SnoopyStyle Orson Welles adapts the iconic William Shakespeare play about a prophecy from three witches that Macbeth will become the King of Scotland. Orson Welles stars as Macbeth. There are experienced stage and film actors. Sometimes they give overwrought stage performances. Then there are the over-pronounced r's. The varying levels of fake Scottish accents are distracting with the Shakespearian script. It comes and it goes depending on the time and the person.As for the Shakespearian script, there are a few differences and not just the usual subtractions. Welles added a Christian Holy Man to accentuate the conflict with the old religion. The sets are all interior sound stages. The costumes are a hodgepodge of wardrobe leftovers. Some are fine. Some are head-scratching like a weird sci-fi metal-bubbles shirt for Macbeth or the tridents and blank triangle shields for the soldiers. Through it all, Welles is doing intriguing camera shots and other stage craft to stretch the traditional play.

writers_reign Even in this, the first of a trio of bardic adaptations Welles was showing how Shakespeare should be adapted for the big screen and the fact that he did better with Othello and better still with Chimes At Midnight is evidence of a genius at work. If you look at the film today you might be forgiven for thinking that Jeanette Nolan disappeared without trace after making a fairly decent fist of Lady Macbeth, not a bit of it, already married to John McIntire, she played Larry Hart's (Mickey Rooney) mom that very same year and ended a long career playing Robert Redford's mom in The Horse Whisperer. Welles' strength - apart, of course, from the voice, is his strongly developed atmospheric sense which is perfect for what is almost a pre-Gothic Gothic story laden with brooding clouds and craggy terrain. Working - as always post-Kane - with a stick of gum Welles performs miracles and turns in a memorable movie.

Leofwine_draca Directed by and starring Orson Welles, this is a hugely atmospheric version of the Shakespeare tragedy which plays up the Gothic horror of the play for all its worth. There are nice little stylistic touches of originality, like the creepy voodoo-style doll used by the witches in the opening scene which crops up later on.So far, this is my third favourite version of the story, following on from Polanski's harrowing and excellent TRAGEDY OF MACBETH and Kurosawa's compelling and very different THRONE OF BLOOD. MACBETH shares some similarities with the latter, namely in the atmospheric scene-building and scenes of characters riding through foggy and desolate landscapes.Sadly, the dialogue scenes are the one that lack here. The dialogue is authentic Shakespeare all right, and Welles is certainly a great actor, but I found something lacking. Welles just wasn't moving or involving in the same way Mifune and Finch were involving as the lead. Jeanette Nolan is a scene-chewing Lady Macbeth but lacks a certain something, and seeing the faces of Dan O'Herlihy and in particular Roddy McDowall in support is just, well, odd.This movie is not without merit, and as an exercise in scene-building and set design it's rather excellent. Some moments, like the gripping climax, are brilliant, but other scenes just feel stodgy and don't progress the plot, so it's good in places and weak in others. Nice effort, though.

Steffi_P After Laurence Olivier's epic production of Henry V in 1944, movie versions of Shakespeare plays suddenly became viable again after a dwindling of interest in the 30s. And this being the era of film noir, the Shakespeare pictures that appeared in the late 40s and 50s were almost all of the tragedies. Olivier's Hamlet was the big Oscar-winner of 1948, but just preceding it was Orson Welles's take on the overwhelmingly bleak MacBeth.This was the time in which Welles was having his infamous "troubles" with studios that would eventually make him a cause célèbre. Unable to get work with the majors MacBeth finds him working for Republic, a tiny studio yet one that produced some good stuff occasionally. While most Shakespeare adaptations from this period tried to open the plays out a bit, the low budget on offer here actually gives MacBeth a very stagey look. The castle where most of the action takes place is just a sparse couple of walls, a staircase and some scattered props, very much like a stage "building". This actually serves the play fairly well. Low-key lighting and billowing mist hide the gaps in the set and the fact that Welles only had a handful of extras for the "crowd" scenes, but they also give it that stark and stifling atmosphere that MacBeth needs.And that is not to say that this version of MacBeth is not cinematic. Welles's style as a director is, as always, one of style over substance. He is great at visual tricks and aesthetic shots, but didn't really understand the nuances of cinematic expression. But MacBeth is a Shakespeare play which can stand a bit of style over substance. It's not Shakespeare's best story, but it is a very poetic piece, with elements of myth and the supernatural. Welles's quick cuts, roving camera and baroque shot composition actually suit the material, creating some beautifully haunting and rhythmic sequences. The scene of MacDonwald's execution is a fine example, a hypnotic montage of grim faces, MacBeth running to embrace his wife before a gallows, and the drums constantly beating out an eerie tension. Later there is also the dynamic battle sequence, given impact with some rapidly-edited dolly-in shots.Now let's look at Welles the performer. His acting is not exactly world-class, but he really gets into the swing of it. I think more than any other role he played, you can actually forget that it's Welles and just see the character. And he certainly makes a better Scot than he did an Irishman in The Lady from Shanghai. His Lady MacBeth, Jeanette Nolan, was originally a radio actress and unsurprisingly her best asset here is her voice, at times coarse, at others sibilant, every consonant crystal clear, and absolutely full of the character. Despite her lack of experience she seems able to do the visual, physical acting as well. The rest of the cast are uniformly decent – theatrical yes, but never excessively hammy. No-one is trying to steal the scene here.The end result is probably the best film adaptation of MacBeth. It's also an adequate vehicle for Orson Welles's overtly stylised directorial style. The feel of a horror-tinged folk tale is all about this one, and while it doesn't breathe the same life into the bard that Olivier could manage (both as an actor and a director), it is a worthy and enjoyable effort.