What luck that Welles shot in black-and-white, so there was no color to fade. Both versions carry the original English-language soundtrack the Brazilian disc is clear enough and a thing of beauty. Preparing to attend the epic production of both parts of Shakespeare's "Henry IV" at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, I wanted to see it again and found it available on DVD from Spain and Brazil. It dropped so completely out of sight that there is no video version in America, Britain or France. I saw the film in early 1968, put it on my list of that year's best films, saw it again on 16mm in a Welles class I taught, and then could not see it for 35 years. How can it be that there is an Orson Welles masterpiece that remains all but unseen? I refer not to incomplete or abandoned projects that have gathered legends, but to "Chimes at Midnight" (1965), his film about Falstaff, which has survived in acceptable prints and is ripe for restoration. There live not three good men unhanged in England.
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