A Performance of Macbeth (1978)

Sound and Fury

To be honest, I watched this a couple of days ago and am just getting around to writing about it now. I've been trying to build up backlog, since we're going on vacation, and I will invariably reach a point where I just can't face writing about any more movies. I don't have enough reviews for the two weeks we're going to be gone, either, but since Graham's vacation time isn't getting approved (gosh, and they wonder why someone at ACS might disagree with company policy), the amount of time I have to do this in keeps increasing. So that's something. But anyway, this is not the only version of [i]Macbeth[/i] we're going to have. Technically, it isn't now, but I supposed that depends on whether you count [i]Slings & Arrows[/i] or not. There will doubtless be a lot of opinion-crossover among the three versions, since so much of what's presented depends on the words written so many long centuries ago.

At the beginning, Macbeth (Sir Ian McKellen) is just a Scottish lord. He and his best friend, Banquo (John Woodvine), are returning from battle. They have helped defeat forces invading Scotland. They encounter three witches (Marie Kean, Judith Harte, and Susan Dury) on the heath, and they greet Macbeth as Thane of Cawdor and future King of Scotland. Banquo will not be king, but he will be father of kings. And so it begins; it turns out the Thane of Cawdor had been a traitor, and Macbeth the military hero is given his title. Macbeth, kinsman to King Duncan (Griffith Jones). He tells his lady wife (Dame Judi Dench) of the witches' greeting, and they agree to kill Duncan and frame others so that Macbeth will be king as the Weird Sisters told him. It is a bloody deed, and blood will be the theme for the rest of the story. It's a tragedy, which means bodies strewn across the stage. It's Shakespeare, which means words everyone knows spoken, often as people kill or are killed.

And in this particular production, there's not much to discuss other than the words. There is no scenery; there are really no props. The costumes totaled less money than the cost for a single costume in a different production. (In one of the special features, Sir Ian tells us that he has his coat draped over his shoulders at the beginning because it was too small.) There aren't really lights, either; the question of scenery is moot most of the time, as only faces are in the light. The performance this is based on was done in the round, with a circle on the floor representing the stage and the actors just kind of gathered outside it until it was time for them to perform. It is spare. Stark. I've little doubt the original production was more elaborate, and productions at the time weren't, particularly, unless they were performed at court. Often not even then. This production has distilled the play into just the characters who drive it, leaving Sir Ian and Dame Judi facing one another across the darkness.

It is a very dark play. The choice here is not to have Banquo's ghost physically appear at the banquet. This makes Macbeth look mad, not necessarily haunted. Dame Judi at one point lets out a positively chilling screech, one which almost makes you forgive her for her dark and bloody deeds. The pair of them together are examples of the many characters in Shakespeare who acted without considering the consequences. They appear in both comedy and tragedy, and often, which one it is depends on them. Oh, this would never have been a comedy. For one, it isn't as funny as various of the others. The comic doorkeeper here (Ian McDiarmid!) isn't a patch on the comic gravedigger in [i]Hamlet[/i]. I think possibly the main difference, though, is one of personality. Had the line of Danish succession gone peacefully from Hamlet the elder to Hamlet the younger, Hamlet the younger would have been a king, no better or worse than any other king, and there would have been no story. The Macbeths, though, were dark people destined for dark deeds.

The one professional review Rotten Tomatoes offers for this production says she cannot see the point in a filmed version of the play, something this assuredly is. Why bother? But that is easily answered to me. For one thing, I did not, for some reason, have the chance to see Sir Ian and Dame Judi at odds with one another on the stage in 1976, the production on which this is based. For another, [i]Macbeth[/i] doesn't need pageantry the way various of the other plays do. The scene where the Weird Sisters deliver their prophecies is not made better by careful stagecraft the way the battles of the histories are. [i]A Midsummer Night's Dream[/i] is improved with improved makeup and costuming; Dame Judi's wail of terror doesn't have more impact if she's wearing velvet than it does while she wears grey cotton. The two leads may even be better served by the blackness around them. There is nothing to distract from the blackness within them.