Double Life, A

Synopsis: Feature film. ` A serious case of this-is- Shakespeare-so it-must-be art’. Anthony John is a great but unbalanced classical actor. Outwardly gentlemanly, he is taken over by any role that he plays, and playing Othello he becomes insanely jealous. In a manic fit he strangles Pat Kroll, a waitress, Bill Friend, a publicity agent, ties the unsolved murder to a production of Othello. A furious John attacks Friend. Friend sets up John with a Kroll look-alike, and the police decide from his reaction that he is the murderer. They decide to arrest him after a performance of Othello. On stage, knowing that he has been found out, he is overtaken by the role and nearly strangles Desdemona, his former wife. He pulls back just in time, stabs himself and dies in the wings’. (McKernan, Luke & Terris, Olwen Walking Shadows: Shakespeare in the National Film & Television Archive (London: bfi, 1994), p123.
Language: English
Country: United States
Medium: Film
Technical information: Black-and-white / Sound
Year of release: 1947
Duration: 105 mins; 9,396 feet

Director

George Cukor

Producer

Michael Kanin

Cinematographer

Milton Krasner

Screenplay

Garson Kanin; Ruth Gordon

Music

Miklos Rozsa

Cast

General: The cast of Othello: Guy Gates Post, David Bond, Leslie Denison, Virgina Patton, Thayer Roberts, Fay Kanin, Arthur Gould-Porter, Frederic Warlock, Boyd Irwin, Percival Vivian.

Some way down the cast, cast as ‘girl in a wig shop’, is Betsy Blair, one of several actresses who almost became Desdemona in Welles’ OTHELLO (1952). She also appears as Emily in the Othello derivative ALL NIGHT LONG (1961).
Awards: Academy Award 1947 - Best Actor - Ronald Colman. Best Score for a Dramatic or Comedy Picture - Rozsa.
Reviews: `Whether Colman’s rich performance is on the greatest or one of the worst-ever recorded on film seems a matter of taste. Overall a silly but suspenseful melodrama that would convince far more if the scenes from Othello were not so poorly staged’. (McKernan & Terris, Walking Shadows: Shakespeare in the National Film and Television Archive. (London:bfi, 1994), 123). Tony Howard in his essay Shakespeare’s Cinematic Offshoots in Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film edited by Russell Jackson (Cambridge: CUP, 2000) believes that in this film and MEN ARE NOT GODS (1936), both Othellos act better when they are insane.

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