Chimes at Midnight

“A Distinguished Company Breathes Life Into Shakespeare’s Lusty Age of FALSTAFF”

Sir John Falstaff (Orson Welles) is a fat, aging knight who spends his days drinking in a tavern with Mistress Quickly (Margaret Rutherford) and Doll Tearsheet (Jeanne Moreau), and he treats young Prince Hal (Keith Baxter) as his own son. Hal's real father, Henry IV (John Gielgud), has taken the throne and now faces a rebellion led by Hotspur. Welles, who also directed, stages the tavern and the battlefield in the same hard shadows, as if one life had to hold both.