Reclaiming Iago

In my previous post, I blogged about the mysterious lyrics of Modugno's song and how difficult they proved to interpret. Well sometime in 2007 the internet came to my rescue. One of my favourite past-times is to google odd combinations of words which mean something to me to see what resonance they have on the net. I call it: 'testing the limits of global imagination' and it is one of the best ways for discovering the relationship of one's ideas/thoughts/dreams to those of other people around the world. When I googled the lyrics of the song, I found that it came from an oddly titled film "Cosa Sono le Nuvole?" (What Are Clouds?), directed by the Italian writer and intellectual: Pier Paolo Pasolini (see photo on the right). In 1967 Pasolini came up with an Italian version of Othello, as a film about the play as enacted by a set of puppets. He cast some of the leading figures of mainstream Italian television of the time such as Franco Franchi and Ciccio Ingrassia as actors. 

Domenico Modugno figures as a garbage collector/undertaker, who constructs new puppets and disposes of old ones and there is an unforgettable performance of Iago by Toto`: the leading Italian comedian of the twentieth century. It was actually Toto`'s last film and he died before it was released. The song is sung by Modugno as he is disposing of the dead bodies of Othello and Iago. Its lyrics were composed by Pasolini in collaboration with Modugno and many of the words are taken from different speeches by Shakespeare's Othello. Caught up in a whirlwind of oscillating passions, Shakespeare's Othello exclaims: "But I do love thee. And when I love thee not, Chaos is come again." The same words are sung with ringing conviction in Pasolini's version. But without the implied reference to Desdemona, they become a statement about Love and its relationship to Life. "All my fond love thus do I blow to heaven", which is in Shakespeare the enraged prelude to Othello's killing of Desdemona become in Pasolini's version a philosophical adieu to erotic love from the standpoint of one who is dying, 

The  words are transformed; becoming more abstract and existential. Divorced from their immediate social context and the narrative temporality of the play the contradictions between Othello's various declamations emerge starkly and take the form of opposing principles, or mega-themes with the daemonic energy to propel humans in different directions (tal-genn Man!) At the same time new themes are added, clearly by Pasolini himself, who inserted lyrics speaking of the Beauty of Life (Ah but the poignant smell of the delicately textured grass! Ah if you had never been born!), of our Freedom to respond positively to the hatred of others (the one who is robbed and smiles steals something from the thief...so long as you can laugh you will never be lost) and about the relationship between Reason and Passion: But these are only words and I never heard that a heart, a heart which is deeply wounded, can be healed through listening. These last words contain, I feel, the key to the song and to the play as re-created by Pasolini. In his film, Pasolini makes significant departures from Shakespeare's plot, as the extract below makes clear:

Thus Desdemona becomes an artful, superficial little miss whose innocence is merely another term for the psychological and emotional immaturity she shares with Othello. Pasolini's Iago, by contrast is presented in a far more complex and sympathetic light than Shakespeare's. Shakespeare's Iago stands for irredeemable, inexplicable malice, which makes it possible for him to stand as the ultimate scapegoat and for the audience's sympathy to be drawn towards Desdemona and Othello. Pasolini's is green with envy but as a puppet manipulator himself he is also the only puppet who is somewhat aware of his condition as a puppet and thus able to offer advice when Othello asks him about the meaning of truth and of existence itself ('we are in a dream inside a dream', he tells Othello).. Acting as Othello's confidante, he sensitively observes and empathizes with Othello even while manipulating him, fitting into the ancient Greek model of pederasty, which the homosexual Pasolini celebrated. Thus Pasolini has the audience intervene to interrupt the killing of Desdemona and to kill Othello and Iago instead and as brothers in death he invites us to see the world through their eyes and not through those of the scapegoating mob with its rash moralising judgements.

At this terminal point, we become aware of a kinship between Iago and Othello which goes beyond male solidarity or even the solidarity of shared death. Othello, who always allows his Passion to prevail over his Reason, because he is convinced that Truth ultimately resides in his inner feelings and Iago, whose passionate commitment to Reason leads him to rationally manipulate the passions of others, are forced completely out of the puppet show. As total social rejects, they find themselves on the rubbish heap and there, freed from all subjection to Passion and Reason alike, they discover Beauty as their eyes are finally set free from their selves and they are able to gaze, with total freedom and without any desires, at the clouds."Ma quanto sono belle!" (How beautiful they are!) exclaims the former puppet that was Othello. "O straziante e meravigliosa bellezza del creato" replies his brother: "O marvellous and agonising beauty of creation." The words are those of Saint Augustine: "Oh Beauty ancient and ever-new the sight of you has set me on fire", or as Shakespeare more matter-of-factly put it: "We are such stuff as dreams (or clouds) are made of."

     

PS The entire film sub-titled in English can be viewed from this link