Macbeth (1948)

Directed by: Orson Welles | 107 minutes | drama, history, war | Actors: Orson Welles, Jeanette Nolan, Dan O’Herlihy, Roddy McDowall, Edgar Barrier, Alan Napier, Erskine Sanford, John Dierkes, Keene Curtis, Peggy Webber, Lionel Braham, Archie Heugly, Jerry Farber, Christopher Welles, Morgan Farley

Orson Welles’ Macbeth is a meeting between two legendary greats, poet and playwright William Shakespeare and actor, director and producer Orson Welles. Between 1603 and 1607, Shakespeare wrote an extremely grim play about a Scottish nobleman who becomes king through treachery and murder and, in order to keep it, wallows in a paranoid orgy of violence.

Orson Welles, who previously showed that he has a soft spot for great tragic characters with ‘Citizen Kane’, here presents a Macbeth who seems to be caught in the obscure black and white of this jet-black adaptation. Babyface Welles, in stark contrast to ‘Macbeth’, looks like he hasn’t swallowed a bite in weeks, following the witches’ prediction that he will be the new king. Welles’s large white eyes are sometimes almost all we see of him as he recites his stirrings in Shakespearean verse in the shadows of his castle. With a Scottish accent that is, something that the producer did not thank him for. Welles had to make a new overdub of the voices in Shakespearean English, but this version, which had also been shortened, would make way for the original voice tape years later. From the point of view of creative freedom, this is of course good, but should we really be happy with American actors who twist their voices and pronounce the “r” more emphatically? We can’t call it authentic Scottish, certainly not 11th century Gaelic Scottish, let alone 20th century Scottish.

‘Macbeth’ is somewhere between filmed stage and feature film. For the most part, the story takes place in Macbeth’s castle which is represented here by a huge rocky structure that is obviously set in a studio. The effect is that Macbeth is more reminiscent of a caveman than a nobleman, but the stage-like setting works perfectly to create an unreal abstract world, which, combined with the powerful chiaroscuro lighting effects and the accumulation of eerie lyrics, portray Macbeth’s descent into the hell of the human mind, can convey frightening.

The vast space of the studio is also put to good use to create extreme shots in which Macbeth is close to the camera almost filling the screen while we see the opponents much smaller in the distance. The result is that as a viewer we, as it were, crawl into Macbeth, who begins to live more and more in his head and becomes alienated from his surroundings. This mise-en-scene is reminiscent of the deep focus technique Welles applied in ‘Citizen Kane’, in which everything is in focus from front to back, this allows the director to, while an actor is in focus at close range, allow visible actions to take place at different depths in the background.

In ‘Macbeth’, however, the camera does focus on the acting figure and this results in Welles’ huge head present in the picture being sometimes beautifully out-of-focus, in combination with the contrasting but also creamy black and white, this for stunningly beautiful images. For comparison, see the work of photographer and director Anton Corbijn from the 1990s.

‘Macbeth’ is jealously referred to among actors as The Scottish Play, pronouncing the name would bring misfortune. After seeing Welles’s version, we can indeed not suppress a certain amount of discomfort, this film is so gloomy, but in this case we can only be happy about it.