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Macbeth Month: 1948 -the Welles One


Anyone who’s followed this blog for a few years now might have noticed a curious absence back in September: my annual theme month. Over the past six years I have featured a weekly series in September based around a particular theme that I might not have an excuse to cover otherwise. I’ve indulged in British Gangster Flicks, John Candy movies, One Saturday Morning nostalgia, comic strips, Richard Curtis, and musicals; and this September …I just plum forgot. Oops.
So for one time only, Theme Month is in November and it took me longer than usual to decide on a topic before it occurred to me. I went to see Macbeth at a Shakespeare festival this past summer and there’s a new version by Joel Coen coming out this December. The Scottish play is on my mind because of these, and obviously it’s one of the Bards’ most adapted works, so why not look at some of the interpretations we’ve seen over several decades. Obviously movies for the most part, but perhaps a couple filmed stage productions as well. After all, some extraordinary actors have taken on this role, it would be negligent not to consider them.
This is Macbeth Month! Each Tuesday I will be covering one of the most famous or interesting takes on the great tragedy of ambition and avarice. I will be considering the cast, the aesthetics, how the text is interpreted, and how it is adapted. And I’ll compare and contrast as I make my way through the movies. It’s going to be fascinating, and fun. A couple of these I’ve never seen, others I’ve not seen in a while. So let’s go for it. Witches and murder and ghosts and Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinane await.

“Fair is foul and foul is fair
Hover through the fog and filthy air.”
                                                    -Act I, scene i, 11-12

Orson Welles’ Macbeth! This was a big one, but also a little one -a fairly cheaply-made adaptation for its’ time. Even though Welles was a proven actor-director at this point, and had demonstrated himself gifted when it came to Shakespeare through his landmark Julius Caesar adaptation for Broadway, it took a lot of convincing to get even B-movie western studio Republic Pictures on board with the idea. The success of Olivier’s Henry IV probably gave it that essential push too, though Welles felt too intimidated to ask Olivier for Vivien Leigh, his original choice to be his Lady Macbeth.
The film is indeed still relatively cheap though. Aside from the opening scene with the witches and a couple sequences at Malcolm’s camp late in the movie, the entire drama is shot on seemingly one set -which might be a stylistic reflection of the theatrical origins of this piece, but feels much more practical than artistic in intent. Certainly little excuse can be made for the costumes, which don’t look at all medieval and are characterized by some bizarre features. Welles himself referred to the crown he wore as king as looking like the Statue of Liberty.
The minimalist production design does dampen the films’ visual capabilities, but nevertheless the talent is still there to bring out Shakespeare’s text. Despite everyone performing in Scottish accents that vary wildly in quality, it’s a decently strong ensemble. Dan O’Herlihy probably fares the best in the brogue department, being from Ireland, and makes for a very compelling Macduff. Welles’ old Mercury colleague Erskine Sandford plays the reduced role of Duncan while a post-How Green Was My Valley but pre-Planet of the Apes Roddy McDowell is his son Malcolm. Edgar Barrier makes for a decent Banquo and in a role added to contrast the witches’ paganism with Catholicism, Alan Napier (the classic Batman’s Alfred) plays a councillor priest. Jeanette Nolan was ultimately cast as Lady Macbeth and does a fine job, even if she wasn’t ideal for the part -and Welles himself is a very interesting Macbeth. He plays up the recalcitrance of the character, someone pushed into fulfilling the witches’ prophecy, and yet still thoroughly selfish and power-hungry. Welles performs with immense dedication -he goes all out on the madness; and he sees the part as one of real moral complexity, best epitomized in how he takes in the climactic assault on his fortress.
Here though is also where he indulges in his more experimental tastes, the entire last act of the play happening almost simultaneously: scenes are depicted out of order and in repetition. I think Welles is intending to evoke the chaos of Macbeth’s mind, but it’s still pretty vague and the choice does ultimately run tiresome and to some detriment of the text. Lady Macbeth’s suicide, which is shot very intensely for the period, loses something in the film coming right back to her again to play out part of the scene leading up to it. And in what has to be a choice simply to subvert expectation, Welles focuses the camera on a blank sky while reciting the iconic “life’s but a walking shadow” speech. I get the demonstrative intent of this, but still can’t help but think it robs him of an important showcase. The film comes to an end rather swiftly with a surprising decapitation -I guess a studio like Republic could get away with that.
Welles’ artistic choices do pay off elsewhere though. I like the grave intimacy of the Banquo’s Ghost scene, and for as unconventional as they are, the exchanges with Lady Macbeth on the precipice do work to nicely frame the magnitude of Macbeth’s action. Welles was still only in his early thirties when he made this, which is remarkable. And it’s remarkable too he chose Macbeth, when most Shakespearean actors about his age would be chasing Hamlet. It speaks strongly to Welles’ specific identification with the work of Shakespeare that he is attracted to Macbeth and Othello, Brutus and of course most successfully John Falstaff. His Macbeth is not great, plenty interesting and ambitious though it may be; but his Macbeth is in its’ way astounding. The movie is worthwhile for that.

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