Macbeth

This is the original general-release version, not the more recent restoration, of Orson Welles’s 1948 cheapie, expressionist adaptation of the Shakespeare tragedy, shot in three weeks at Republic Studio on converted western sets. (Both versions are edited by Welles, but this one is two reels shorter and has a redubbed sound track to make the cast’s Scottish accents more subdued.) Whatever the version, this remains the most problematic of Welles’s Shakespeare adaptationsparticularly because of the inadequacies of the two lead performers (Welles and Jeanette Nolan) and the violence done to the textbut it has its compensations and moments of raw power. With Dan O’Herlihy and Roddy McDowall. (JR)

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