Expected more

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

Orson Welles' first Shakespearean film, it is sadly on nowhere near the same level as either his masterpiece "Citizen Kane" - my third favourite film of all time - or Laurence Olivier's versions of "Henry V" and "Hamlet", which was released the same year. Macbeth has always been my favourite Shakespearean play and it is the one with which I am most familiar while Welles is one of my favourite directors. My hopes were consequently high but I am afraid to say that I was bitterly disappointed with the film.In terms of Shakespearean acting, Welles is himself not on the same level as Olivier - his performance in "Richard III" notwithstanding - or Kenneth Branagh. While he is very good in many of the quieter scenes, he has a tendency to overact in others. The same is true of his Lady Macbeth, Jeanette Nolan. Welles' decision to have the cast use Scottish accents wasn't a very good one as several of them are distractingly bad or just plain distracting. The best ones are probably from future "Batman" star Alan Napier as the Holy Father (a character invented for the film) and my fellow UCD graduate Dan O'Herlihy as Macduff. His papers are in the UCD Archives. I must see what he thought about working on the film! In one of his first adult roles, Roddy McDowall is not great as Malcolm. In spite of the fact that he was of Scottish descent himself, his accent was probably the worst in the film. The film was shot on a small budget over 23 days for Republic Pictures, best known for churning out B-films and serials of dubious quality. In a far from ideal move, the dialogue was prerecorded and it was dubbed in afterwards, leading to occasional synchronisation issues. Nevertheless, the film looks quite good and is suitably moody and atmospheric. The best scene is certainly the approximately ten minute one shot in a single take in which Macbeth murders Duncan. It is beautifully shot, one of the few in the film to demonstrate Welles' great talent as a filmmaker, and features his and Nolan's best acting in the film. The first half an hour is strong but, after Macbeth becomes king, the film goes downhill and never recovers. Although it is only 107 minutes long and is therefore shorter than many Shakespearean films, its pacing is rather sluggish in the last hour and it's hard to get excited about it. It feels rather lifeless. As is usually the case with Shakespearean adaptations, the film makes alterations to the play such as excising the character of Donalbain entirely, conflating several characters into the Holy Father, depicting Lady Macbeth's suicide on screen, shifting dialogue around, etc. Most of these are to the film's advantage or at least not to its particular disadvantage. I didn't have very strong feelings about any of them, if I am perfectly honest about it. Perhaps I would have if I had enjoyed the film more but I doubt it since I thought that Olivier's "Hamlet" was an absolute masterpiece in spite of the fact that it cut huge swathes of that play and several major and minor characters.I saw an interview with Eartha Kitt from the 1980s recently where she said that a major problem in the arts at the time - one which I think has gotten worse since then - was that too few people were artists and too many were just entertainers. She specifically singled out both Olivier and Welles as fantastic artists and two of the best of their generation and I would agree wholeheartedly with that. There are comparatively few actors, directors, singers, etc. whom I would describe as artists either and fewer still who are alive. Unfortunately, in Welles' case, this was one of his lapses in much the same way as "Richard III" was for Olivier.

Macbeth was always the play of Shakespeare's that I read in high school that connected with me the most. Not that I was any sort of scholar, but between this and Romeo and Juliet, I took witches and ambitious-madness in a rise to power any day of the week. Hamlet may be deeper and more evocative of so many more things existentially speaking, but Macbeth, a story of self-fulfilling prophecy, is like the grimier, harsher cousin to that Danish tale of Kings and Queens and life and death, and speaks to another level of what it means to obtain and hold on to power that has lasted for centuries for good reason.So fitting then that in 1948 while Olivier made his legendary Hamlet film, Orson Welles, on the outs with many in Hollywood, toured quickly and then shot a Macbeth film in 21 days (!) So the fact that this isn't one of his best films is, perhaps, a disappointment unto itself. And yet this is a very worthy film because it has many of the hallmarks of an Orson Welles creation, in all of its operatic, even surrealistic and harrowing scope.Indeed in embracing the rank and dank Scottish caves and corridors and chiaroscuro, we get a fecund mix of Welles in Shakespeare but also a kind of film-noir take on it as well, even as it's in the 12th century and in an area of the medieval and barbarian times. Welles also plays the title character, and rightfully so, it's one of those roles he went into Shakespeare in the first place to play - much like he would later play Faltaff (though, arguably, to much greater and three-dimensional effect than here). And much of the film is Welles himself, first the doubting and fearful would-be king, then the shattered 'Oh wow, now I AM King', and then the whole bag of Madness chips as he descends with the ghosts of those he has killed (Duncan, Banquo), and his wife. Oh, the wife.I must say a criticism right off here: I didn't think Jeanette Nolan was up to par for the role. Is she a BAD Lady Macbeth? No, of course not. But she often comes off kind of stiff in the part, at least for me, even as she does her best to imbue the traits asked of this this iconic Lady - who is really the brains and cruel, dark heart behind the king, that furtive witch who has more than meets the eye behind the horrible encouragement. Is it because it's Welles, who with one look can both eat up part of the scenery and still manage to convey a range of subtlety that is remarkable and more intriguing than can be given enough credit for, is hard to match to? Maybe so. It's like she needed to really get up to a certain level with the part, and got to a level that was just good enough to get the scene by; see when she has to deliver the "Out, spot" monologue that is the show-stopping climax of her character, and it's there.But no matter - even with this, and what threatens to be an overabundance of performance from Welles and darkness from the sets, it's still an absorbing chronicle of this masterpiece of characterization. He's giving all he's got and, unlike some other critics have pointed to, it's not all that hard to follow at all, long as one has some general familiarity with the play (I'm not sure which version I watched - I imagine at 112 minutes it's the one that has the restored footage - but the dialog was easy enough to hear). And other cast do help along like Roddy McDowell as Malcolm and, for his handful of scenes, Dan O'Herlihy as Macduff, who really does stand toe to toe with Macbeth for a few minutes of shared screen time.This may not be the best place to immediately dive in if you haven't seen Welles before, or even Shakespeare films. Hell, it's not even the greatest of the Macbeth adaptations; Kurosawa's Throne of Blood still stands tall above others, and Polanski's adaptation is close behind. Yet it is in that company of bold Shakespeare films - the start to what would be an informal trilogy with Othello and Falstaff - and Welles really digs in with all he has in his low-budget disposal to make it MATTER. So what if he has sets that look it, or lightning when it strikes that shows the sheet on the wall? The theatricality of the whole production, to the horror/film-noir movie cinematography that feels like a monster lives in the caves as opposed to a Royal figure, to the scene of the 'trees' walking forward in unison towards the castle, it all adds up to a unique experience that, while flawed, is totally and wholly remarkable.In other words, maybe not a lot of "fun", per-say, but then it probably never should be. Turn off all the lights, let Welles' terrified and monstrous eyes fill the screen, and get sucked in. If it were made by any less of a filmmaker, it'd be considered a major triumph - for Welles, it's another day at work.

Directed by and starring Orson Welles, this is a hugely atmospheric version of the Shakespeare tragedy which plays up the Gothic horror of the play for all its worth. There are nice little stylistic touches of originality, like the creepy voodoo-style doll used by the witches in the opening scene which crops up later on.So far, this is my third favourite version of the story, following on from Polanski's harrowing and excellent TRAGEDY OF MACBETH and Kurosawa's compelling and very different THRONE OF BLOOD. MACBETH shares some similarities with the latter, namely in the atmospheric scene-building and scenes of characters riding through foggy and desolate landscapes.Sadly, the dialogue scenes are the one that lack here. The dialogue is authentic Shakespeare all right, and Welles is certainly a great actor, but I found something lacking. Welles just wasn't moving or involving in the same way Mifune and Finch were involving as the lead. Jeanette Nolan is a scene-chewing Lady Macbeth but lacks a certain something, and seeing the faces of Dan O'Herlihy and in particular Roddy McDowall in support is just, well, odd.This movie is not without merit, and as an exercise in scene-building and set design it's rather excellent. Some moments, like the gripping climax, are brilliant, but other scenes just feel stodgy and don't progress the plot, so it's good in places and weak in others. Nice effort, though.

I'll always have a soft spot for the play as it was one of my first Shakespeares, and I really liked this Macbeth. It is not my favourite film version of the play, Polanski's film and Kurasawa's Throne of Blood I just preferred. However, despite some scenes that suffer from a lack of momentum and some indifferent sound quality in a number of scenes excepting the soliloquies, this is very good if not quite on par with Welles' other Shakespeare adaptations Othello and Chimes at Midnight. I loved how dark and expressionistic the sets and lighting were and the cinematography shows thought and accomplishment. The score by Jacques Ibert is a haunting one and matches the expressionistic, brooding tone of the film very well, the story is still the dark and compelling one, complete with an atmosphere of intensity and great unease, I know and love and the script especially the soliloquies is wonderful. Orson Welles' Macbeth doesn't quite match his extraordinary Othello but nonetheless he gives an commanding, sometimes intense, sometimes moving performance. The last twenty minutes are especially mesmerising. Of his supporting cast, the best were the scheming Lady Macbeth of Jeanette Nolan and the delicate Malcolm of Roddy MacDowell. Banquo is also quite good. The rest of the cast are not bad, and the accents were a nice touch when the sound wasn't so indifferent, but I didn't get the sense they were living the parts as well as Welles in particular did. Overall, not perfect and the least of Welles' Shakespeare adaptations but thanks to Welles' performance, how it was made and its atmosphere it is a film worth seeing. 8/10 Bethany Cox