Macbeth (Fully Restored Version)
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DVD details
Primary Contributor: Orson WellesPrimary Contributor: Jeanette Nolan
Primary Contributor: Dan O'Herlihy
Primary Contributor: roddy McDowall
DVD: Region Code 0.0
Audio: English (Unknown)
Format: Import, NTSC, Subtitled
Running Time: 107 minutes
DVD Reviews of Macbeth (Fully Restored Version)
DVD Review: So Good!
Summary: 5 Stars
Briefly, I have not read the original "Macbeth". I have only a passing acquaintance with the trials (pun intended) and tribulations of Mr.Welles career.
As regards the actual dvd, to be honest the case looked cheap and that it is a Korean import sounded suspicious.
BUT - this is as nice a transfer as you could hope for and the film itself -
WOW!
I though I had seen all the Welles worth seeing and I have a disinterest in Shakespeare that lent itself to my avoiding procuring this film for a long time.
What a terrible error.
This is his best looking film - fans of early 1930s horror and David Lynch should take note (as odd as that sounds): it combines all the gothic bizarrity of "The Trial", "Mr. Arkadin", and "Touch of Evil" into an actual 'gothic' looking setting.
In a couple films like "The Lady From Shanghai" I have problem with Welles' over-the-top performance; though "MacBeth" is certainly over-the-top he is magnificient, sweaty, and fear clenched, down-right fun to watch. In fact, the whole film is fun like a Boris Karloff flick.
I hate to use such a clche', but 'visual treat' barely does this film justice, and that's speaking as a layman with a little taste.
DVD Review: Great Macbeth Adaptation
Summary: 5 Stars
I have seen this restored version in the big screen, where it truly has an amazing impact, as the landscape and the castle are so well integrated into the story. The costumes are great because they give the impression of an older time than the Medieval, which is accurate. There is a sense that Christianity itself is fairly new to this people.
The movie does not follow the play, as it changes some characters, and scenes. however it is a very gifted interpretation. I thought that showing the execution of the Thane of Cawdor, which is related on the play, but not enacted, was an example at the effectiveness of this interpretation: The suffering yet dignified Thane is carried in the arms of soldiers to his execution and Macbeth sees it, which puts Duncan in a totally different light, even if Macbeth is benefitting from his generosity.
Welles' Macbeth is a dark soul from the start, and this darkness is what probably attracts the witches to his path, for as much as they outline the possibilities of destiny, it is he that decides these ramblings of the magical ones are a definitive version taht he needs to enforce. He portrays the character's shadowed nature very well, and I liked the idea of having part of the dialogue told as if he were thinking it, not speaking it.
The atmosphere of this play of doom could never having been done better than in this dark castle that is built so it is actually part of the very rocks on which it stands, its halls caverns. It sets the atmosphere of mystery and darkness that are an integral part of the work. Jeanette Nolan's Lady Macbeth , is very competent, though not on the level of Welles Macbeth, no one is in the film, yet all the supporting roles are pretty well carried out. I am not a fan of Roddy McDowell, but his Malcolm was better than a lot of what he did later.
I strongly recommend the movie as an excellent interpretation of the play.
DVD Review: Film Noir Shakespeare
Summary: 4 Stars
Bloated budgets and smooth edges are not prerequisites to good filmmaking. No one knew this better than the perpetually money-strapped Orson Welles. Once he'd been ostracized from the studio system, the faded Wunderkind spent the majority of his career making pseudo-masterpieces from funds scraped together by the odd acting job. Despite the monetary constraints, Welles proved that a little imagination and visual verve can make up for a tight purse.
"Macbeth" was produced on the relative cheap (about $500,000), filmed at a breakneck pace (about twenty days), and the result is a haggard, stylized tone poem. This is Shakespeare as lurid film noir. The messy quality somehow makes it more compelling, mostly because Welles' unsurpassed visual imagination compensates for the low-end production values. He embraces the supernatural aspects of the play: stylized sets serving for blasted heath and dank castles are blanketed in fog and lit in high contrast B & W. Askew angles and Welles' signature deep-focus photography make for bold, innovative compositions. Gothic flourishes like the silhouetted Weird Sisters seem fever-dream induced. Plenty of sound and fury to be found here. Even a master stylist like Kurosawa borrowed liberally from Welles for his own Macbeth adaptation, "Throne of Blood." Check out both films' "Not 'Til Birnam Wood come to Dunsinane!" sequences and see how Kurosawa compared notes with Welles.
The performances follow Welles' film noir aesthetic. Jeannette Nolan understands Lady Macbeth is among drama's ultimate femme fatales, and plays her like a vampish shrew with a boot of a face but a killer body. She always seems to tower over her whipped husband in the early portion of the film. Welles proceeds to diminish her place in the frame as her power wanes and she descends into despair and madness. Nolan's strong performance and Welles' equally solid turn in the title role are the foundation of this movie. Their theatrical Scottish brogues are occasionally cringe-inducing, but the intense love their characters have for each other is palpable.
Though both leads are solid, the main interest here lies in the hallucinatory intensity of the images. The nightmarish world Welles creates, a world of overt nihilism oddly coupled with doomed fate, makes the skin crawl. Though the text is gutted and some of the acting too shoddy to make this anywhere near a definitive version of "Macbeth", Welles' endless sense of invention carries him through. This is a must-see for anyone with more than a passing interest in Orson Welles or Shakespeare's most feverishly intense play.
DVD Review: Excellent version for students
Summary: 5 Stars
The only thing I didn't like about this version was that it doesn't have a menu with a scene selection option on it, which is inconvenient. If you want a version you can watch straight through, this is a good pick. It is really entertaining and not as violent as some versions.
Orson Welles plays a really whacked-out Macbeth - the picture on the cover of the DVD really says it all. The shadowy, glowering stare, the jutting chin - topped with that bizarre crown and the on-again, off-again accent, you can easily see him as the conscience-free usurper of the Scottish throne.
Lady Macbeth (Jeannette Nolan) is quite a study, too. I think that Welles might have played her in full dominatrix gear if he'd been able to get away with it. She has an oily yet commanding demeanor and a snaky hairdo - a long ponytail thing that looks like a black python draped over her shoulder. Fitting!
The scenery is perfect - the crazy, blurry witches fit in perfectly with the deserted moor; the Macbeth's castle looks like the waiting room for a torture chamber. Done in 1930s black and white, it wonderfully highlights this dirty, nasty plot.
I bought this DVD to show my high school and middle school Shakespeare classes so that we could compare/contrast it with the BBC version (available here: BBC Shakespeare Tragedies DVD Giftbox ) and with the A&E MacKellan/Dench version Macbeth / McKellen, Dench (Thames Shakespeare Collection)
DVD Review: Butchered Version Of William Shakespeare's Classic Tragedy. Still, It's Better Than The 1971 Crap Directed By Polanski.
Summary: 3 Stars
Orson Welle's take on William Shakespeare's timeless tragedy of one man's lust for power and his decision "To know my deed, 'twere best not know myself..." is mediocre, at best. I liked some of his decisions (such as having the murderers hide atop a tree whilst they wait for Banquo and Fleance), but he completely butchered the play (transposed lines and scenes where they didn't occur in the play, eliminated Ross and inserted
"Holy Father" instead, etc). After viewing his finest movie, "Citizen Kane," I expected much better from the man who introduced low-angle shots and other camera moves that we now take for granted. Had Sir Laurence Olivier done this play (either before or after "Hamlet," which remains his greatest achievement as a director, actor, producer and uncredited text editor; he chose to do "Hamlet" when he found out that Welles was planning a film version to be released in the same year that he was hoping to release his version; the inexplicable finacial failure of "Richard III" in 1955 and the death of the would-be-producer soon after forever derailed his plans for a film version), he would have done it the justice it merited. However, when you consider that Orson Welles shot this film in 21 days (I guess under pressure from movie studios; they always interfered with his work after "Citizen Kane"), it's amazing that he was able to film it at all. Watch for a young Roddy McDowall as Malcolm, King Duncan's son. I don't recommend the 1971 (R-rated) trash directed by Polanski (please see my review on it; among other things, there is uneccessary nudity). I've yet to see another version of this play. This film is Not Rated.
Description of Macbeth (Fully Restored Version)
In fog-dripping, barren and sometimes macabre settings, 11th-century Scottish nobleman Macbeth is led by an evil prophecy and his ruthless yet desirable wife to the treasonous act that makes him king. But he does not enjoy his newfound, dearly-won kingship... Restructured, but all the dialogue is Shakespeare's. Written by Rod Crawford *** IMPORTED FROM SOUTH KOREA *** ORIGINAL ENGLISH SOUNDTRACK *** This fully restored Macbeth the original version produced and directed by Orson Welles.Mystery & Suspense DVDs
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