Macbeth
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Short description
Orson Welles directs and stars in this 1948 adaptation of William Shakespeare's tragedy, in which a Scottish nobleman encounters three witches who foretell that he will one day be king. Driven by ambition and urged on by his wife, Macbeth turns to murder to seize the throne and then to hold it. Their path toward two crowns is paved with killings, and guilt and suspicion begin to unmake them as their enemies gather.
The film was made by Welles's own Mercury Productions with Republic Pictures, from a screenplay he wrote and produced himself. It is the fifth film he directed, following The Lady from Shanghai, and it precedes Othello. Welles plays Macbeth, with Jeanette Nolan as Lady Macbeth, Dan O'Herlihy as Macduff, Roddy McDowall as Malcolm and Edgar Barrier as Banquo among a credited cast of twenty. The running time is 107 minutes.
It was released in October 1948 and received a critics' rating of 7.8 from twenty-nine reviews, ahead of the audience scores of 7.4 on IMDb and 7.3 on TMDB. The votes on IMDb run into several thousand, while the TMDB total is in the low hundreds.
What's left behind the scenes
- Judith Anderson (1897-1992), who successfully played Lady Macbeth with Maurice Evans (1901-1989), was one of the few actresses whose suitability for the role Orson Welles (1915-1985) did not test. The director wanted Lady Macbeth to look seductive, and he tried to get Vivian Leigh (1913-1967) for the role, but her then-husband, Laurence Olivier (1907-1989), opposed it.
- In the original version of the film, which lasted 107 minutes, the actors spoke with Scottish accents. After a disastrous world premiere, this version was withdrawn from release. It resurfaced only in the 1980s.
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