Olivier’s version is very good, but the filming style (A three or foour camera setup shooting a play) isn’t the best. Olivier’s performance as Othello is unbelievably good. Get past the whole make-up thing and see how Oliver changed his whole appearance, voice and physicality to hit the right note for the role.
Yes. No. Maybe.
There’s a lot of [del]argument[/del] discourse about Othello’s race and what it might have been and what that meant to an Elizabethan audience. His “otherness” is pointed out during the play, mostly by Iago, and in a negative way. He mentions the “black ram” when he’s painting an ugly picture of Othello having sex with Desdemona. Othello is called “thicklips”, and refers to himself as “black”.
However, “black” may arguably have meant “darkskinned” or “swarthy”, and included people of what today we’d consider Middle Eastern features, sometimes called Arabs. “Moor” referred to both Arab Moors and Black Moors, and in previous plays, Shakespeare wrote one of each into the script, so the evidence is murky.
It seems clear to me reading it that racism does play a huge part in it. Iago, of course, pushes a lot of Othello’s buttons, but a major one is certainly his “otherness” and the idea that he’s achieved success despite his skin color and that other people hate him for it.
But I also personally think it’s sort of irrelevant what the despised (or at least suspicious) race was in the Elizabethan era. If you’re producing the play today, you should think about casting the face which will cause discomfort in your audience today. Frankly, in today’s political climate, I think it would make more of an emotional impact to play Othello as a Muslim Arab, complete with traditional dress and head covering. They’re the boogeymen right now - the one audiences would cringe to see in bed with a white woman. Or, as Patrick Stewart did (he had dreamed of playing the role since he was a kid), reverse the traditional casting altogether - he was a white (very white!) Othello, and the rest of the cast was black. This certainly achieved a sense of “otherness” and was unsettling to the audience.
It’s significant because it sets him apart from everybody. Do you mean why he’s a Moor as opposed to a member of some other group? I think it’s just because Shakespeare was working from an older story about a Moor who marries a white woman.
Also, rather obviously, Othello comes from North Africa, a traditionally Muslim area at a time when Venice was at war with the Muslims- something that is a major, if off-stage plot device.
The way I’ve always heard it explained, to an Elizabethan English audience a “Moor” was ipso facto exotic and fascinating – with the appeal of a Latino or Arab lover in a modern American romance novel – but also overly passionate and emotional and easily angered, which is what allows Iago to arouse his jealousy so easily.
Actually, however, whether Othello was meant to be sub-Saharan black or some sort of North African remains a matter of controversy – see here.