Orson Welles' Macbeth Details

Welles shot this in four weeks in a B-movie studio sound stage for next to nothing. In ways, it shows. The film often does look like it's been shot indoors, even as it is supposed to show us our anti-hero travelling back from a battlefield. The actress playing Lady Macbeth is terrible. And not everyone had quite enough time to get their Scottish accents down pat, but it's telling that anyone was trying Scottish accents at all as to Welles' approach to this film and, for the most part, you do forget that there's no sky or horizon or land visible all around because, despite all these limitations, Welles' Macbeth is one of if not THE most cinematic literal translation of a Shakespeare play to screen (Branagh's Hamlet spring to mind, and Kurosawa's Ran and Throne Of Blood weren't literal translations). There is more inventiveness in the three witches scene in Welles' film than the entirety of any Olivier-handled equivilent; indeed Polanski seems to have had trouble matching Welles' creativity 30-odd years later. The ghost scene too has been done in such a way that you wonder why no-one has had the common sense to do it that way in other film productions, but then revealling what, in hindsight, seems obvious is the true sign of genius. All in all, Welles sidesteps and conjures his way around all the little traps that even the Shakespeare-minded likes of Branagh seem to trip over and, in doing so, creates a great sleight of hand that hides the lower-than-B-movie budget for the most part. Like in his debut, Welles has totally thrown himself into the medium and told Macbeth in a way that can only be told on film, not in the random, gratuitous way that Polanski sometimes did (that mirror?) but with a sensible restraint that matches his inventiveness. It's still a shame about Lady Macbeth, but I'd rather than watch this over and over again than sit through Polanski's version once, or pretty much any other Shakespeare film come to that.

Orson Welles ' Mac Beth

Surreal, a must see for fans of Welles and the Bard. Great B&W photography, the usual unusual treatment one expects form this great American filmmaker.