There were a couple reasons I wasn't looking forward to the next film Orson Welles had directed that I hadn't seen. One is that I've been sleeping a bit poorly and any kind of Shakespeare can be taxing if you're perceiving things at diminished capacity. Another is that this particular Shakespeare play is one I simply do not like.
Never been a fan of Macbeth.
What a depressing story, but that's not what I don't like about it. What I don't like is that it's not a "tragedy" in the purest definition of that word.
For a character's story to be "tragic," it should represent a downfall from a previous period of grace and moral uprightness. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth never have that period. Watching Welles' 1948 cinematic staging of the play, I was again reminded how quickly they turn into monsters. Yes, the phrase "turn into" suggests they started out not being monsters. But so little time is spent meeting them and learning of any potential noble aspects to their character -- almost none with Lady Macbeth -- that we have a hard time feeling like these were good characters breaking bad. They're just Heisenberg right from the start.
I know Macbeth is supposed to be a heroic man twisted by the prophecies of a trio of witches -- sorry, "weird sisters" -- but it isn't more than a soliloquy or two before he descends into outright murderous ambition. What's worse is that the lion's share of the play is spent on him -- both of them -- descending into a sort of regret-induced madness, talking in their sleep and talking to ghosts, bemoaning their wretchedness, wallowing in misery. I believe it when it comes to Macbeth, as I feel like he's a weak man who was manipulated. But I don't believe it when it comes to Lady Macbeth, who never seems to have any qualms about murdering their way to the top. Maybe in my sleep-deprived state I am just not reading between the verses to find those qualms.
But I don't fault Welles for making Macbeth. That play has some of Shakespeare's most enduring lines, and has contributed household phrases to our lexicon. For example, I believe "the be all and the end all" and "what's done is done" both originate here. That's in addition to the more commonly recognized lines like "Out, out damned spot!" and life "is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." I just wish the content of the play was easier to like.
But back to Welles. This was not his first time with Macbeth, though it was his first time filming it. As I was reminded in Mank, Welles directed a stage version of the play in 1936 -- as I only just learned by looking it up now, the cast was all African American. Twelve years later, Welles got to appear in the play himself as its main character.
This was not my first time seeing Welles make Shakespeare. I went out of order as I saw his 1951 version of Othello a couple years ago. That's a tragedy I really love -- in fact, it's the consummate tragedy as I would like to define it, featuring a character undone by a fatal flaw. I suppose Macbeth's fatal flaw is ambition, but I find Othello's insecurity to be a more interesting fatal flaw. Besides, to be "undone" you have to be "done" in the first place, and Shakespeare gets that right in Othello, where our opening interactions with the main character are pleasant verging on joyous. Can't say the same thing with Macbeth.
Until watching this and recognizing that Welles was drawn to both plays, I didn't consciously realize how much they have in common. Both feature a main character unwittingly driven to horrible acts by the urgings of a sinister character whispering in his ear. Again, though, I find Iago to be the more interesting puppet-master, dramatically, than I find Lady Macbeth.
Welles' cinematic staging of these two plays is similar, too, having the same rough-hewn quality to them. I was struck by the roughness of Othello when I saw it, thinking of Citizen Kane as a very clean and controlled sort of film, but I can see that the aesthetic roots of Othello were present in Macbeth. Although Macbeth takes place on a set that was constructed for the film and Othello in existing buildings, both locales have a desolate quality to them that approximates the characters' emotional isolation. It's effective.
I also appreciated seeing some signature Welles touches. From Citizen Kane and from February's The Lady from Shanghai, we know that Welles is big into mirrors. He uses a reflected image in a particularly compelling way here. When Macbeth first fits on his crown after killing Duncan -- an ugly, spiky, square sort of thing -- his image is radically distorted in the mirror, making Macbeth look almost like a drawing whose ink had been smudged into something blurry and unrecognizable. We also get a good dose of Welles' interest in shrouding characters in shadow, as there are a couple shots lit in such a way as to fully obscure Macbeth into silhouette while other characters are in the light.
I suppose I should spend a paragraph here on performance. The secondary characters in Macbeth blend into one another for me, and that was the case with the performances as well -- with the exception of a 19-year-old Roddy McDowell as Malcolm, who was fun to see. But both the leads do acquit themselves admirably here. Welles is big in certain spots, but we're talking about Shakespeare here -- subtlety is rarely rewarded in a performer. I continue to be impressed by his acting ability, as we think of his work behind the camera as the thing that defines his legacy. The revelation for me was Jeanette Nolan, someone I'd never heard of, as Lady Macbeth. Now that it's been a couple nights since I watched this, I can't remember exactly what the technique was, but there was something Welles did to her voice to make it sound a bit distant and distorted.
As much as Othello and other Welles works came to mind while watching Macbeth, the film I found myself thinking about most was another Shakespeare adaptation that came out in 1948. And Macbeth really suffers in comparison to that. The Laurence Olivier version of Hamlet, which he also directed, came out in 1948, and won best picture that year. Except for a sort of flat denouement, I absolutely loved that version of Hamlet, which is more traditionally staged in some senses, but also more emotionally satisfying overall. Then again, Hamlet is my favorite of Shakespeare's tragedies -- followed closely by Othello. So I guess this version of Macbeth had a couple tough acts to follow.
After devoting the first two installments of this series to only one film apiece, we'll have to increase the pace for the next two if we want to get where we need to go by December. So in June I will watch the next two Welles features I haven't seen, Mr. Arkadin and The Trial, followed by Chimes at Midnight and The Immortal Story in August -- pending availability of course.
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