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Orson Welles' Macbeth is an expressionist masterpiece about a doomed man of ordinary ambition who believes an evil prophecy that he will become King. The shortest of Shakespeare's tragedies, Welles long considered Macbeth to be the most filmable of the Bard's work. Produced on a slim budget over a mere 32 days, the results are consistently impressive. As depicted by Welles, the title character is not a warrior king or conscience-stricken, poetic soul on a par with Hamlet; rather, he is revealed to be a facile, superstitious man consigned to fate even as the character does not trust to fate. For her part, Lady Macbeth (Jeanette Nolan) is merely obsessed with the unimpeded exercise of her will to power, viewing her husband's life as a tale told by an idiot (she is particularly effective during the "out, damned spot" scene from Act V). Welles has also created some new scenes here, conflating several characters into a "Holy Father" (Alan Napier) while eliciting strong supporting turns from actors such as Dan O'Herlihy (Macduff) and Roddy McDowall (Malcolm). All of this unfolds within a highly disordered state in which nature itself is on the rant ("Fair is foul and foul is fair"). Though the technically poor soundtrack and the occasional indecipherable Scottish brogue make the film seem a trifle compromised at times, each moment feels preternaturally alive. There is an almost Brechtian quality here, with Welles giving us splendid pieces then leaving it to us to fit them into a theatrically coherent puzzle. Refusing to believe that Birnham Wood could ever travel to Dunsinane, Macbeth is finally exposed as a man of insufficient character. As such, some might suggest that this Macbeth is more accurately described as the story of how Malcolm became King. --Kevin Mulhall
DVD Description
The Players:
- Orson Welles (Macbeth)
- Jeanette Nolan (Lady Macbeth)
- Dan O’Herlihy (Macduff)
- Roddy McDowall (Malcolm)
- Edgar Barrier (Banquo)
- Alan Napier (A Holy Father)
- Erskine Sanford (Duncan)
- John Dierkes (Ross)
- Keene Curtis (Lennox)
- Peggy Webber (Lady Macduff)
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
26 of 27 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
Prior to this 1948 film adaptation of Shakespeare's "Macbeth", Orson Welles had already tackled the play twice: A theater production, the so-called "Voodoo Macbeth" (set in Tahiti with an all black cast!) and a recorded production with the Mercury Theatre on the Air (though the recording was never broadcast). So it is fair to say that Welles knew this play better than most, and it shows in this film, his ultimate version of the play. Welles' vision of "Macbeth" is very, very dark and introspective. Visually stunning, every frame is foreboding and sinister (especially the images with the three witches - a genuinely creepy visualization) , heavily inspired by the German expressionist directors such as Murnau and Lang. The nightmarish images add greatly to the play, and I think Welles managed to bring forth the central emotions that Shakespeare was trying to convey.
Welles delivers one of the finest performances of his career. I've never quite been able to determine whether his acting abilities were equal to his genius as a director, but they come pretty close. Welles had perhaps the most expressive voice in all of Hollywood, and it is perfectly suited to the Bard's work. Every soliloquy is magnificently delivered, despite the bit too frequent use of voice-over (I prefer the actors to actually speak the lines). The rest of the cast is good, but nothing remarkable. Welles as Macbeth is really the star of the show, at least for me.
The only real downside to the production is a very mediocre score by Jaques Ibert. I cannot help but think how much more engrossing the film could have been with an effective score - too bad Bernard Herrmann wasn't available! But other than the music and a somewhat battered soundtrack, this film is simply superb.
Welles delivers one of the finest performances of his career. I've never quite been able to determine whether his acting abilities were equal to his genius as a director, but they come pretty close. Welles had perhaps the most expressive voice in all of Hollywood, and it is perfectly suited to the Bard's work. Every soliloquy is magnificently delivered, despite the bit too frequent use of voice-over (I prefer the actors to actually speak the lines). The rest of the cast is good, but nothing remarkable. Welles as Macbeth is really the star of the show, at least for me.
The only real downside to the production is a very mediocre score by Jaques Ibert. I cannot help but think how much more engrossing the film could have been with an effective score - too bad Bernard Herrmann wasn't available! But other than the music and a somewhat battered soundtrack, this film is simply superb.
The DVD also features a rare short film made in Ireland. Welles plays himself in a spooky ghost story, akin to an episode of The Twilight Zone. A nice bonus.
Other than that, the DVD has no special features at all. But "Macbeth" is worth the price.
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
If you are using this for educational purposes, be aware the text is hacked about quite a bit. If your budget doesn't extend beyond one DVD and you want as full a text as possible, then the BBC Shakespeare version may suit you better, despite Nicol Williamson's overblown performance.
But this DVD is a wonderful complement to other ostensibly more faithful productions because it really has been conceived as a movie, not a glorified record of a stage presentation (which the BBC version feels like, and which the Judi Dench/Ian McKellen RSC one palpably is). The liberties Welles takes with the text make sense because the visuals are doing the work of much of the language so why duplicate the effort? (And this more usual belt-and-braces approach, incidentally, helps to explain why most full-text Shakespeare films never quite come off.)
That said, it does show its B movie budget roots - the biscuit tin crown isn't overly impressive and the accents are dodgy - but there is a real sense of darkness which feels more faithful to the spirit of the original than most other film or TV versions. Welles as Lear - now there would have been a thing ...
Postscript Jan 2011: Re Welles as Lear, you can now buy a Region 1 DVD of Peter Brook's 1953 cut down version of the play, cutting the Gloucester subplot, for US TV's Omnibus series - a restored version from a kinescope copy, the quality is perfectly acceptable, and it comes with related extras from the series. The company is Koch vision. I cannot speak for the quality of other DVD issues.
But this DVD is a wonderful complement to other ostensibly more faithful productions because it really has been conceived as a movie, not a glorified record of a stage presentation (which the BBC version feels like, and which the Judi Dench/Ian McKellen RSC one palpably is). The liberties Welles takes with the text make sense because the visuals are doing the work of much of the language so why duplicate the effort? (And this more usual belt-and-braces approach, incidentally, helps to explain why most full-text Shakespeare films never quite come off.)
That said, it does show its B movie budget roots - the biscuit tin crown isn't overly impressive and the accents are dodgy - but there is a real sense of darkness which feels more faithful to the spirit of the original than most other film or TV versions. Welles as Lear - now there would have been a thing ...
Postscript Jan 2011: Re Welles as Lear, you can now buy a Region 1 DVD of Peter Brook's 1953 cut down version of the play, cutting the Gloucester subplot, for US TV's Omnibus series - a restored version from a kinescope copy, the quality is perfectly acceptable, and it comes with related extras from the series. The company is Koch vision. I cannot speak for the quality of other DVD issues.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
Welles lost Agnes Moorehead (he owed her money), had a very tight budget, had his soundtrack scrapped when the US studio objected to the brogues, in other words this was a typical Welles production post RKO. All the same, he gets at the dark heart of the play and the character by flashes of crude dark shadows and brilliant moments that are seldom touched in any production. His relatively crude face and heavy voice are actually well suited to MacBeth. The witches and magic, played for real, ground the film in the mud, which is where it belongs. Those who can only appreciate the more ethereal style of Shakespeare will be disappointed. This is the blood and guts.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
SSSSHHHHH
GENIUS AT WORK,ALAS THE RESTLESS HEART, ONCE AGAIN ORSON DESERT,S A BABY,JUST LIKE AMBERSONS,IT,S ALL TRUE THE STRANGER,ORSON TRIED TO EDIT THESE MOVIES FROM A DIFFERENT... Read more
Published 9 months ago by A. Hussain
Too much trilling
An astonishing obsession with an attempt to mimic a scottish accent spells disaster for any english native for this incarnation of the play. Read more
Published 19 months ago by ndb_master
THE macbeth
the sets are surreal, absolutely perfect, welles gets to grips fully with shakes masterpeice, to me this is easily welles greatest acting, to me no other macbeth film comes even... Read more
Published on 28 Oct 2008 by casio smith
Great Film... Not so great DVD.
If this movie is restored then I'm Santa Claus. The print is quite rough so I have no clue how they can claim it's restored unless it was restored by a blind person. Read more
Published on 13 Nov 2006 by Orson99
Restored (ish)
I got this for my wife who is taking GSCE English (she's Romanian so doesn't have such a qualification).
Firstly it says its restored, well if it is its not a good job. Read more
Published on 1 Oct 2003 by "markcst"
No words to describe the perfection !
This film is a fairly faithful rendition of Shakespeare's play and personally i believe that it is one of the greatest experimental films ever made under the Hollywood studio... Read more
Published on 24 Dec 2000
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