Macbeth (also known as The Tragedy of Macbeth) is a 1971 film directed by Roman Polanski, based on William Shakespeare's play of the same name, concerning the Scottish lord who becomes the king through deceit, treachery and murder. It stars Jon Finch as Macbeth and Francesca Annis as Lady Macbeth. Because of the transition from play to movie, some passages from the original play had to be cut out for time constraints, and some soliloquies have been changed to inner monologues for the sake of realism.

Although the film maintains the basic structure of Shakespeare's original text, it is considered one of the darkest interpretations ever conceived. It overtly presents much of the violence only implied in the play, including the murder of King Duncan, the bear-baiting, the execution of the traitorous Thane of Cawdor, and Macbeth's decapitation.

This has been attributed to the fact that Polanski's wife, actress Sharon Tate, had been brutally murdered by the Charles Manson family in 1969, prompting the director to unleash his sadness and anger into this movie.

The film is made up of single-camera shots, with which the audience becomes the witness. Almost all the dialogues lack music playing in the background, all that remains are words. Both Lady Macbeth, whom many consider tamer and softer than usual, and Macbeth are much younger than tradition goes. Polanski's Lady Macbeth is an ambitious woman who rules his husband with her sexual power and whose strength shatters when she witnesses the disastrous outcome of her plans. The reason she is portrayed so is explained by Polanski in an interview: "The directors always present Lady Macbeth as a nagging bitch. But people who do ghastly things in life, they are not grim, like a horror movie."

Production

When his wife Sharon Tate was murdered, Roman Polanski gave up on his latest film project Day of the Dolphin, and started blaming himself. He even had psychics called over his house where the murders were committed. Meanwhile, he had on his mind to adapt perhaps the bloodiest work in English literature, Shakespeare's Macbeth, but he had trouble financing his project when major studios turned him down. His saviour was the owner of Playboy Enterprises, Hugh Hefner who promised plenty of nudity, blood and gore. Although exceeding its budget by about 600 thousand dollars, the film was not as lascivious as Hefner anticipated, but it received reviews such as "a world flooded with blood".

External links

• Review by Fraser Donald
• Review by Roger Ebert
• Feminism and Roman Polanski's Macbeth, by Peter Balderstone, The Electronic Journal of British Cinema
• Film Notes, New York State Writers Institute