deep, hidden wound of insecurity. Among them is Iago, who decides to use cunning and malice to bring down the man he can’t openly insult. The same heroism that enraptured his young bride drives repulsion and envy within Venetian society. Othello ’s plot revolves around the titular character, a North African moor employed as general of the Venetian Republic who has fallen desperately, erratically in love with the senator’s daughter, Desdemona, with whom he elopes. Having alienated the studios with Citizen Kane, Othello would estrange the few other sources of money still willing to work with him. The three years of production that Othello ran to-an appallingly long time by 1940s standards-became the genesis of the Wellesian myth: Orson could sell financiers a dream, but never bear to complete it. Control freak and perfectionist that he was, Welles could never bear to leave a single frame flawed, spending years of his life creating masterpieces long after others had moved on. Othello featured Welles (as many Welles productions do, barring any particularly pernicious conspiracy theories regarding writing credits) as actor, writer, and director. The buck had to stop with him, after all. Filmed over three years through budgetary and marital collapse, and the loss of cast and crew for months on end as they sought to make enough money to live, Othello was the production that first sowed the seeds of doubt amongst his backers. Orson Welles once said that, rather than focusing on the individual man, his Othello depicted the “whole world in collapse.” It certainly triggered the collapse of his own in many ways, Othello was the beginning of the end.
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