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Michael Gambon, a protégé of Laurence Olivier and giant of the British stage who portrayed Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore, apparently with little effort, in the final six Harry Potter movies, has died. He was 82.

“The Great Gambon,” as Ralph Richardson once called him, died “peacefully in hospital with his wife Anne and son Fergus at his bedside, following a bout of pneumonia,” according to a family statement provided Thursday by a publicist.

Among the first group of actors recruited by Olivier for the National Theatre Company in the early 1960s, Gambon, a Dublin native, was nominated 13 times for an Olivier Award, winning in 1986 and ’90 for Alan Ayckbourn’s A Chorus of Disapproval and Man of the Moment, respectively, and in 1988 for Arthur Miller’s A View From the Bridge.

He received another one for his turn as a recently widowed businessman trying to reunite with his former mistress in Skylight,...

William Shakespeare's "The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice," inspired by the Italian story "Un Capitano Moro" by Cinthio (1504 - 1573), was likely first performed around 1603 at the Globe Theater just outside of London. The story follows the titular Venetian military commander and his relationship with Desdemona, the daughter of a senator. Othello and Desdemona are both mature adults, and speak their emotions clearly, unlike Shakespeare's other well-known Veronan youths. One of Othello's ensigns, Iago, announces to the audience that he secretly hates Othello, and aches for his undoing. The term "Moor" is an old English word used, insensitively, to refer to anyone with dark skin, and didn't necessarily refer to any country of origin. The word is fraught and deserves more context than I can provide here.

Because Othello's race is constantly mentioned in the text of the play, many critics see Iago's hate and jealousy of Othello...

Stars: Orson Welles, Micheál MacLiammóir, Suzanne Cloutier, Robert Coote, Fay Compton, Michael Laurence | Written by William Shakespeare, Orson Welles, Jean Sacha | Directed by Orson Welles

We open with a funeral. For whom we’re not sure, but by the end of Orson Welles’ 1952 adaptation of Shakespeare’s Moorish tragedy Othello we can be certain that more than one of the main characters will be dead.

The location is Cyprus, and Venetian General Othello (Welles) is married to Desdemona, much to the chagrin of Othello’s supposedly loyal ensign, Iago (Micheál MacLiammóir). The latter sets about bringing ruin to his master through a convoluted campaign of rumour and hearsay. Specifically, he makes Othello believe that one of his captains, Cassio (Michael Laurence), is romantically involved with Desdemona. In all of literature a simple handkerchief has never held such power.

MacLiammóir is having an absolute riot in the upsetter role (the painted-on...

Othello

Blu-ray

Criterion

1952 / Black and White / 1:33 / Street Date October 10, 2017

Starring Orson Welles, Suzanne Cloutier, Micheál MacLiammóir

Cinematography by G.R. Aldo, Anchise Brizzi, George Fanto, Alberto Fusi, Oberdan Troiani

Written by William Shakespeare (Adapted by Orson Welles)

Edited by Jenö Csepreghy, Renzo Lucidi, William Morton, Jean Sacha

Produced by Orson Welles, Julien Derode

Directed by Orson Welles

Shakespeare didn’t invent Orson Welles but he did define him; it can be said that if any one director took arms against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, it was the man behind Citizen Kane, Touch of Evil and Chimes at Midnight. The 1952 production of Othello is exhibit A.

Filmed over a turbulent three year period in and around Morocco, Venice and Rome, Welles was bedeviled by an ever-changing cast and crew resulting in reshoots by five different cinematographers and assembled by four different editors. The sound recording was a joke.

The Criterion Collection has announced its May offerings, including “Dheepan,” “Ghost World” and a Blu-ray update of “Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles.” Also joining the Collection are Orson Welles’ “Othello,” a new World Cinema Project collector’s set and Yasujirō Ozu’s “Good Morning.” More information below.

Read More: The Criterion Collection Announces April Titles: ‘Tampopo,’ ‘Rumble Fish,’ ‘Woman of the Year’ and More

“Ghost World”

“Terry Zwigoff’s first fiction film, adapted from a cult-classic comic by Daniel Clowes, is an idiosyncratic portrait of adolescent alienation that’s at once bleakly comic and wholly endearing. Set during the malaise-filled months following high-school graduation, ‘Ghost World’ follows the proud misfit Enid (Thora Birch), who confronts an uncertain future amid the cultural wasteland of consumerist suburbia. As her cynicism becomes too much to bear even for her best friend, Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson), Enid finds herself drawn to an unlikely kindred...

Orson Welles' "Othello," based on Shakespeare's tragedy, was a famously troubled production with a long and checkered history. The film itself was shot sporadically over a period of three years after the film's initial Italian producer went bankrupt. Welles poured his own money into the production and found some creative solutions to keep the budget down. Shooting went on for so long that some key roles (including Desdemona) had to be recast, with scenes reshot. Though the film won the 1952 Best Picture Award at Cannes, it wasn't released (in an altered version) in the U.S. until 1955 to little fanfare. In the film, written and directed by Welles, the director himself plays the doomed Moor in the classic tale of sexual jealousy and betrayal shot on location in Morocco and Rome. Welles starred alongside Micheál MacLiammóir, Robert Coot and Suzanne Cloutier. There have been several different versions of the film,...

Irish stage and screen character actor who appeared in Barbarella, The Verdict and the BBC's 1969 sitcom Me Mammy

For a performer of such fame and versatility, the distinguished Irish character actor Milo O'Shea, who has died aged 86, is not associated with any role in particular, or indeed any clutch of them. He was chiefly associated with his own expressive dark eyes, bushy eyebrows, outstanding mimetic talents and distinctive Dublin brogue.

His impish presence irradiated countless fine movies – including Joseph Strick's Ulysses (1967), Roger Vadim's Barbarella (1968) and Sidney Lumet's The Verdict (1982) – and many top-drawer American television series, from Cheers, The Golden Girls and Frasier, right through to The West Wing (2003-04), in which he played the chief justice Roy Ashland.

He had settled in New York in 1976 with his second wife, Kitty Sullivan, in order to be equidistant from his own main bases of operation, Hollywood and London. The...

The distinctive and beguiling Irish actor David Kelly, who has died aged 82, was as familiar a face in British television sitcoms as he was on the stage in Dublin, where he was particularly associated with the Gate theatre. But he was perhaps best known in recent years for playing Grandpa Joe in Tim Burton's movie adaptation of Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), an engaging performance that was honoured with a lifetime achievement award from the Irish Film and Television Academy; Johnny Depp, who played Willy Wonka, paid a touching tribute on a video link from Hollywood to Dublin.

Kelly was a tall and flamboyant figure who was often cast as a comic, eccentric Irishman, notably as Albert Riddle, an incompetent, one-armed dish-washer in the late 1970s British sitcom Robin's Nest; he...

'I actually wanted to be a writer long before I wanted to be an actor'

'Dickens was the most gorgeous person you could possibly meet. He was just amazingly affable. Your day would be absolutely made if you bumped into Dickens. More than that, he possessed the power to make you funnier and more attractive. He would laugh so generously that he actually empowered you. What a gift. No wonder that even during his lifetime people knew he was one of the immortals."

Simon Callow is explaining a lifelong fascination that has led him to write about Charles Dickens, to adapt his work, and to play the man – twice in episodes of Doctor Who alone – as well as his characters on both stage and screen. It is an engagement that reaches something of a culmination next year with the Dickens bicentenary, when Callow will publish a new book about...

Director best known for Georgy Girl, a romantic comedy set in 60s London

The film and TV director Silvio Narizzano, who has died aged 84, handled several genres throughout his career, including black comedies, period pieces, social dramas, action thrillers and horror movies. But one picture, his swinging London romantic comedy Georgy Girl (1966), stands out from the rest of his eclectic filmography.

Georgy Girl was part of the trend in which British cinema shifted the focus from provincial life and back to the metropolis, celebrating new freedoms and social possibilities. Narizzano, influenced by the French New Wave and his chic contemporaries Richard Lester, John Schlesinger and Tony Richardson, explored such "shocking" subjects as abortion, illegitimacy, adultery and sexual promiscuity with a light touch. The film, which took its cue from the jaunty title song by the Seekers, had superb performances from Lynn Redgrave as the virginal and plain Georgina; Charlotte Rampling...

The Arbor, a film in which actors mime to recorded words, is part of a rich history of sonic experiments

Like all cinematic developments hailed as leaps towards verisimilitude, the advent of synchronised sound at the end of the 1920s in fact opened up a whole new dimension of illusion. The clue is in the name: despite the appearance of unity, the audio and video tracks are synchronised but separate recordings, and the space between them can be put to all sorts of cunning uses.

The latest of these is found in The Arbor, Clio Barnard's moving and ingenious cinematic profile of the young Bradford playwright Andrea Dunbar, which is out this Friday. Taking its cue from "verbatim theatre", in which actors speak lines taken directly from interviews with real-life people, The Arbor features actors lip-synching to interviews with Dunbar's loved ones, to emotionally compelling yet formally alienating effect...

Often cast as villains, he appeared in Goldfinger and The King and I

The actor Martin Benson, who has died aged 91, occupied a screen category filled in its time by Herbert Lom, with whom he acted on several occasions, and previously Conrad Veidt – that of the worldly, sophisticated, foreign villain. With jet-black hair, dark colouring and pronounced eyebrows on a thin face, he never seemed properly dressed without a tuxedo. As well as remaining furiously busy during six decades as an actor, he pursued several artistic disciplines.

Born into a Jewish family in London, he seemed briefly destined to become a pharmacist. As a gunner in the army during the seond world war, he organised entertainment for the troops, and produced a tour of Gaslight in aid of a fund to replace Hms Dorsetshire. By 1944, he had been promoted to captain and was posted to Alexandria, Egypt, where he built a theatre from scratch,...

A talented Irish actor on stage and in films for Ford and Huston

For an actor who worked with two of the greatest movie directors of the last century and appeared in the world premieres of plays by Brian Friel, Ireland's leading contemporary dramatist, Donal Donnelly, who has died after a long illness, aged 78, was curiously unrecognised. Like so many prominent Irish actors in the diasporas of Hollywood, British television, the West End and Broadway – all areas he conquered – Donnelly was a great talent and a private citizen, happily married for many years, and always seemed youthful.

There was something mischievous, something larkish, about him, too. He twinkled. And he had a big nose. He had long lived in New York, although he died in Chicago, and had started out in Dublin, although born in England.

In John Huston's swansong movie The Dead (1987), the best screen transcription of a James Joyce fiction,...