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.

[Le Chiffre]

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 Welles' 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.

[Le Chiffre]

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.

St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle, be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him we humbly pray; and do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly host, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.
Amen.

[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.

[ToddBaesen]

The UCLA archive restored print of MACBETH will be showing on Easter Sunday at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley. It's listed as running 119 minutes, which is probably due to the addition of the long overture and exit music, which is rarely included in most screenings of the film. Also showing will be Welles untampered with original version of OTHELLO, in a 35 mm archive print from the Library of Congress.

Amazingly, reporter Ken Bullock tracked down Richard Connema who apparently was a camera assistant on MACBETH, and he offers up some memories of working with Welles on the Republic Studios set of MACBETH in this piece from The Berkley Daily Planet:


WORKING WITH WELLES ON "MACBETH"

By KEN BULLOCK

The Berkley Daily Planet 3-21-2008


"What Orson always said about his career,” Richard Connema reminisced about working on Macbeth with Orson Welles at Republic Studios in 1946, “was that when he came out with Citizen Kane, he was a big shot and everybody gave him Christmas presents. During the making of The Magnificent Ambersons, they still gave him presents. But the next year, after he got back from Brazil and with all the problems with the release of Ambersons, nobody gave him presents.”

Connema, a lively reviewer for the national website Talkin’ Broadway and a member of the Bay Area Theater Critics Circle, is a familiar face at local opening nights (he covers over 200 shows annually). He started as “camera assistant,” as he carefully spelled it out (“or chief flunky”) at Republic, after World War II. “John Russell was chief photographer. Nobody was called cinematographer in those days. And during the halcyon days of Hollywood, nobody got credit either. Nowadays, you sit for 10 minutes after a film is over, and they list whoever drove the honeybucket wagon.”

He detailed his advent in the Dream Factory. An Air Force cameraman in the Philippines, a service buddy who had worked for Republic before getting drafted, had made a pact with Connema to get him a studio job after discharge at Travis Air Force Base. But first he decided to go back home, to see family in Dayton, Ohio.

“Of course, it was deadly dull,” he said. “I was thinking, ‘What am I doing here?’ when I got a telegram from my friend in Hollywood. It was just like in the movies. I was even waiting for the chorus girls when I got off the train with the suitcase in my hand. I guess I should’ve burst out with ‘Hooray for Hollywood!’”

Connema started out as an apprentice, first on a Roy Rogers Western, “making sure the horses were moving, not shitting in front of the camera.”

When he heard Welles would be directing Macbeth, he begged his friend to get him on the 23-day shoot.

“When I was introduced to Orson, he gave me a weak handshake,” recalled Connema. “You know, like ‘Who are you?’ His ego was bouncing around the studio. I immediately told him I thought Citizen Kane was probably the best movie ever made—not to butter him up; I felt that way. Immediately, we became friends. Not buddy-buddy, but we did have lunch together a few times during production, and that’s what we mostly talked about, Citizen Kane.”

Connema also heard Orson’s woes over the stringent budget Republic gave him, and the cutting that studio head Herbert Yates later demanded.

“Orson desperately wanted to do Macbeth, but no one would touch it,” he said. “None of the studios wanted anything to do with Shakespeare, who they thought wouldn’t be box office in America. But Herbert Yates wanted to make Republic a first-rate studio and thought Orson’s name would help.”

Connema continued: “It was really from Poverty Row. [Yates] tried art films, like Specter of the Rose, that went over like a lead balloon. He did make The Quiet Man in ’52. And The Red Pony. But they only lasted a few years trying to get into the majors, then went belly up, with Yates throwing money into films and nothing coming from it. With films like Wake of the Red Witch, they at least knew what the hell they were doing. That, and 55-minute musicals were the breadwinners, the B pictures that would go to Ohio, Illinois, down south...they’d eat it up there. Five lots, and only hillbillies on them, mountain views, god only knows what. And Republic relied on United Artists for distribution; Yates was irritated because they didn’t even use Republic’s eagle on them. Later, Jack Webb took over, and they shot Dragnet there. Now it’s used for sound.”

The low production values in the film pushed Welles.

“He had his fingers into everything, the costume design with Fred Ritter, he and Dan O’Herlihy doing the sets,” Connema said. “We all got into that, doing it as a lark. And the Republic people just didn’t know what to do. Thank god we had a western outfit when it came for the army in the Birnam Wood battle scene. They saved going into the extras pool and paying everyone $25, $30 a day by stopping a Roy Rogers film and sending me to the Western slots to go over to a bunch of cowboys in chaps, throw Scottish outfits that were more like sacks over their heads and give each a pike. ‘Cowboys for Scottish raiders?’ Orson said, and didn’t even have them muttering in Scottish as he had intended. They told me not to keep the guys very long—they had to get back to work with Roy Rogers—so those rags went right over the chaps. And they sent me running around looking for trees for Birnam Wood. On another lot I found sagebrush! They spray-painted it or something and had every cowboy handle a branch and walk towards the camera.”

Seeing the papier-maché sets and hearing the pre-recorded Scottish voices coming over a speaker “for a lip-sync” made it “funny to be on the set. It looked like a high school play. We used to break up. Paper crowns on the heads. Orson using those shadowy, oblique camera angles of his, no full shots so you couldn’t see the phoniness of it.”

Connema recalled a lunch with Welles and leading lady Jeanette Nolan, “a good actress, but not a good Lady Macbeth. Orson’s first choice was Vivien Leigh, but Laurence Olivier said, ‘No way you’re going to work with Orson Welles!’ [Nolan] joined us at the table, bitching about her outfit, asking why she had to climb the stairs, mouthing her lines—at the same time stumbling—and can’t we get more light in here? And I’d just listen, wet behind the ears, wondering if this is what every movie would be like.”

The studio didn’t release Macbeth immediately. It would be the last Hollywood directorial credit for Welles for a decade, until Touch of Evil, his last studio film.

“They had him cut out quite a lot,” Connema said. “At the first preview, Yates had a fit and walked out. He wouldn’t release it. Orson said he’d buy it, but didn’t have the $700,000. Yates made him take out the Scottish accents, and had a hard time getting actors to remouth it. Finally Orson didn’t want to either, and they had to tempt him to come back—with 50 grand. There’s a lot of narration where scenes are cut out. It only played the big cities, and the critics jumped all over it.”

Connema later saw Welles’ stage production of Around the World in 80 Days, and spoke with Welles another time.

“I remember him calling Republic a shit house, how he would’ve made a masterpiece if he’d been given a budget,” he said. “And I remember, too, during production, Roddy McDowell, who played Malcolm, had his camera with him, but no way, Orson told him not to bring it on set. He didn’t want photos of him directing in those cheap outfits to show up in one of Roddy’s gallery shows.”

[Wellesnet]

Sydney Morning Herald has high praise for Welles's "Macbeth"-
The Bard, The Good and the Ugly:
https://www.smh.com.au/culture/movies/t ... 54fx4.html

Orson Welles' skin-crawling 1948 production of Macbeth, in which Dunsinane is all clotted rocks, crags and chasms, rather than a castle. Welles fearlessly reshaped the text, while thickening the play's dark spirit, so the witches are wraiths that would trouble the dreams of a saint.

[tonyw]

Another possible ending to MACBETH? https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/a-l ... iC_3ppiEKA

[Le Chiffre]

Right at the end of the 1982 Cinémathèque Française lecture OW is asked if he would like his followup to FILMING OTHELLO to be FILMING MACBETH, but he says he would prefer to make FILMING THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI, because that one is more interesting and richer in anecdotes.

[tonyw]

Somewhere in Harold Bloom's SHAKESPEARE: THE INVENTION OF THE HUMAN (1998) he describes Macbeth as the most expressionist of the Bard's plays.

[Wellesnet]

45-minute discussion on Welles' 1948 film. In Spanish, but the auto-translate feature will provide a rough but interesting English translation.

Que grande es el cine - Macbeth (Orson Welles) | Coloquio:

[RayKelly]

The upcoming Kino Lorber Blu-ray release of “Macbeth” on June 11 utilizes 2022 high definition masters made by Paramount Pictures from 4K scans of the 1948 and 1950 releases. https://wellesnet.com/macbeth-kino-lorber/

[Roger Ryan]

The upcoming Kino Lorber Blu-ray release of “Macbeth” on June 11 utilizes 2022 high definition masters made by Paramount Pictures from 4K scans of the 1948 and 1950 releases. https://wellesnet.com/macbeth-kino-lorber/

This new Kino Lorber release also features an 8 minute overture and four minutes of exit music which accompanied early roadshow screenings of the original cut in 1948. The additional music (presumably by the film’s composer Jacques Ibert) was included in the French Blu-Ray release of film, but I’ve not heard it. That seems like an awfully long overture, but I’m curious to hear this additional music since I admire Ibert’s score.

[Le Chiffre]

I saw the film with the overture and exit music once at a theater long ago. If I remember correctly, part of the overture was used for the end of the short 86-minute version.