2) Chimes At Midnight
Trust Orson Welles – the man who relocated Julius Caesar to fascist Italy and once staged a Haiti-set ‘voodoo Macbeth’ – to break from tradition and tear up the Shakespeare rulebook in order to suit himself. Chimes at Midnight uses Shakespeare’s own dialogue, but it’s based on no single Shakespeare play.
Rather, it’s several of them cut up and glued together the way Welles saw fit. The film concerns Shakespeare’s jolly, bloated noble character Falstaff, who appeared through Henry IV parts one and two, Richard II, and Henry V.
Welles, adoring of Falstaff, simply took all of the character’s scenes and put them together for Chimes at Midnight. The result is not just surprisingly coherent, but also disarmingly warm-hearted, humorous, and ultimately sad all at once. The Battle of Shrewsbury is one of Welles’ finest directorial achievements, an intimate, down-and-dirty take on an epic battle, one where the most touching and tragic moments come in-between the conflict.