Shot in 23 days on a shoestring budget at the cheapjack Republic Pictures, Orson Welles\u2019 \u201cMacbeth\u201d was poorly received by American critics and audiences when it first came out in 1948 and again in 1950 when its compact 107-minute running time was edited by about a half-hour and the Scottish burr used by the actors was redubbed into accent-free English. Even today, Welles\u2019 original vision doesn\u2019t carry the same level of respect that his later Shakespearean films \u201cOthello\u201d (1952) and \u201cChimes at Midnight\u201d (1966) enjoy.
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Yet \u201cMacbeth\u201d is perhaps the most intriguing of Welles\u2019 Shakespearean ventures. The filmmaker used his budgetary and scheduling limitations to turn Macbeth\u2019s Scotland into a feral landscape devoid of sunlight. Fog and shadow create an abstract netherworld, while the massive set used for Macbeth\u2019s castle has a Stonehenge quality that suggests its inhabitants have yet to cut their acquaintance to the pagan primitivism of pre-Christian Scotland.<\/p>\n
Critics in 1948 complained about Welles\u2019 heavy editing of the Shakespeare text, with scenes rearranged and reconfigured \u2013 including the placement of the Three Witches at the end of story watching their prophecy play out from a distance \u2013 and the new character of a priest created from lines snagged from other characters. But there is no rule that Shakespeare cannot be freely adapted from the theatrical medium to meet the specific needs of a film production, and the carping about taking artistic liberty was also aimed at Laurence Olivier\u2019s \u201cHamlet,\u201d released the same year to greater fanfare than Welles\u2019 \u201cMacbeth.\u201d<\/p>\n
Much of the imagery in \u201cMacbeth\u201d is unsettling, particularly the beginning when the Three Witches \u2013 their faces obscured in shadow and framed by unkempt stalks of white hair \u2013 perform their \u201cbubble, bubble, toil and trouble\u201d chant over a cauldron of bubbling muddy liquid where they bring forth a large clay figurine that will symbolize Macbeth. Later in the film, the Three Witches\u2019 prophecy of Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinane is depicted in an eerie slow-motion, with thick fog lacing its way through the troops who slow advance while hiding behind chopped trees. In many ways, the real star of \u201cMacbeth\u201d is cinematographer John L. Russell, whose vivid Expressionist camerawork unveiled a talent that would strangely not truly be challenged again until 1960 when another great filmmaker tapped him for another low-budget gem \u2013 Alfred Hitchcock and \u201cPsycho.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMacbeth\u201d is not without its peculiarities, particularly the headwear that seems to run the gamut from Tartar to Viking to just plain strange (the notorious square crown worn when Macbeth is coronated). And while Welles dominates the cast in a boldly externalized interpretation of Macbeth\u2019s descent into self-destructiveness, Jeanette Nolan \u2013 a radio actress in her first film \u2013 never quite catches the malevolent power of Lady Macbeth\u2019s homicidal manipulation or the tortured guilt that belatedly drives her into madness and suicide. Still, Welles and Nolan offer a remarkable acting feat in a daring 10-minute unbroken take when their characters plot the murder of King Duncan amid an impending storm. This sequence ranks among Welles\u2019 finest work for technical and dramatic genius.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Shot in 23 days on a shoestring budget at the cheapjack Republic Pictures, Orson Welles\u2019 \u201cMacbeth\u201d was poorly received by American critics and audiences when it first came out in 1948 and again in 1950 when its compact 107-minute running time was edited by about a half-hour and the Scottish burr used by the actors […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":46404,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1369],"tags":[3619,2297,1477,2099,932],"class_list":["post-46403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-retro-cinema","tag-jeanette-nolan","tag-macbeth","tag-orson-welles","tag-republic-pictures","tag-shakespeare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46403"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46403\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46406,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46403\/revisions\/46406"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}