Macbeth

1971
7.4| 2h21m| R| en| More Info
Released: 20 December 1971 Released
Producted By: Playboy Enterprises
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
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Synopsis

Scotland, 11th century. Driven by the twisted prophecy of three witches and the ruthless ambition of his wife, warlord Macbeth, bold and brave, but also weak and hesitant, betrays his good king and his brothers in arms and sinks into the bloody mud of a path with no return, sown with crime and suspicion.

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Reviews

Jeanskynebu the audience applauded
Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film
Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.
Livestonth I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible
camicardenasp Polanski addresses the transposition by trying to maintain a high degree of credibility and squeezes us into a general state of the world sieved into battle and a victory situation. It encloses the presentation of deep characters on their way through a landscape of rude climate that seems to condemn in cold to all living being. As a human individuality the determined pathos leads to guilt and injustice, regardless of the legitimacy that may be elaborated, as in the case of Lady Macbeth, all this through the contradiction that transcends reality and transposes and sees through that other it is itself but far from the normal thought carried by the drives.
Robert J. Maxwell Not badly done at all. Peter Finch is a handsome young MacBeth, always responsible except when he's nuts. And Francesca Annis is a toothsome redhead. "Back in the day," this would have been shot under in Hollywood sunshine, full of scintillating seas and glorious gorse. But the director places the story where it belongs, in a Scotland of lowering skies, one that is dark, windswept, rainy, and almost barren.It's always interesting to see how movie directors handle the soliloquies. The conventions of the stage rarely work. Polanski gives the actors interior monologues. Lots of emotional close ups, not befitting a stage. It all works pretty well.MacBeth is a likable play, party because it's masterfully done -- the unlikely rhymes still raise my eyebrows -- but also because it's short and because the narrative is clear. The Bard could write some clunkers. I wonder if anyone can really sit through "Love's Labour's Lost" and truthfully claim he enjoyed it. No problem with MacBeth though, and nothing obscure about what's going on. If "Hamlet" was about a man who could not make up his mind, "MacBeth" is about a man whose reach exceeded his grasp -- and who went to hell for it. MacBeth has his head lopped off -- maybe twice, according to the play. WS needed a good copy editor.Oh, how we recognize that motive, the lust for power. It shows up in our technology. All of the Volkswagon Beetles of 1960 have been replaced by SUVs too massive to fit into the garage. A .38 special is infra dig. We want .44 magnums. Nor is the play politically correct in any way. It takes Lady MacBeth one second to decide that the King has to be slaughtered so her husband can rule. Okay, so the current king has just promoted MacBeth and given him a title. But "Thane of Cawdor," my foot. It's the KING who has the power.Of course the king's isn't the only death. The wily Lady MacBeth has framed the king's guards and MacBeth quickly slaughters them before they can be questioned. MacBeth is now King of Scotland but "uneasy lies the head that wears the crown," as someone once said. There is another threat. MacBeth's friend and rival -- Banquo, and his child must go too. The kid gets away but Banquo is assassinated in the woods. Banquo gets even later by showing up as a decomposing corpse at MacBeth's castle, Dunsinane, and spoiling a festive dinner.That famous scene is handled well enough although Polanksi brings nothing special to it, nor to the rest of the story for that matter. It's not distinctively Polanski's in any way, no "Chinatown" or "Rosemary's Baby." Visually, the most impressive scene is MacBeth's second visit to the Sinister Sisters in pursuit of some vision of the future. They slip him some psychedelic drug and things go round and round, to a point that surpasseth understanding -- mine anyway.Fortunately, Polanski works a little nudity into the play. When Lady Macbeth is wandering around in her sleep she's not wearing any clothes, a nice artistic touch. Too bad she talks to herself and spills the beans about her crimes in front of two gawking attendants. MacDuff's little boy is naked too and so are the Weird Sisters but they can be disregarded. One's testosterone level dwindles at the sight of those flabby, toothless, blind, cackling old women.MacBeth has still another impediment. There's MacDuff, next in line for the throne, now in exile. By this time, with so much blood having been shed, MacBeth's nobility and courtiers are beginning to wise up. They joke about MacBeth behind his back and wish him gone. But he's not gone yet. Now a tyrannical ruler, he must commit more and more murders to protect himself. MacDuff may be gone for the moment, but that doesn't stop MacBeth's lackeys from murdering MacDuff's wife and young son, while raping the maids and pillaging the house. That's a pretty rotten thing to do, when you get right down to it. Certainly MacDuff thinks so when he gets wind of it. He and his army set off in search of justice and revenge. MacDuff lays on. Boy, does he lay on.Polanski has a habit -- unfortunate in my opinion -- of tacking an unhappy ending on all of his movies, even a comedy like "The Fearless Vampire Killers." Well, MacBeth is already a tragedy so he doesn't have to tack an unhappy ending on it. Instead, he makes the entire story more hopeless. In the play, as I remember, Ross is only a minor figure, a messenger. Here, Ross (John Stride) is a buddy and supporter of MacBeth. He murders for MacBeth. But when towards the end, when he sniffs which way the wind is blowing, he deserts the king and hastens to inform MacDuff that the king has slaughtered MacDuff's family and servants. He's a sneaky character and he celebrates MacDuff's coronation with the same fake enthusiasm he did for MacBeth's. It is, as someone said, throwing a perfume on the violet. It's a double downer. Not only has MacBeth, the confused protagonist, given up the ghost, but now his successor, MacDuff has a mole in his midst. All that notwithstanding, it's a gripping tale made into a good movie.
Neil Welch Witches deliver a prophesy to Scottish warlord Macbeth that he will be King. Macbeth's wife pushes him towards the notion that the only way to ensure this is by killing the current King himself. And so he embarks on a fateful course of events.Roman Polanski's 1971 adaptation of Macbeth, one of Shakespeare's darkest plays, makes full use of cinema to place the words of the play into a grim, grey, grimy reality. As you watch Macbeth work his way further along a road to tragedy, the visuals which accompany Shakespeare's words place those words into a brutally real world.The performances are great, but this is an excellent adaptation, and makes you think that this is perhaps the sort of presentation which Shakespeare might have been involved in making had he still been alive.
TheLittleSongbird To say that this adaptation is a bit of a bloodbath is a bit of an understatement, but you cannot deny that this film from Roman Polanski is quite possibly the definitive film version of Shakespeare's play, which is very complicated to even contemplate transcribing to screen. The cinematography is excellent, as is the script. It is true that there are a lot of disturbing scenes, chiefly Lady Macbeth's nude sleepwalker scene and King Duncan's death. Roman Polanski should be commended for how much he managed to get into the film, and he somehow made it all effective. Any scene with the three witches, the murder of Macduff's family, plus the part when Macbeth sees Banquo's ghost was very well done.(I saw an amateur production of this, and not only was it disappointing, but that particular scene was the worst aspect of it) The performances were brilliant, Jon Finch(who did start off uncomfortable) is great on the whole as the treacherous thane-turned-king, and Francessca Annis was nigh-on-perfect as Lady Macbeth. And Martin Shaw was excellent as Banquo. From the suitably eerie opening scene, to the superb climax, this is a near-perfect adaptation, there were just some bits that were really disturbing to watch, that deserves more recognition. 9/10 Bethany Cox