Orson Wells, Macbeth (1948)

In 1948, famed director/actor Orson Wells, released his film version of Macbeth. It was the fourth time that a post-silent era Hollywood studio produced a film based on a Shakespeare play. As the clip below shows, Wells combined a number of film techniques that gave the production the feel of a Hollywood horror film. The film opens on fog shrouded, craggy landscape with the three witches surrounding a boiling cauldron, silhouetted against a stormy sky. They proceed through their well-known chant while fashioning a crude fetish doll from the cauldron’s slimy contents and name it “Macbeth.” The credits roll, backed by a purposely spooky theme, then two riders enter the scene. Thunder sounds and lightning flashes and the rider’s progress is interrupted by the witches’ injunction, “Hail Macbeth.”

Macbeth (1948)

Influenced by film noir and German expressionism, Macbeth creates a brooding mood of dread and despair appropriate to the tragic fall of a once great man. Wells is quite good in delivering Shakespeare’s lines, but he and the rest of the cast complicate negotiating the language by their insistence upon layering each speech with a distracting Scottish burr. Realistic perhaps, but this may make it difficult for viewers unaccustomed to Shakespeare’s English to understand what is being said. Viewers may also be distracted by the choice of costumes. Macbeth and his compatriots often look like refuges from a Mongol horde rather than a Scottish clan and Macbeth’s regal crown looks like it was stolen from the Statue of Liberty.  

A definite must for film historians, Macbeth is a worthy of a viewing and I would place it in the top five film adaptations of the play. However, for viewers new to Shakespeare in performance, I would recommend starting with a rendition that is more user friendly, perhaps Roman Polanski’s 1971 version.

Available on YouTube and Amazon

The Historical Macbeth

An interesting video exploring the historical Macbeth.

The Historical Macbeth

Macbeth: Summary and analysis

The first set of posts will offer a collection on links to resources related to Shakespeare's most famous villain, Macbeth.

 Thug Notes: Macbeth

Introduction

     This blog is intended to encourage involvement with one of the central figures in the development of the western literary tradition: William Shakespeare. It ties in with my previously published text, To Prove a Villain: Shakespeare's Villains, but aspires to be more than a sales pitch. Instead, the blog will attempt to gather together articles, voice recordings, pictures, videos, etc. that will help the common reader engage with Shakespeare in an enjoyable, welcoming format. Like the book, the blog will center on Shakespeare's villains, great and small. 

     Why villains? Because they are fun and fascinating, because they represent some of Shakespeare’s most vividly drawn characters, and because they invite discussion of themes such as the nature of justice and of evil that are as relevant today as they were in Shakespeare’s day. Harold Bloom, the noted Shakespeare scholar, credited Shakespeare with “inventing the human.” By this he means that Shakespeare has created characters that reflect human nature with a range of virtues and vices, filled with ambiguities and contradictions. No where is this more consistently obvious than in the villains he created. 

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