Reimagined Shakespeare Marathon Movie 8: A Double Life (1947)

There are different ways that someone can adapt a book or play to the big screen.  The most interesting of the methods is to have the movie be about someone adapting the source while also being involved in a story that goes along with the source.  Two of the adaptations of this sort that come to mind for me are Adaptation, which takes it a step further, and The Red Shoes.  The Reimagined Shakespeare Marathon has helped to add another film to that list.

A Double Life is a 1947 film based on Othello.  Guy 1 is starring in a stage adaptation of Othello.  He gets so deeply into his character that his life begins to take the shape of the play.  That’s it.  That was honestly the easiest plot to describe out of the entire marathon without spoiling any of the dramatic beats.

The first half of the movie is kind of weak.  I don’t think it holds up too well 65 years later.  It has nothing to do with the direction or the acting in the movie.  The first half feels a little bit long and of the time in which it was made.  There isn’t too much movement of the plot which may hurt the movie.  I couldn’t get interested in the first half and it made for a struggle as I tried to watch the movie.

Once I got into the second half of A Double Life, things picked up.  The acting from the lead actor, Ronald Colman, is especially good as the movie gets going.  It all leads to a final ten minutes which is some of the best payoff in the entire marathon thus far, both emotionally and plot wise.  A Double Life still feels a little bit stale throughout its entire run but the final act is a great piece of filmmaking.

There’s something about a person devolving into insanity that always gets me when I’m watching a movie.  That is where the second half of A Double Life got me invested.  The actor becomes too involved in his character, so much that he can no longer separate his character’s life from his own.  This is similar to an idea that was presented in Black Swan, though it doesn’t have as much of an emotional punch.  That could have been due to the code that was in place in Hollywood at the time.  That does not matter though as the final scene created enough emotional tension in order to leave the viewer satisfied in their viewing experience.

I don’t have too much more to say about A Double Life.  It was an okay movie.  The first half definitely holds it back, and it isn’t a timeless movie.  But the lead actor is superb and deserves recognition for his performance, which he got when he won the Academy Award for Best Actor.

Was that the shortest writeup of the Reimagined Shakespeare Marathon?  I think it was.  I don’t have too much to say about the movie.  Hopefully the next one, I’ll have more.  The next movie is A Midsummer Night’s Rave from 2002.  When I picked it as part of the marathon, I picked it solely on name alone.  It may have been a bad choice.  We’ll see.