{"id":18710,"date":"2026-06-30T20:30:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T00:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=18710"},"modified":"2026-06-28T20:50:48","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T00:50:48","slug":"macbeth-1948-orson-welles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/18710","title":{"rendered":"Macbeth (1948, Orson Welles)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A difficult story to film, but major film artists keep trying for some reason: Bela Tarr, <a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/14906\">Joel Coen<\/a>, <a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/14686\">Polanski<\/a>, <a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/12829\">Kurosawa<\/a>.  Welles turns in one of the crazier versions, the actors having a great time with their Scottish accents then lipsyncing (very well) their own performances on an abstract paper-mache stage.  The opening 8-minute overture over black would be impressive if it wasn&#8217;t big symphonic 1940s music.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image26\/macbeth1.jpeg\"><\/p>\n<p>Lady M would not become a star, but had decent parts in Ford and Lang films and voice roles in major Disney movies.  Mac&#8217;s destroyer Macduff is Dan O\u2019Herlihy, Bunuel&#8217;s Robinson Crusoe.  Heir resurgent Malcolm is Roddy McDowall, unrecognizable from either <em>Planet of the Apes<\/em> or <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/18143\">Fright Night<\/a><\/em>.  Mac&#8217;s short-lived witch-prophesied friend Banquo and the late King Duncan are original Welles Mercury players.  The Joseph McBride commentary is much better than the Tim Lucas, from what I played of &#8217;em.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image26\/macbeth2.jpeg\"><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/jonathanrosenbaum.net\/2025\/07\/orson-welless-macbeths-tk\/\">Jonathan Rosenbaum<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Welles\u2019 approach to the material is wildly neo-primitive and so expressionistic that one can never be entirely sure whether the action is taking place in interiors or exteriors; the same ambiguity persists in the spoken text, where off-screen internal monologue and on-screen external speech often seem only a breath apart. The witches\u2019 foaming, bubbling cauldron and Macbeth\u2019s equally unstable consciousness are the closest we can get to any continuous sense of location, and the unabashed B-movie artificiality of the sets confirms that Welles wanted to draft something closer to a charcoal sketch than a finished canvas.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image26\/macbeth3.jpeg\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A difficult story to film, but major film artists keep trying for some reason: Bela Tarr, Joel Coen, Polanski, Kurosawa. Welles turns in one of the crazier versions, the actors having a great time with their Scottish accents then lipsyncing (very well) their own performances on an abstract paper-mache stage. The opening 8-minute overture over [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[416,223,524,320],"class_list":["post-18710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-1940s","tag-orson-welles","tag-shakespeare","tag-witches"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18710"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18765,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18710\/revisions\/18765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}