All Night Long

Basil Deardon's 1962 adaption of Shakespeare's Othello is set in an all-night-long party in London to honor the wedding anniversary of Aurelius Rex and Delia Lane, Othello and Desdemona, respectively (and respectfully). If Verdi's Otello takes Shakespeare's English play that is set in Venice (and Cyprus) back to Venice, screenwriters Nel King and Paul Jarrico take the Boito/Verdi Otello opera, and bring it back to England. The action takes place in a tower-like building in London, and high-profile musicians take the place of courtiers.

All the principal actors play their roles as if they were the personalities in the Shakespeare play, making the politics and power struggles in music truly close "cousins." The quotation marks around cousins refer to the "Iago" character Johnny Cousins, who is a drummer and a band leader. He's the person throwing the party.

I will give no spoilers regarding plot, but if you know your Shakespeare, you will appreciate the way characters translate into a group of American musicians and their supporters who might be on tour in London.

The music was excellent. The first musician we meet is Charles Mingus, comfortably playing himself and his bass (he says that he is the first one to arrive and the last to leave). Then other musicians pour into the two-story loft with private rooms upstairs, and a roof that looks over the Thames. The staging is very Shakespearian. All the action takes place within the tower and happens in the span of a couple of hours.

Rex has a lot of Duke Ellington in him, and Rex = King is obvious. Here he is on the roof with the Thames behind him, looking very Venetian:


Here he is playing some Ellington on the piano:


So we have Paul Harris playing the character of Othello filling a role that might be considered analogous to that of Duke Ellington in the Jazz world of 1962.

Here's Rex in the loft with Delia (played by Marti Stevens), a singer who put aside her high-profile career to be Rex's wife:



The musicians asked her to sing "All Night Long," her signature song. Here's a closer shot:



And Patrick McGoohan, who plays the hell out of the drums and hell out of the Johnny/Iago character does some "work" on some tape as well.



Dave Brubeck is featured, along with other musicians who play in different configurations. In addition to Mingus and Brubeck (who play together for a bit), the other musicians who play themselves are Bert Courtley, Keith Christie, Ray Dempsey, Allan Ganley, Tubby Hayes, Barry Morgan, Kenny Napper, Colin Purbrook, and John Scott (who is an excellent flutist). The only time you don't hear the music is when a scene is on the roof or in one of the upstairs rooms when the door is closed.





I was as impressed with the set as I was with the music, the script, the direction, and the acting. Here's a shot of some of the artwork in the loft:



And we can't forget the square-looking music business executives who are at the party:



You can see the full cast listing from the IMDB. And if you have the Criterion Channel, you can stream it from there!