Dialogue: 'Macbeth' and the Movies: Part One

The first of our three-part conversation about screen versions of 'Macbeth,' leading up to the new Joel Coen adaptation, kicks off with Orson Welles and Akira Kurosawa.

In the lead-up to Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth, slated for limited release this Christmas and Apple TV+ on January 14th, we wanted to have a conversation about the most significant attempts to bring “the Scottish play” to the biggish screen. That exchange will run in three parts. This week: Orson Welles’ 1948 version and Akira Kurosawa’s 1957 Throne of Blood. 

Scott: Keith, how many times in the last few years have you sighed deeply and said to yourself, “I think our country sinks beneath the yoke. It weeps, it bleeds, and each new day a gash is added to her wounds”? Okay, maybe not those words specifically, but Shakespeare’s Macbeth is an endlessly renewable resource for referencing our darkest impulses, the witches’ brew of greed, vanity and a lust for power that can lead to tyranny and violence. After seeing the new Joel Coen film The Tragedy of Macbeth, with Denzel Washington in the title role and Frances McDormand as Lady Macbeth, it struck me anew what a foundational work this play is to the culture and, particularly, to the movies. Perhaps the film noir genre needed post-World War II disillusionment to give it shape, but we can see Macbeth in its antiheroes with coarsened souls, in the whispery enticements of its femme fatales, and in the violent comeuppances that consume them and many other collateral players. 

The big reason I wanted to have this conversation, though, is that Macbeth itself is a natural fit for the movies. I’d hazard that it has inspired more interesting films than any other Shakespeare play, even the endlessly malleable Romeo and Juliet. Those noir qualities are critical here, because it’s a story that benefits from spare, chiaroscuro lighting effects, the lust and paranoia of a couple hatching a wicked scheme, and the violence and moral consequences that follow. And perhaps unsurprisingly, we’ll be discussing work from some of the great cinematic conjurers of darkness, including Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa, Roman Polanski, and, of course, the Coens themselves, who have evoked Macbeth since their very first movie, Blood Simple. 

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But let’s get started with Orson Welles. I had never seen his Macbeth until watching it for this project, assuming that its reputation as one of his many “troubled” productions made it less essential than, say, Chimes at Midnight, his more celebrated take on Shakespeare’s Falstaff.  In fact, this Macbeth has been the opposite of canonized—both of us had to turn to YouTube to watch Welles’ preferred 107-minute cut of the film. (There’s still an Olive Films Blu-ray version out there, but nothing is streamable.) And while I recognize the film’s flaws, no doubt enhanced by the constraints of a low budget and a 23-day shooting window, I was surprised by how brilliant much of it is—the performances by Welles as Macbeth and Jeanette Nolan as Lady Macbeth, the expressiveness of the low-angle camerawork and angular production design, and a number of choices in the staging that struck me as extremely bold, which I’ll get into later. But let’s hear from you first: What did you think of Welles’ take on the play? And did you, like me, feel the erotic kick of the classic femme fatale when Nolan’s Lady Macbeth is introduced, in bed, reading a letter where her husband outlines his intentions?

Keith: You better watch your step. She’s going to break your heart in two. She’s a femme fatale. That connection you make between Macbeth and noir is one of the reasons I wanted us to have this conversation. When you proposed it, I (a big dumb dummy) had never really connected those dots. I’d always focused on the debt Blood Simple owed to The Postman Always Rings Twice but, hey, that’s pretty Macbeth-y, too, isn’t it? I do think watching Welles’s Macbeth—which, like you, I’d never seen before— might have fired off some light bulbs. Not that it’s the noir Macbeth, but it brings some of the same love of murk and shadows to the Scottish play. That’s partially the result of a limited budget, as Welles was working for the budget-minded Republic, often on sets left over from Westerns. Sometimes it shows. There’s one moment illuminated, remarkably, by lightning flashes, but when one flashes too brightly you can see the soundstage wall.  (And it’s here I should direct all readers to our friend Dana Stevens’s invaluable pocket history of Macbeth on film for Slate.)

Mostly, however, Welles makes the most of those limitations. The tight compositions create a sense of claustrophobia and the many close-ups invite viewers to consider the psychology of the characters delivering Shakespeare’s famous lines. I can’t say I love Welles’s choice to render some of the monologues as voiceover, however. It drains drama and intensity out of those moments. Laurence Olivier did something similar with his 1948 Hamlet and earned great acclaim. I’m not sure it works here, though. 

That said, it seems odd one would be so revered while the other met with mixed reviews after a tortured process of screenings and reshooting. Olivier’s Hamlet was ostensibly released the same year as Welles’s Macbeth but the two films met decidedly different fates. I say ostensibly because Macbeth didn’t really play widely until 1950 after being pulled from the Venice Film Festival and testing poorly in a few markets. Out came two reels and the Scottish accents audiences felt made the film hard to understand. It arrived as a kind of wounded animal (which might also describe the state of Welles’ career). Bosley Crowther’s review in the New York Times condescendingly referred to it being “re-cut, re-recorded and oft exhibited far and wide in the past three years” but admitted it was “less of a vagary” than he expected and praised its “feudal spectacle and nightmare mood.”

That’s what stands out now and, quibbles aside, I think this is quite a strong film. Everyone who adapts Macbeth has to choose what to emphasize. Welles turns it into a mounting nightmare. Noir scholar Eddie Muller popularized the phrase “the noir moment,” the point in the story where noir heroes make a decision that irrevocably sets them on a path of darkness. Welles makes Macbeth’s decision to listen to his wife plays like the original noir moment. Now, Scott, we’re going to see all sorts of Macbeths that emphasize different parts of the play. Is that how Welles’s version works best for you? As a psychological drama of one man’s undoing?

Regrets? He’s had a few.

Scott: It would almost have to be, right? That’s the thing about Orson Welles as an actor: He’s always the center of gravity in a film, even if he’s not the star. (I recently had occasion to catch The Long, Hot Summer, a so-so Tennessee Williams adaptation that Paul Newman and director Martin Ritt did together before they hit paydirt with Hud. And Welles, playing the de facto owner of a small town in Mississippi, gobbles the whole movie up like a plate of fried okra.) But this is Macbeth, so Welles can be forgiven for commanding the screen a bit, even if it feels like, as a director, he’s ungenerous to his supporting cast. He doesn’t even allow Lady Macbeth to fall into suicidal despair on her own: In the play, a doctor and a gentlewoman are present to talk about her habit of sleepwalking, and their thoughts are juxtaposed with her haunting speech about the blood stains on her hands. (“All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.” Shakespeare: Good writer.) But Welles’ Macbeth is right there at her bedside, which contrasts meaningfully with the earlier scene of Lady Macbeth dreaming and scheming in bed, but continues to keep the focus on him. 

Nevertheless, Welles could add Macbeth to his long line of memorable characters undone by greed, vanity, and corruption, from Charles Foster Kane to Hank Quinlan in Touch of Evil. As we’ll see later with Coen’s adaptation, Macbeth feels like a statement of purpose for its director, like a return to first principles after getting battered by Hollywood. And while you can see where certain budget constraints might have cost Welles, this is mostly a case of necessity being the mother of invention. The castle is such a bleak tableau of jutting black stone and cave-like interiors that it feels like a cursed empire for Macbeth to inherit, even before fate plays its tragic hand. As with Kane, Welles draws heavily from the minimalist shadowplay of German expressionism, which feeds into what you rightly describe as “a psychological drama of one man’s undoing.” That’s what the entire movement was about: Finding the visual language to externalize inner torments. 

Some favorite touches from Welles’ Macbeth: The visualization of the witches’ brew, which is the burbling muck you’d expect until it evolves into images of clouds and flames, with the witches finally pulling out a grotesque clay icon of Macbeth himself; the sudden blurring of focus when Macbeth starts his “Is this a dagger which I see before me” soliloquy, as if he’s already lost his bearings; the slumped posture Welles takes when he’s finally on the throne, which is very “uneasy lies the head that wears the crown” (different Shakespeare, but still); the image of the camouflaged army approaching the castle over a hill, which we see as a moving forest without seeing the faces of the soldiers; and, finally, the shot of cloud-like plumes of fog shifting around as Macbeth gives his “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” soliloquy. We talk about Welles asserting himself as the center of this (and many other) productions, so his physical absence during arguably the most important speech in the play is surprising and meaningful. 

What about you, Keith? Any more standout touches from the Welles? You’d think that his Macbeth would be the most vigorous possible interpretation, but boy oh boy we have Toshiro Mifune in Throne of Blood to discuss, too. How did Akira Kurosawa’s samurai twist on the material hold up for you? 

Keith: That shot of the army approaching over the hill put me in the mind of a similar shot in Seven Samurai, which got me wondering if Kurosawa had seen the Welles Macbeth when he made Throne of Blood. I would guess “yes,” if only because Kurosawa seems like he was pretty omnivorous in his viewing habits. That Kurosawa delayed his film a few years so as not to overlap with Welles’s at least confirms he was aware of it. I think there are echoes of Welles in parts of Throne of Blood, too, particularly the claustrophobic staging of the scenes between Kurosawa’s version of Macbeth, Washizu, and his wife Asaji. But this is very much a Kurosawa take on Macbeth, one that mixes intense drama indoors with the sweeping spectacle of feudal combat outside.

For the former element, Kurosawa drew on Noh theatrical traditions. Noh’s outside my area of expertise, and I think, to a lot of non-Japanese viewers, some of the performances—particularly Mifune’s vigorous (as you say) work as Washizu and Isuzu Yamada’s spookily removed take on Asaji—can feel theatrical. That’s because they are theatrical, an attempt to create the cinematic equivalent of Noh’s big moments and outsized emotions without Noh masks. I don’t think it’s hard to get on their wavelength, however. Macbeth lends itself to bigness. Verdi turned it into a pretty good opera, for instance, and I once saw a wild take on the material called 500 Clown Macbeth performed by Chicago’s 500 Clown theater troupe. (It did not actually feature 500 clowns, alas.)

There’s a lot to talk about here: the action scenes, the evil spirit with the spinning wheel who takes the place of the three witches, the ghosts, that insane finale, the fog, the chilling shots of Asaji and Washizu scheming in a room still smeared in the blood of their victim. (Subtlety is such an overrated quality sometimes.) But, as with all Macbeths I found myself wondering why the director wanted to make it and why they wanted to make it when they did. Kurosawa made several films with contemporary settings dealing with the conditions and psyche of Japan in the wake of World War II, like Ikiru, Stray Dog, and I Live in Fear. Throne of Blood feels as much of a piece with those movies as it does with Seven Samurai and The Hidden Fortress. Much of the film puts the emphasis on depicting abusive leadership and ill-gotten power. (And it’s probably worth noting that Kurosawa has more freedom to put the emphasis where he likes than usual because he’s not as beholden to the text as a straight adaptation.) Despite knowing all hope has been lost, Washizu continues to send men to their death by piling one lie on top of another. Shakespeare was banned in Japan during World War II. Propaganda, however, was not. In one of the most striking shots we see farmers tending the field outside the castle as warriors arrive. They go about their business as always with no say as their lives get upended by a handful of men behind closed doors.

Scott: To me, any discussion of Throne of Blood has to begin with Asaji, Kurosawa’s Lady Macbeth, realized to absolutely chilling effect by Yamada. For all of his great tempests of emotions, Washizu is a passive and suggestible Macbeth, enticed by power perhaps, but not naturally inclined to leadership off a battlefield. Were it not for Asaji, he would have blithely accepted the evil spirit’s prophecy, not feeling the need to actively engineer his fate. Killing Miki, the equivalent of Banquo here, and trying to kill Miki’s son isn’t in his original plans—he is content to allow another man’s son to be his successor, particularly since he and Asaji do not have a child. (Fate does intervene there, gruesomely.)   

But my God, the way Asaji steadily cranks the gears in Washizu’s mind, quite literally placing a guard’s spear in his hands so he can take action, is astonishing. “Without ambition, a man is not a man,” she tells him, but the ambition is hers, and the man is almost entirely a tool she wields. In perhaps my favorite moment of the film, when Asaji crosses the room to prepare the poisoned wine for the guards—the adjoining room, where she does the deed, is shrouded in absolute darkness—Kurosawa limits the sound entirely to the swishing fabric of her robe, giving it unforgettable associative quality. She’s so good at being wicked that it’s difficult to accept her transition to the guilt and madness that grips her in the end, as she tries furiously to wash her hands in an empty basin. 

Kurosawa’s free hand in adapting Shakespeare allows him to cherry-pick certain elements and ideas, and dispose of the ones he doesn’t need. And that pays off in so many different ways, starting with the decision to reduce the three witches to one evil forest spirit, spinning a thread that’s evocative of the Fates of Greek mythology. Most striking of all is the way the ending plays out, with Macbeth/Washizu’s own men turning on him, rather than him falling to the equivalent of Macduff and an army. Washizu is shown trying to inspire his troops by sharing with them the prophecy that he’ll never lose a battle unless the forest itself moves toward the castle—a ludicrous idea! But when that impossibility  actually comes to pass, it’s persuasive enough for Washizu to draw friendly fire from inside the castle walls. Kurosawa has not only pulled off a clever twist on the material, but emphasizes the degree to which Washizu’s wounds are self-inflicted, the inevitable result of a leader who has acted with weakness and dishonor at every turn. 

What were the standout touches for you, Keith? And did you see some touches of dark humor here and there, too? I was struck by the absurd denials of the screeching crows (“Listen, even the crow is saying, ‘The throne is yours’”) and the trickster energy of the evil spirit, who opens her second round of prophecies by congratulating Washizu for reaching his goals. And what did you make of the words that end the film and the monument they accompany? Personally speaking, I’d be fine with Confederate monuments in public spaces if they were intended to warn us of a treacherous mind. 

Shakespeare’s three witches reduced to one sinister forest spirit.

Keith: There are definitely some funny touches here and there. In the banquet scene, Mifune acts like a man whose very concept of reality is being unwound by seeing a ghost, and it’s pretty chilling. But it’s hard not to chuckle at the polite bows of his banquet guests, as they back out of the room, when Asaji explains, in so many words, “He’s just drunk! He’ll be fine soon!” And the end, like the movie that preceded it, plays like the statement of an artist who’d grown weary of war and the men who foment it. And the women who egg them on, apparently.

Asaji's pregnancy is one striking touch for me, and I'm not sure what to make of it. It’s one of the most notable additions from Kurosawa and collaborators ​​Hideo Oguni, Shinobu Hashimoto, Ryūzō Kikushima. The Macbeths are usually depicted as childless, though Lady Macbeth’s reference to having “given suck” complicates that. It might refer to the historical inspiration for Macbeth being Lady Macbeth’s second husband, though it’s not like Shakespeare worries that much about being true to history. Still, in a story that doesn’t shy away from depicting the murder of children, the complete silence about any little Macbeths is curious. Here, the addition of a child gives Washizu an heir for which to fight, or at least it would if he and Asaji didn’t end up on the losing end of the battle for Spider Web Castle, though I’m not sure what it changes, beyond compounding the tragedy.

When I think of the movie, though, I mostly think of the images, especially the ghostly forest spirit and the whiteness of her wheel and the way it echoes the whiteness of the film’s ghosts. And the arrows, of course, which were actual arrows shot by actual marksmen. No wonder Mifune looks so terrified in the finale. I’m still not sure how they executed that final gag, in which an arrow seems to pierce Washizu’s throat, but it provides an appropriately gory segue to our next two Macbeths: Roman Polanski’s 1971 film Macbeth and Justin Kurzel’s 2015 adaptation (also called Macbeth).

We’ll see you then, but first a couple of quick notes: We’re choosing to ignore filmed stage performances, as remarkable as they might be, in favor of proper film projects. So, sorry Patrick Stewart, etc. You’re wonderful but outside our scope. Also, we really wanted to track down Joe MacBeth, a British adaptation from 1956 set in the American criminal underworld, but it appears to be deeply unavailable. That still leaves us with plenty of Macbeth to talk about however. See you in a week.