Macbeth (1971)

Roman Polanski's first film following the murder of his wife, Sharon Tate, was an adaptation of Macbeth, released in 1971. It was the first foray into films by Hugh Hefner and Playboy, but it was such a bomb that it put them right out of the movie business. Conceived by Polanski and theater critic Kenneth Tynan, it was a faithful adaptation, set in the right time period, but had touches of the '60s counterculture.

The film begins promisingly, with an arresting image of the three weird sisters burying a noose, a severed hand, and a dagger. But overall, this version of Macbeth is so dour that it's hard to get enthused by it. Macbeth, of course, is no romp, but this film is so full of mud and gray skies and muted colors that it can be just plain unpleasant to sit through.

Polanski also seems to be purposely slowing the pace of the film. At 141 minutes it's too long, with pointless scenes of people crossing rooms. I wondered at the scene when Duncan arrives at Inverness and there is about a thirty-second view of the horses cantering up to the gate.

To appeal to younger audiences, I guess, Polanski cast younger, attractive actors in the lead roles. Jon Finch is Macbeth, and Francesca Annis is Lady Macbeth (I once saw her in person, standing behind her in a movie line at the Angelika in New York with her then beau Ralph Fiennes--she was gorgeous). The connection between Lady Macbeth and the ideal Playboy woman is palpable--she's a babe, and her tougher edges are smoothed out. Her most vicious line: "I have given suck, and know How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me. I would, while it was smiling in my face, Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you Have done to this." She does, however, sleepwalk in the nude.

There is also a clumsy effort at special effects, although perhaps that is just the condition of the time. Macbeth hallucinates a dagger, and it is laughably rendered, but the "double double toil and trouble scene," when he visits the witches and sees the descendants of Banquo as kings in a series of mirrors, is imaginative if not bad VFX. In this scene there are not just three witches but a whole coven, and they are all naked (and the women cast were not Playboy material).

It was also notably violent. The violence that happens off-stage in the play, such as Duncan's murder, is shown in all its savagery. I don't disagree with this--Macbeth is a violent play. Macbeth's death, with Macduff chopping off his head, is brutally well done, as is the slaughter of Macduff's family.

This film was such a colossal dud that there wouldn't be another major release of a Shakespeare film until Kenneth Branagh's Henry V eighteen years later. It was a noble effort, but ill-considered, I think.