mark.waltz My love of theater has taken me to genres and eras of the stage where I would not have dared gone back in my 20's and 30's. I spent the 2013/14 season and beyond seeing more Shakespeare on the New York stage than I had seen in my entire life. This included two different Broadway productions of "the Scottish play", one a solo performance by Alan Cumming, the other a Lincoln Center production on Halloween night that had me go home and take a shower for having partaken in a production that reeked of dark forces from the underground. For my first film or video version of this classic play so notorious that nobody mentions its name within the confines of any theater the 1948 Orson Welles version, and if other versions of it on screen are far better, they must be outstanding, for I could find no fault with this version.Welles, the boy wonder of RKO in the early 1940's, had to go to lowly Republic Studios to get this made. He's commanding, both in front and behind the screen, both as actor and director. Looking like the wicked queen from "Snow White", Jeanette Nolan looks the part of sinister manipulation, but speaks with such girlish longing, it is easy to see why Welles' MacBeth could fall for it. The sets and costumes, along with the moody photography, really make you feel like you are living 1000 years ago. Supporting cast members like Roddy McDowall and Dan O'Herlihy fill out the other important roles. The sequences with the witches are rather eerie, adding to the atmospheric structure. While not a great film, this is still an artistic triumph, with many visuals providing outstanding detail.

travis_iii Macbeth is an interesting film despite its flaws. At times it's very, very interesting, but unfortunately the work is undermined by the use of cod-Scottish accents throughout. All the modernist visual touches and expressionist feel, all the talented delivery of Shakespearean verse (and there is some good acting in parts, especially from Welles) is undone by the insistence that the cast talk as though on the set of Lassie Come Home. One can just about endure non-Scottish actors making a lame attempt at nailing the accent in a film like "Whiskey Galore!" (where there is no alternative) - but it has never been necessary for Macbeth! We know the story is set in Scotland and don't need to be fed constant verbal reminders. Quite the contrary - the (often bad) Scottish accents actually makes the verse harder to hear. Imagine Romeo & Juliet staged with Leonardo Di Caprio using an accent copied from the Dolmio pasta sauce adverts! I suspect that the mistake of using accents was recognised quite soon after production and I have heard that a different re-dubbed version was soon released. One can understand why they did this but the re-dubbed (and cut-down) version must have been worse as the version with brogue is now the preferred one.This massive distraction aside Welles does a good job on a small budget. It does inevitably look stagy, confined and rather monotonous (all shooting being done indoors) but his attempt to create interesting and visually striking cinema from the limited ingredients at his disposal has to be applauded. The nature of the dramatic material doesn't help - Shakespearean text inevitably means lots of lingering shots during soliloquies, and striking design elements that look quite good at first start to look tired when lingered on. The expressionistic, dark, brooding, angular barrenness starts to oppress and bore one after a time. In between the choice speeches there is a lot of rather wooden movement going on as characters shuffle on and off "stage" but this is compensated for by some moments of very good interpretation of the text and compelling drama.Whilst some elements of the film are clumsy (the drunk scene with clichéd tuba music) many exhibit Orson Welles' great vitality and cinematic flare. All his films have these last two qualities to one degree or another and that's why they are ALL very very interesting and worth watching.

lasttimeisaw Very frankly speaking, it's a horrible adaption of Macbeth, which might not be Shakespeare's best masterpiece, but still holds his gold-lettered signboard, I constantly keep myself from any possible idolization even if this time the object is Orson Welles. I am disqualified to evaluate Orson's works as I have not watch enough amount of them, I just articulate my feelings as far as this film is concerned. I guess the only person whom the film satisfies is Orson himself, as he seems to be quite intoxicated with his over-the-top performance while Shakespeare's brilliant lines could intermittently jump out of his mouth. For me it looks like even his co-star Jeanette Nolan (Ms. Macbeth) would like to finish her role (by jumping from the cliff) earlier. The film is merely a second-class Shakespeare's play with a bigger but undeservedly shabby set, actually a burlesque may be more accurate. Of course, no matter what it is still the original Macbeth, so it does has its own charm in spite of its potboiler quality, which could not be attributed to Orson himself (maybe the horror surrealistic background he creates is an exception). So clearly I'm not a B-movie fan, in my opinion the controversy of the film is largely due to the fact that it is made by Orson Welles, a prematurely senile genius, other than the film itself. The performance is un-even, Orson is not Laurence Olivier (in 1948 Laurence's Hamlet was a huge success), on the contrary, Jeanette Nolan became my sole guilty pleasure in this film (the truth is that there is sheerly no other choice for me, perhaps the three witches also stand a chance), I am not familiar with theatrical work, so if someone tells me Orson actually has done a great job in the film, I will be very disappointed by the intrinsic characteristic of an actor.

ptb-8 This 1948 Republic Production polarizes viewers but pleases theater and Shakespeare purists it seems. An almost direct visual transfer from a nightmarish muddy staged play, Republic's Orson Welles' MACBETH has been soundly criticized as a 'movie' but applauded as a 'film'. The whole film is like a nightmare sequence from another film, except here it runs 107 minutes and is the the entire look of the movie. If you have seen the fantasy horror of the Salvador Dali sequence from SPELLBOUND, then you might be prepared for the spiky dark landscape of MACBETH with Welles a dark knight/king haunting its wet cold pits and crags. Like a grimy silent movie from the Russian film studios of the 20s or as one critic said "a riot in a coal mine" MACBETH according to the stark icy black desert presents the viewer with an unrelenting grim mad world of fog witches and vicious tone. It is a nightmare for sure but a stark solid one which will either grab you because of its sparseness or repel you for the same reason. Theatre lovers will get it and those seeking a bit of Errol Flynn style derring doo will run.... Its reputation has grown over the years, and I do believe rightly so.