Along with Charles Boyer, Cary Grant, and David Niven; Ronald Colman was one of the suavest leading men in Hollywood movies from the late 1920s through the middle of the twentieth century. These are not the kind of actors one would think of to play the tormented, explosively jealous character of Othello. A more plausible change-of-pace for any of them would have been to undertake playing Iago.
In "A Double Life" Ronald Colman plays Anthony "Tony" John, a star of charming drawing-room comedies who undertakes "Othello." It is plausible that such an actor as John or Colman would aspire to the role, but Anthony John is also supposed to be a success in the role. The film-viewer does not see the whole performance, but sees the climax multiple times—and Colman is not convincing in it. This failure rather undercuts the very unsubtle premise of the film script, which is that an actor is consumed by the role and crosses the line between performing on stage and living the role. (I don't think that this can be a plot spoiler, since it is verbally foreshadowed within the first five minutes and the actor starts confusing playing the role and being Othello even before agreeing to undertake the role.)
The opening of the film is uncompelling, and despite the impressively mobile camerawork and noirish lighting, the first half of the movie is labored and fairly dull. As Tony more and more loses any grip on reality in the second half, things become more interesting. Colman is better at cracking up than he is at embodying all-devouring jealousy and the camera illustrates the throbbing in and out of John's consciousness, if not subtly, effectively.
In that I consider Iago the most interesting character in "Othello", what we see of the staged "Othello" seemed to me mostly bluster. There seems to be a real-life Cassio (Edmond O'Brien's press agent, Bill Friend) but no Iago in the offstage drama, either. Eventually, however, this Cassio takes an Iago turn, and, in revenge, undertakes pushing Tony into the abyss. There is even a bit of surprise in the ending.
Signe Hasso's Desdemona is perfunctory and not particularly convincing. Offstage, as Tony John's ex-wife, she is more convincing. An unlikely and very unlucky offstage Desdemona, waitress Pat Kroll, played by Shelley Winters in her first major screen role, is very convincing. She is a bit vulgar to be the refined Desdemona, but just right as the yearning and vulnerably young woman under a thin veneer of knowingness who picks up the disoriented actor. Winters and O'Brien are the standouts in the cast, which also includes reliable character actors Ray Collins and Millard Marshall.
Awards and Prints
I consider myself a Ronald Colman fan. He was good at gallantry (A Tale of Two Cities, The Prisoner of Zenda) and could be very whimsically funny (If I Were King, Talk of the Town, Champagne for Caesar), or fall poignantly apart (The Light That Failed, Random Harvest). But he was not credible being consumed by the Green-Eyed Monster of jealousy. Colman received an Oscar for "A Double Life" in a year without strong competition—at least from other nominees. Of those, the strongest case could be made for John Garfield in "Body and Soul". In my view, "A Double Life" did not even contain Colman's best performance of the year (that would be as the bemused title character in "The Late George Apley"), and if I were handing out retrospective awards, James Mason's performance as the "Odd Man Out" would be my choice of best actor in an English-language 1947 movie.
I don't hear anything special in Miklós Rózsa's score to have justified an Academy Award, though the music from none of the other nominees that year stick in my mind. The cut-rate Pirandello screenplay by Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon, which like the musical score lacked subtlety, was nominated for an Oscar, as was George Cukor's turgid direction.
The really outstanding work on display in "A Double Life" was Milton Krasner's cinematography, which received no award recognition. (His work received Oscar nominations in "All About Eve" and "An Affair to Remember", and he won for "Three Coins in a Fountain". After "A Double Life", which is not generally categorized as cinema noire, he shot some more obviously noir films: "A Double Life", including "The Set Up," " House of Strangers," " No Way Out.")
The new DVD shows Krasner's work to great advantage, being digitally mastered at UCLA from the original film negative. The disk is devoid of DVD extras (I don't consider having scene selection an "extra," perhaps English closed captioning is). The 2.0 Dolby Stereo Surround is also fine
An actor playing Othello loses touch with reality and starts to behave like the Moor. Directed by George Cukor. Best actor Oscar for Colman.More at HotMovieSale.com
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