MACBETH

[Obssessed_with_Orson]

peter bogdanovich said that mr. welles' macbeth was barbaric. but added that's what was so good about it.

any additional comments to the family?

sorry if a repeat.

bye now.

[mteal]

Welles' Macbeth has a barbaric atmosphere because the play itself is one of Shakespeare's most barbaric. Welles staged the play in Salt Lake City before filming it in Hollywood, and it is probably the closest he ever came to "filmed theatre" (unless that Moby Dick Rehearsed film turns up someday). But, like the Voodoo Macbeth, he deviates wildly from a conventional representation of the play. You guys had a nice little discussion about Frankenstein movies a little while back (BTW, I agree Gods and Monsters is a terrific little movie), and I think Wells' Macbeth bears almost as much resemblance to Karloff and Lugosi as it does to Shakespeare. So, the film is ghoulishly dreamlike as well as barbaric. A barbaric, prehistoric dream. There's even a Welles-invented character, the Holy Father, played by Alan Napier, who looks and sounds just like Boris Karloff. I think the film is influenced by King Kong as well. Macbeth's castle resembles Kong's lair.

Michael Anderegg, in Orson Welles, Shakespeare and Popular Culture - one of my favorite Welles books - argues convincingly that the films atmosphere could be read as post-apocalyptic too, with characters wearing, and scenes decorated with items that seem collected from a lost civilization. Made three years after Hiroshima, does the film prefigure Mad Max too? Welles, as usual, employed all these touches with superb subtlety.

[jaime marzol]

...............

yes, welles happily scissored through a hefty chunk of willy shakes' text. you could say the film has macbeth flavoring. cocteau said only 10% of the viewing public will enjoy welles' macbeth, and he was proud to include himself in the 10% i'm there also.

though not much different than what coppola did with the godfather novel.

[Welles Fan]

While the film's style could be used in a post-apocalyptic setting, I think it was meant to be ancient/barbaric. I seem to remember in Welles spoken prologue to the studio version (the one without the Scottish accents that Republic released) the "the Cross itself is newly arrived". Presumably, we see pre and post Christian civilizations at odds with each other in the movie, with Macbeth decidedly in the non-Christian camp, and the witches little more than hold-overs from the "voodoo" Macbeth, replete with a little "voodoo doll" figure of Macbeth made of clay. The "Holy Father/Boris Karloff/Heidi" character is in the camp of Malcolm and Macduff, and Macbeth's killing of that character shows his barbaric nature.

I don't think it is really cut much more than Polanski's version (and it is Shakespeare's shortest play), but the approach Welles took is (in my mind) very vivid and exciting in a blood-and-thunder melodrama sort of way.

[mteal]

Jaime,
I'm definitely among the 10% too. I love Welles' Macbeth, and think it's one of his most underrated films. But Welles not only edited hefty chunks of Shakespeare's text, he also rearranged alot of dialogue as well. If I remember correctly, the line "Peace, the charm's wound up", comes towards the beginning of the play, after the witches' first meeting with Macbeth. In Welles' film, it comes at the very end. Some critics complained that this altered the line's meaning, with the "charm's wound up" meaning finished, rather then ready to work. But I've always wondered if this wasn't a little joke of Welles', trying to convince us that film itself is a kind of Magic charm, ready to work on us once it's been stored into the brain.

I've never read Puzo's Godfather book, but I've also heard that it contains much more story then the movies do. Did you ever hear producer Robert Evans' claim that the 3-hour version of The Godfather that we all know and love is actually HIS cut of the film, and that Coppola's cut ran only about 2 hours?

Welles Fan,
Interesting that you should mention that spoken prologue to the shorter version of Macbeth (which I hope becomes available on video someday - after all, the studio-ordered changes were made by Welles himself, so in that sense, the short version is still a work by Welles). The fact that the line "the cross is newly arrived" does NOT appear in the full-length version could indicate Welles' desire to create a greater sense of ambiguity about the films' setting.

[jaime marzol]

mteal:

MY OPINION ON EVERYTHING:

Yes, welles synopsized the events in macbeth.

After I became a fan of welles' macbeth, I've read and watched quite a few analyzations of the play, and nothing sticks out in my memory as completely removed by welles.

OTHELLO is also more or less intact, it is shakespeare's most compactly written play, no unecessary characters, and subplots. what welles scissored out are the character's motivations: iago, and the blonde haired guy who they get drunk, forgot his name, they both were courting desdemona, and both wanted to be assigned to a post that became available. othello got desdemona, and assigned the blonde haired guy the post, and iago got squat, thus his villainy.

and though in the film a lot of events are not right away identifiable, once you watch a program like 'standard deviants's shakespeare's tragedies,' then watch welles' efforts, you realize that all the knocks MACBETH and OTHELLO got for rearanging shakespere's text, were more writers wanting to sound off than damage welles did to the text. almost everything is there. though sometimes glossed over rather than developed for the viewer.

same goes with THE TRIAL. i recently aquired an 8-hr unabridged reading of the book because i have problems reading kafka while driving. have heard the first 3 1.2 hours, and so far it's not vastly different from the film. and a lot of stuff i've read about kafka's novel in welles books has been bullshit. one writer said the world of kafka's novel was closer in setting to welles' OTHELLO, than the setting welles chose for the novel. this is pure bullshit.

evans:
i read his book, i heard the audio book which he read himself. i liked it. undoubtedly that boy rode that train, like bogdanovich did. only difference between bogdanovich and evans is that now that they are both off the train, bogdanovich has a talent to trade on, and evans will probably end up selling suits in his family's store.

i read the godfather book. the book is not to literature what the film is to cinema. the book is a minor effort, nothing very special about it, i've read much better mafia books than the godfather. however, the film's place in undiniable. after reading the godfather novel, and seeing copolla's original 4 1.2 hr rough cut of apocalypse now, you realize he has an incredible intuition of what not to film, and what to cut out of a film to make it great.