But watching the film was distracting the dubbing was so careless that there was often no correlation between the words and the lip movements. Welles finally pulled the whole project together, dubbing many of the voices himself. Continuity was made even more difficult because some scenes were shot on locations in two or even three different countries, a doorway in Morocco leading to a piazza in Venice. He was also handicapped by a revolving-door cast his final Desdemona, Suzanne Cloutier, was the third actress in the role. Part of his approach was born of necessity: He could not afford to record sound on many of his locations, and so he placed the camera to make the actor's lips invisible, shooting over shoulders or at oblique angles. Instead of the tame eye-level visuals of many films of Shakespeare plays, where the camera is content to watch great actors saying great words, Welles approached "Othello" as a work intended at least equally for the eye. From its opening shots, where the camera looks down on a solemn funeral procession, "Othello" exhibits Welles' flair for dramatic compositions. Even after winning the Palme d'Or at the 1952 Cannes Film Festival, it failed to open in America until 1955, and since then has been seen only rarely, in shabby 16mm prints. But "Othello's" compromises were not all so happy, and the resulting film, made only a decade after the boy wonder had conquered Hollywood with " Citizen Kane," was a ragged production with a soundtrack that was badly out of synch. The result probably looks better than it would have otherwise, which is often the case with a Welles improvisation (he keeps the camera close to a flurry of blades and swordplay).
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