Criterion Corner: The Tragedy of Macbeth (1971) - Reviewed

Images courtesy of Columbia Pictures

Controversial Polish auteur/outlaw Roman Polanski’s 1971 adaptation of William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Macbeth co-authored for the screen by Shakespeare encyclopedic Kenneth Tynan isn’t so much a straightforward period adaptation of the legendary medieval tragedy so much as it is a continuation of the gothic occult horrors of his previous picture Rosemary’s Baby.  Feeling like the tale of the Scottish King’s rise and fall filtered through the prism of visceral crimson spattered phantasmagoria, the film is noted for being the first feature the fugitive filmmaker directed following the tragic murder of his wife/actress Sharon Tate.  As a film it is doomed cathartic response to the tragedy and a thoroughly atmospheric horror film version of the legendary Shakespeare epic of madness and murder that ranks as one of the very best, most visually striking adaptations of Macbeth since Akira Kurosawa’s 1957 masterpiece Throne of Blood or more recently Joel Coel’s 2021 black-and-white iteration.

 
The story of The Tragedy of Macbeth is familiar to countless Shakespeare aficionados, only this version with wet rainy muddy Scotland is caked in blood, sweat and naked tears.  Starring Hammer horror star Jon Finch in the role of the titular Macbeth alongside Cleopatra actress Francesca Annis as Lady Macbeth, Polanski’s meditation on the Scottish warrior who conspires with his wife to murder King Duncan (Nicholas Selby) and steal the throne before succumbing to madness and a military coup is an intentionally unglamorous naturalistic medieval horror film.  Arguably the other side of the coin that was Ken Russell’s The Devils that year in terms of scope widescreen historical fiction as gothic horror, its ethereal, gross yet elegant tapestry of audiovisual sensory doom lensed by Dr. Strangelove cinematographer Gilbert Taylor in Todd-AO 35 with an atonal avant-garde medieval score by The Third Ear Band is positively dripping with handsomely crafted atmospheric grotesquerie. 

 
Financed by none other than Playboy founder Hugh Hefner for Playboy Enterprises and distributed in the United States by Columbia Pictures, despite the film’s ample graphic violence and nudity including a hallucinatory mirror-jumping occult horror scene plucked right out of Rosemary’s Baby, this particular version of Macbeth is striking for the visuals and sonics taking precedence over the casting who act and speak their lines authentically.  Rather than vying for big distracting Hollywood stars, Polanski chose actors that were lesser known at the time and thus allowed for audiences to more believably accept them as Macbeth and his Lady as real-world figures.  Of course the real star of this picture is the one behind the camera who possesses total command of the visual medium and for the time does some wild editing trickery achieved by recurring Polanski editor Alastair McIntyre. 

 
Despite a difficult shoot on the British Isles with poor weather and near perpetual rain that soaks every frame of this otherwise illustrious production, Polanski’s Macbeth budgeted at around $2.4 million was tragically a commercial failure at the time.  Controversial for its graphic content, the film was given an R rating despite the absence of foul language and critics took umbrage with its jet-black cruelties and transgressions including a coda darker than the original Shakespeare text as well as its affiliations with the Playboy company.  Years later, whatever reputation the film may have had was further buried by Polanski’s own felonious criminal transgressions and subsequent fleeing of the US, rendering any dialogue to be had about the film null and void.  However, decades later after being canonized by The Criterion Collection who gifted the film a new 4K restoration, open minded audiences keen on the controversial director’s preexisting works as well as the numerous screen adaptations of William Shakespeare will find quite the demonic horror experience of debatably the legendary playwright’s scariest tragic epic offering.  Few if any other Shakespeare films out there look, sound, smell or feel quite like this daylight nightmare.

--Andrew Kotwicki