MACBETH

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 657, 8 February 1952, Page 18

MACBETH

(Mercury-Republic) F (like Ronald Frankau) you like to see a murder when you're out, then Macbeth-as adapted, amended, abbreviated, acted, and directed by Orson Welles-is, in a word, your meat. Mr. Wellés, like any other director faced with the problem of fitting the play into the framework of a standardsized film, has had to jettison a critical amount of Shakespeare, but all the familiar on-stage manslaughter has been preserved and for good measure we get the execution of the ci-devant Thane of Cawdor (whose title fell to Macbeth). and the suicide leap of Lady. Macbeth forby! We also meet for the first time a Holy Father, a. character whose function is somewhat obscure (he appears to be intended as a counterpoise to the subversive elements on the Blasted Heath), but who proves a useful standin for odd Messengers and Old Men purged from the original dramatis personae. But if the action of the drama springs, in the words of the prologue, from Agents of Chaos plotting against Christian law dnd order, Mr. Welles

doesn’t let you forget that the Scotland of those days was bleak, savage and primitive-socially and meteorologically. The blanket of the dark is hardly lifted throughout the performance, and how old Duncan could describe the dank basalt catacomb of Macbeth’s castle as having a pleasant seat passes comprehenSion. The only comfortable corner I noticed was the bearskin-irimmed daycouch on which Lady Macbeth (Jeanette Nolan) was first discovered. (She was busy invoking the Spirits that Attend on Mortal Thought to unsex her there and then, but it was obvious that it would be a tough assignment for any spirit.) This accentuation of the primitive, and the outlandish, was carried to such lengths that in the end it degenerated into the ludicreus and robbed the play of dignity. Macbeth’s uncomfortably square crown could have been accepted (though it suggested a comic footnote to one hackneyed Shakespearian tag). but his tartan snoods, his Tartar helmet (a sort of fur-trimmed tea-cosy). and another confection that made him look like the Statue of Liberty, seemed too fantastic to consider seriously. Mr. Welles, of course, took thern and everything else very . seriously indeed.

and his seriousness was, I think, his undoing. As well as enormous energy he has a streak of genius; but genius is often a solemn quality and a sense of proportion does not always thrive in company with it. The Welles Macheth, in consequence, has some good moments and some bad ones-and cccasionally they coincide. His pictorial sense is good, and the film is always, at the very least, interesting to look at. Some sequences, however, would have been more moving but for the hilarity carrigd over from an earlier incongruity, or the

simultaneous intrusion of ersatz Scots accents. ‘ Beyond manipulation .of the textI‘ should say that about half of the original dialogue was dispensed withand the cast, there did not seem to me to be anything particularly revolutionary in the interpretation. Neither Welles nor Miss Nolan (whose acting experience has, I believe, been hitherto cenfined to radio plays) broke fresh ground, and I was interested to observerthat the form of the soliloquy was carried over without any serious modification. The only

concession Welles made to the new medium was to dub the dialogue of each soliloquy on to the soundtrack then keep his mouth shut. In this, of course, he was in cofmpany with Olivier, who did much the same in Hamlet, but I still think both are wrong. A soliloquy is thought made audible-necessary on the stage, and in the case of Shakespeare, justifiable on the screen-but the film can and should identify the audience subjectively with the speaker not treat us to a display of ventriloquism, All things considered, though, Macbeth is* worth seeing. You don’t need to know your Shakespeare to enjoy it-but it helps!