Macbeth (1948)

This version of Shakespeare's The Scottish Play might more fairly called The American Play, being an American production in which most of the American cast put on vaguely Scottish-sounding accents... when they remember to.

Even the director and star, Orson "Unicron" Welles, is not immune from slipping back into his own voice from time to time, nor his co-star Jeanette Nolan as Lady Macbeth. These slips are largely forgivable, partly because this film was made under legendarily tight constraints of time and budget, but mostly because the attempt at historical accuracy is otherwise so lacking that one has to wonder why they even made a token attempt at the accents in the first place.

The landscapes and castle locations we see don't look like any part of Scotland this Scotscat is familiar with, and the costumes look assembled from every land and every period of history they could find except for the 11th century when the historic Macbeth lived... with some tartan thrown over the top in a token nod to what non-Scots think the Scots looked like back then. At one point Macbeth dons a breastplate that is more 16th century than 11th - more accurate to the period the play was written in than set.

That's not what you come to this film for, though, is it? 

Where Welles's Macbeth succeeds is - and this should be no surprise with Charles Foster Kane at the helm - in the vision; the style and feel of the thing. The castles aren't the castles of medieval Scotland; they're like something out of a dream or a nightmare, vast and illogical edifices of stone that trap the protagonists within them. This being a black and white film, they are lit so as to emphasise shadows and darkness, especially in scenes where there's been a murder... of which this has its share. Perhaps that's why they call it The Scottish Play?

Welles suits the action to the words, the words to the action: the murders of Lady Macduff and Macduff's kitten are filmed with fast cuts to mask the fast cuts, and a closeup of the snarling face of the murderer. The murder of Duncan takes place off-screen, of course, but the camera keeps coming back to show the door through which Macbeth has passed to do the deed.

The powerful atmosphere of dread created during this pivotal scene - a combination of the actors, their lines, and the cinematography - makes it one of the film's best, along with the final few scenes once Macbeth sees the prophecies of the witches have all come true in their Tolkien-baiting way. His last lines see him become almost heroic as he learns, in the end, defiance of his fate, too late to avert his doom:

"Though Birnam Wood be come to Dunsinane,

And thou opposed, being of no woman born,

Yet I will try the last. Before my body

I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff,

And damn'd be him that first cries, 'Hold, enough!'"

Alas, poor Orson, he was if anything too reverent with the speeches, and performs them as he might a radio recital. The famous "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" soliloquy suffers in this way, and we don't even get the benefit of seeing Welles's face since he speaks it in voiceover. This robs the adaptation of one avenue of uniqueness, so at least we have the direction, the lighting (or purposeful lack of it), and the magnificent stylized sets to make this stand out from the many other interpretations of A Scottish Play.

Oh, and Roddy McDowall is in it too.