Blind Spot blog on Welles's "Macbeth"

[Wellesnet]

Joshua Wilson (From Wellesnet Facebook): "My thoughts on a first viewing of MACBETH, with thanks to Wellesnet for some of the information that helped my appreciation of the film.":
https://fforfilms.wordpress.com/2016/03 ... 6-macbeth/

[magadizer]

Thanks for posting a link to my blog post!
Glad to join the forums here...Wellesnet has been an invaluable resource for me!

Josh

[Le Chiffre]

Nice review, Joshua. I've always liked the film very much, but you have to cut it some slack and consider the circumstances under which it was made. Given the poverty of the sets and costumes, it's probably the closest Welles ever came to "filmed theater", although there are plenty of modest and imaginative cinematic touches to make it more plausible as a film. The film’s setting seems to exist in a kind of no-man’s land between the theatrical and the psychological. I also like the ambiguity of the film's historical setting: part prehistoric, part medieval, part western, part post-apocalyptic. Welles had a way of turning limitations into virtues, and part of the joy of watching his lower budget movies like MACBETH is the joy of watching someone do so much with so little, as opposed to a lot of Hollywood films, where so little is done with so much.

My favorite of the long speeches, which where Macbeth speaks of “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,” is spoken over imagery of roiling clouds or fog. I think another source of this technique may be Welles’s past experience in radio. He knew well what he could accomplish dramatically with only words.

I've heard more then one person say that that speech is one of Welles's finest moments in film, even though he's not even onscreen! It gives credence to the idea that, while OTHELLO often seems like a silent film with a soundtrack, MACBETH often seems like a radio program (the "theatre of the mind") with a visual track. Welles could make either approach work.

If it wasn’t clear enough at this point that Macbeth represents the forces of the pagan religion, he goes so far as to chop off the cross from Macduff’s helmet in their climactic duel. Macbeth’s war-crown, which Welles himself mocked as looking like the Statue of Liberty, is shot in closeups to appear almost as devil-horns. It’s a striking and persuasive reading of the text, and in particular gives a more clear motivation for Macbeth’s desire to fulfill the witches’ prophecy (or, as Welles would have it, their “ideas which make things happen”).

Yes, Welles makes clear in the spoken prologue to the shortened version of the film that Macbeth is a tool of the witches (and if I'm not mistaken, Jeannette Nolan, who plays Lady Macbeth, voices the witches as well, uncredited). The battle between good and evil gives the film certain qualities of the old classic Karloff and Lugosi horror films, and Macbeth's castle seems influenced by KING KONG as well (another bewitched king). The conflict between religions was one of the driving ideas behind the Voodoo Macbeth, and I can't help but wonder if it might have been a significant theme of the "Life of Christ" film that Welles was planning in the early 40's, which would have been set in the American west of the early 20th century. Welles was a good re-cycler of unused ideas.

One can also find some interesting pages online asserting that Shakespeare's original play was a response to the so-called "Gunpowder Plot" of 1605, in which Catholic rebels attempted to destroy the Protestant regime of James I, another example of the clash of old and new belief systems.

"Our story is laid in Scotland - ancient Scotland, savage, half-lost in the mist that hangs between recorded history and the time of legends. The cross itself is newly arrived here. Plotting against Christian law and order are the agents of chaos, priests of hell and magic; sorcerers and witches. Their tools are ambitious men."

[magadizer]

Thanks for reading. One of the most interesting points I got from the article on Wellesnet I referenced (http://www.wellesnet.com/catherine-bena ... ly-review/) was this: "It is also rather amazing to note that Welles never seemed to actually lose control over all the changes that were being made, even though they were done mostly by letter and cable from Europe."

Even though he was forced to make a lot of compromises, he at least got to make them in his own way. I'm reading "This is Orson Welles" right now, and as you probably know, it documents all the ways he had tried to make some of the same types of compromises from afar during the post-production of Ambersons. In that case, though, he was not given the time of day by the studio, which of course made the changes to the film in their own way, without really any reference to the details of Welles's proffered alterations.

To me, Macbeth is both coherent and cogent, which is not always the case with cut-down Shakespeare. The budget limitations show up only in the sets and (some of) the costumes. I think some credit probably goes to the photographer, who helped make a very stylish film in short time!

[Le Chiffre]

For me, the unabashed eccentricities of MACBETH, particularly the Scottish accents, are what gives the film a significant part of it's charm. Take them away, and much of that eccentricity, and thus the charm, are gone. I know Welles himself made the 20 minutes of cuts to the film, but he did it out of studio pressure, not because he wanted to. Also, he didn't supervise most of the redubbing of the film, aside from his own performance. That's why I never watch the short version, and why I haven't watched the public domain version of Arkadin in many years; if there's a better version out there, I'll watch that instead. By the same token, if the original Ambersons were to ever magically show up, I would never watch the studio version again, even though that's what turned me into a Welles fan in the first place.

[Roger Ryan]

Richard Wilson, who supervised the re-dubbing of the dialogue, badgered Welles to acquiesce to Republic's demand to shorten the film and drop the Scottish accents. Welles was hesitant to alter the film (perhaps understandably) until Wilson told him flat-out he would lose control the same way he did on Ambersons and The Lady From Shanghai if he didn't make the changes himself. Specifically, Wilson commented that industry folks blamed Welles for the incoherence and box office failure of Shanghai, not realizing that the final edit went against his intentions. Eventually, Welles cut twenty minutes out of Macbeth and re-recorded his own dialogue (nearly two years after he wrapped shooting on the film!), but Wilson was the one who pushed Welles to maintain control.

[magadizer]

Regarding your point about SHANGHAI, I had no idea just how different it was from his intentions until reading the notes in "This is Orson Welles" about the film and his futile attempts to shape it in post production.
Particularly regarding the soundtrack, he was not at all satisfied with how the studio put it together.

[Wellesnet]

Another nice article on Macbeth, this one from The Daily Mirror.
Orson Welles Films Macbeth on Tight Deadline:
https://ladailymirror.com/2018/07/15/ju ... -deadline/