Despite the point that Epstein and Lennon tried to make in The Battle over Citizen Kane, Orson Welles wasn't banned from movies after the Hearst conflict. Instead, he was part of several bumbled projects and had so much trouble finding directing work afterwards that, in 1948, he ended up working on a project for B-film studio, Republic Pictures. That’s where he made Macbeth.
This Welles film is an interesting adaptation of the
play. His technique here has some strong
echoes of his work in Kane. There’s the
deep focus that Kane is so famous for, and characters’ faces shift in and out
of light to reflect their conflicted, changing morality. And again here, movement attracts attention
wherever it is in the frame, even if that’s in the background. For example, when Macbeth leaves Duncan’s
chamber after the murder, it’s a tiny movement in the background, but with the
stasis in the rest of the frame, our eye is drawn that way.
Some elements of Welles’ Macbeth also recall Eisenstein’s
Ivan the Terrible, Pt. 1. Macbeth
unfolds Ivan is infused with a similar setting and
mood. The clunky royal wardrobe and décor
in both is similar, especially the tall, slender staffs that characters
carry. There are even overwrought
clergymen in both. And both films
hearken back to a theatrical, silent-film ethos of dark expressionism. The overwrought, twisted atmosphere of
paranoia in Ivan, Pt 1 is not far from that in Welles’ Macbeth.
But despite Welles’ using such cinematic elements to create an
appropriate atmosphere for Macbeth, the movie remains only partly
successful. The staging is full of
tension and psychosis, yet the atmosphere leaves us uninvolved because it’s
hard to become invested in Macbeth or his Lady.
Many productions highlight the drama and conflict of the couple’s
descent, but in this one, it’s hard to care much about the characters or about
the state they rule. Macbeth is an
interesting film to watch, but it is far less compelling than many adaptations
of the play are.
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