|
|
|
|
Shakespearean Masterpiece
 April 12
was Shakespeare’s birthday. The
real Shakespeare, I mean: Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford. I thought a little
celebrating was in order, so I watched one of the best Shakespeare films
ever made: Roman Polanski’s 1971 Macbeth.
When I was a kid, that was one of
my favorite plays. Still is. The language!
I should have used that one to get dates, but I never seemed to be able to work it into a conversation with ![[Breaker quote for Shakespearean Masterpiece: A kinder,
gentler, and foxier Lady Macbeth]](2006breakers/060413.gif) the girls in my class. Airheads.
Anyway, I got really hooked on
Shakespeare when I saw a televised production with Maurice Evans as
Macbeth and Judith Anderson as Lady Macbeth, the role she was most
famous for. Talk about undaunted mettle!
You may remember her as
Mrs. Danvers, the domineering housekeeper in Alfred Hitchcock’s
Rebecca. She was almost too scary as Lady Macbeth, and
though I admired her no end, I vaguely wondered why Macbeth would marry
her. Yes, a man wants a woman with her share of undaunted mettle, but
there are reasonable limits. How do you pop the question to a battle-ax like
Mrs. Danvers? And where do you take her for a honeymoon?
Polanski took a daring new
approach. Working with the brilliant critic Kenneth Tynan, he made the
Macbeths a young, attractive couple on the make, instead of the usual
plummy-voiced, middle-aged folks. Jon Finch played Macbeth as a handsome
warrior, and Francesca Annis was a gorgeous Lady Macbeth. When Macbeth
had qualms about murdering King Duncan, she didn’t humiliate him with
reproaches; hurt and disappointed, she melted him with tears.
A kinder, gentler Lady Macbeth
was certainly a new departure, but it was a brilliant success. Most
Shakespeare productions make me wince; this one is a triumph. By making
this formidable woman weaker and less tough than her husband thinks she is,
Polanski prepares us for her panic and crackup later. Guilt destroys her.
Macbeth is almost undone by it at first — “O, full of scorpions is
my mind, dear wife!” — but learns to live with it. Her madness
leaves him completely isolated as he goes from one atrocity to another.
When Macbeth was
released, it was rated “X.” Annis played Lady Macbeth’s
sleepwalking scene nude, but it was so discreetly shot that Hugh Hefner, who
financed the film, must have been, well, hurt and disappointed.
What’s really shocking is
the violence. After a rough opening battle scene — seen a man killed
with a mace lately? — we see the Thane of Cawdor brutally executed
and King Duncan murdered (these deaths happen offstage in the play), but
that’s the least of it. Banquo gets a broad-ax through the spine and is
pitched into a stream; then his ghost makes a hair-raising appearance at
dinner; a little later, Macduff’s young son is dispatched in a horrifying
way; finally, Macbeth kills several men in single combat and is himself
beheaded by Macduff (again, it happens offstage in the play).
But Polanski really excels not in
extremes of mayhem, but in the unexpected, unsettling little touches. Think
of Jack Nicholson’s nostril in Chinatown; you remember
that moment (Polanski himself wielded the switchblade) long after
you’ve forgotten a thousand movie shootings. One of the Weird
Sisters is an eyeless, toothless old crone, ugly enough to give you
nightmares; where did they dig her up? On the night of Duncan’s
murder, even the cleansing rain startles.
The scenery is gorgeously filmed.
The natural beauty of the settings only underlines the unnatural doings going
on within them, just as the poetry celebrates the normal order Macbeth is
destroying. The terrible evil is accentuated by the goodness it violates, the
darkness by the daylight. The film’s images capture the
story’s paradoxes. Banquo’s killers, though thugs, are also a
pair of oddly touching losers.
Of course we go to productions of
Shakespeare for thrilling acting, but
here  we
have to settle for competence. The peerless Laurence Olivier could never
raise the money to film his legendary Macbeth, sneaking quick furtive glances
at his own hands to make sure they weren’t bloody; and the world is
forever the poorer for it.
But Polanski’s inspired
direction almost allays one’s regrets that Jon Finch can’t fill
Olivier’s shoes. He shows that even fidelity to Shakespeare can leave
plenty of room for surprise.
Joseph Sobran |
||
| Copyright © 2006 by the
Griffin Internet Syndicate, a division of Griffin Communications This column may not be reprinted in print or Internet publications without express permission of Griffin Internet Syndicate 
|
||
|
||
|
Archive Table of Contents
Current Column The Shakespeare Library Return to the SOBRAN’S home page. |
||
|
|
| FGF E-Package columns by Joe Sobran, Sam Francis, Paul Gottfried, and others are available in a special e-mail subscription provided by the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation. Click here for more information. |