This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

That was an excellent one.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Macbeth (1948) was directed by Orson Welles and stars Welles himself as Macbeth, and Jeanette Nolan as Lady Macbeth. The immensely talented Welles was famous for thinking up ambitious projects that he could not fund. Macbeth fell into that category.With inadequate funding, Welles was forced to patch together his cast, his props, and his location. Although most of the important scenes of the play take place in a castle, Welles didn't have a castle. His set was an amorphous rock formation, with steps that apparently led nowhere.I saw this movie as part of an honors seminar (Shakespeare in Film) that I'm auditing. The students were scornful about the movie. They got tired of the obvious Christian (good) Pagan (bad) symbolism. They got tired of Macbeth lurching around the set as if he were drunk. (Could he have been drunk, or did he want us to think Macbeth was drunk?) They got tired of a new character that Welles introduced--the Holy Father.Welles was a great actor, and his interpretation of Macbeth as a glowering medieval lord covered in sweat is as valid as other interpretations. Jeanette Nolan was not a great Lady Macbeth, but she was creditable enough.What ruined the movie for me was the lower-than-low budget appearance. Sometimes, you just can't fake it with papier mâché and shadows. For example, in one of the most dramatic scenes in world theater, Lady Macbeth comes sleepwalking into a hall and continues to wash her hands. (That's where "Out, out, damned spot" comes from.)In this version, Lady Macbeth, her maid, and the doctor seem to be on a platform of rock, with no roof. Shakespeare meant this to be a tight, intimate, indoor scene. It loses its effectiveness in this setting.We saw this film on the small screen. It might work a little better in a theater, but it works well enough on DVD. This is a flawed, unsatisfying film, but it's not without its merits. Welles is a genius. Even a lesser movie by a genius has some great moments in it. My suggestion--watch it and decide for yourself.

I personally found this movie quite dull. The commentator at the beginning of this movie described it as being lax it the emotional department and that it did not capture the true essence of the play Macbeth. I am inclined to believe in him. He said at the end that while making this film, Welles said that he would not go over time or over budget. He succeeded in that, but this film was the result.I will not go into the depths of an analysis of the play Macbeth because I really do not think that it is needed here. I would rather wait until I watch the Roman Polanski version, which is far superior to this. What I though made this movie stand out was the sets. Basically the twisted trees and the ruined palace created the scene of a cursed and desolate land. It was a land that was under the curse of an oppressor and it came out well in the end.The most memorable scene here is when McDuff's daughter is talking with her mother about the nature of traitors. She, I think, is by far the best actor in the film, and that was one of the best scenes in the film. Other than that, I found the film to be quite lacking and I was waiting for it to end. The reason that it received such a low score was that it was a complete bastardisation of a classical Shakespearian play. Even though the style of the sets were good, the sets themselves appeared rushed and thrown together, giving no real thought or desire to create a good movie.

"My purpose in making Macbeth was not to make a great film." - Orson WellesShot on a meagre budget over just 23 days, plagued by pre and post production problems and mutilated by Republic Pictures before being restored many years later, Orson Welles' "Macbeth" is nevertheless a fine take on William Shakespeare's now well-known tragedy. Welles keeps things interesting by passing the material through a noir filter, with devious femme fatales, expressionistic sets, chiaroscuro lighting, poor saps, much existential brooding, fated demises and an onslaught of clever compositions, long takes and camera tricks. One gets the impression that Welles, because he was plagued by financial and production difficulties, was always desperate to pack as much razzle dazzle into his films as possible. He might, after all, never get another chance to direct.Welles famously shot "Macbeth" only as a means of gathering funds for future projects. The film is nevertheless very good, and echoes a number of his other pictures (particularly "Citizen Kane"), with its characters who lust for power and whose aspirations for control, stature and "greatness" result in their own downfalls. This, of course, all echoes Welles' own tragic career. Welles the legend seems to himself be some great, fallen Shakespearean King, dethroned and left to wander alone in exile.Welles would direct three films based on Shakespeare's works (and many theatre productions, one of which was "Voodoo Macbeth", which featured an all African American cast), his best being perhaps "Chimes at Midnight". Welles' "Macbeth" doesn't quite touch Akira Kurosawa's and to a lesser extent Roman Polanski's take on the same Shakespeare play – Kurosawa's is more tense, subtle, restrained ("Throne of Blood"), Polanski's is gloomier, more corporeal – but there are stretches here that surpass anything Kurosawa and Polanski do. Welles' landscapes, bathed in shadow and ominous thunder, suggest some mad mind-space, where power's pursuit turns everyone into fanged barbarians, and every now and then he'll zap your eyeballs with some off-beat image or composition. Welles, who also stars in the film, also includes several sad passages which echo his' own off-screen wounds; the recent collapse of his marriage, the studio mutilations of "Shanghai" and "Ambersons", the collapse of several film projects...there's a strong autobiographical quality to Welles' films; Welles, the doomed and the damned.For those familiar with the "Macbeth" play, there isn't much new here; lots of talking heads, soliloquies and monologues. But a nightmarish, deliberately primitive aesthetic helps keeps the dialogue fresh, and the film should play well to younger audiences who've never read Shakespeare, sat through a stage-play, or are unfamiliar with "Macbeth's" plot.8/10 - Destroyed by critics and producers upon release, "Macbeth" would be reappraised with the release of a special "restored cut" in 1980. Worth two viewings. See Kurosawa's "Ran", one of the finest Shakespeare adaptations.

Macbeth is an interesting film despite its flaws. At times it's very, very interesting, but unfortunately the work is undermined by the use of cod-Scottish accents throughout. All the modernist visual touches and expressionist feel, all the talented delivery of Shakespearean verse (and there is some good acting in parts, especially from Welles) is undone by the insistence that the cast talk as though on the set of Lassie Come Home. One can just about endure non-Scottish actors making a lame attempt at nailing the accent in a film like "Whiskey Galore!" (where there is no alternative) - but it has never been necessary for Macbeth! We know the story is set in Scotland and don't need to be fed constant verbal reminders. Quite the contrary - the (often bad) Scottish accents actually makes the verse harder to hear. Imagine Romeo & Juliet staged with Leonardo Di Caprio using an accent copied from the Dolmio pasta sauce adverts! I suspect that the mistake of using accents was recognised quite soon after production and I have heard that a different re-dubbed version was soon released. One can understand why they did this but the re-dubbed (and cut-down) version must have been worse as the version with brogue is now the preferred one.This massive distraction aside Welles does a good job on a small budget. It does inevitably look stagy, confined and rather monotonous (all shooting being done indoors) but his attempt to create interesting and visually striking cinema from the limited ingredients at his disposal has to be applauded. The nature of the dramatic material doesn't help - Shakespearean text inevitably means lots of lingering shots during soliloquies, and striking design elements that look quite good at first start to look tired when lingered on. The expressionistic, dark, brooding, angular barrenness starts to oppress and bore one after a time. In between the choice speeches there is a lot of rather wooden movement going on as characters shuffle on and off "stage" but this is compensated for by some moments of very good interpretation of the text and compelling drama.Whilst some elements of the film are clumsy (the drunk scene with clichéd tuba music) many exhibit Orson Welles' great vitality and cinematic flare. All his films have these last two qualities to one degree or another and that's why they are ALL very very interesting and worth watching.