Macbeth (1948 film)

• 1. Introduction

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  Orson Welles shot Macbeth in 23 days. Not 23 weeks, not 23 months. Twenty-three days to film an entire Shakespeare tragedy, on sets borrowed from cowboy pictures, with costumes rented from a shop that mostly outfitted Western movies. The year was 1948, and the result was one of the strangest, most divisive films in Hollywood history. How did a man who had reshaped radio and stunned cinema with Citizen Wells end up making Shakespeare for a studio best known for Roy Rogers? And why, decades after critics dismissed it as a scandal, did scholars go to the trouble of restoring the original version from the archives?

• 2. A Republic of Ambition

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  Herbert Yates, the founder and president of Republic Pictures, had a problem. His studio had made its name on low-budget features and Roy Rogers Westerns, and he wanted to be taken seriously. When Orson Welles arrived in 1947 pitching a Shakespeare adaptation, Yates saw an opportunity. Republic had already tried to move upmarket, releasing Gustav Machatý's Jealousy in 1945 and Ben Hecht's Specter of the Rose in 1946. A prestige picture from a filmmaker of Welles's reputation seemed like the next logical step.

  Welles had not arrived at Macbeth by accident. He had first tried to interest Alexander Korda in an adaptation of Othello, without success. He then shifted to Macbeth, describing his vision to Yates as something like "a perfect cross between Wuthering Heights and Bride of Frankenstein." Yates agreed to the project, though the money on offer was strictly limited. Welles personally guaranteed to deliver a completed negative for $700,000. When some board members expressed doubts, he went further. He signed a contract agreeing to personally cover any amount the production exceeded that figure.

  The film marked only the fourth time a post-silent Hollywood studio had produced a Shakespeare adaptation. United Artists made The Taming of the Shrew in 1929, Warner Brothers followed with A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1935, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer produced Romeo and Juliet in 1936. None of them had turned a profit. What helped tip the scales in Welles's favor was the success of Laurence Olivier's Henry V, a British production from 1944 that reached American audiences in 1946 and earned both commercial and critical respect.

• 3. Casting the Impossible Role

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  Republic Pictures regarded Lady Macbeth as the central role of the film, and finding someone to play her caused Welles considerable difficulty. His first choice was Vivien Leigh. He never approached her, however, because he believed her husband, Laurence Olivier, would not support the project. The role was then offered to Tallulah Bankhead, who turned it down. Welles also sought Anne Baxter, Mercedes McCambridge, and Agnes Moorehead, but none of them were available.

  Biographer Frank Brady later wrote that there was no evidence these rejections troubled Welles deeply. He ultimately turned to Jeanette Nolan, a trusted colleague from the Mercury Theatre's radio repertory who had worked with him on The March of Time radio program. Macbeth was her feature film debut.

  For the supporting cast, Welles brought in Irish actor Dan O'Herlihy to play Macduff, this being O'Herlihy's first film role in the United States. Former child star Roddy McDowall was cast as Malcolm. Welles also gave a role to his daughter Christopher, casting her as Macduff's son. It was her only film appearance.

• 4. Shooting on Borrowed Sets

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  The sets used for Macbeth were not built for the film. They were left over from the Westerns that Republic Studios normally produced, repurposed to stand in for medieval Scotland. To compensate for the impossibly tight schedule, Welles made a production decision that would later draw criticism. He had the entire cast pre-record their dialogue before shooting began.

  Most of the costumes came from Western Costume, the standard rental source for Hollywood productions. Only the outfits for Macbeth and Lady Macbeth were made specifically for the film. Welles later told filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich that his own costume should have been returned. "Mine should have been sent back, because I looked like the Statue of Liberty in it," he said. There was no money to replace it and nothing in stock at Western would fit him, so he kept it.

  One of the most vivid scenes in the film, showing the massed forces of Macduff's army storming the castle, turned out to owe its energy to an entirely practical circumstance. Welles told Bogdanovich that the urgency in the charge came from the fact that the noon break had just been called. The extras were rushing off to lunch, not into battle. The film was finished in 23 days, with a single additional day set aside for retakes.

• 5. The Scottish Accent Disaster

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  Republic had originally planned to release Macbeth by December 1947, but Welles was not finished. The studio entered the film in the 1948 Venice Film Festival, where it ran into immediate trouble. Also competing that year was Laurence Olivier's adaptation of Hamlet. Compared unfavorably against Olivier's production, the Welles film was abruptly withdrawn from the festival.

  When Macbeth was tested in a handful of American cities ahead of its wider release, critics responded with sharp disapproval. Much of the complaint centered on Welles's decision to have his cast perform with Scottish burrs and to modify Shakespeare's original text. The reaction was described as overwhelmingly negative.

  Republic ordered Welles to cut two reels from the film and to have much of the soundtrack re-recorded, with the actors this time speaking in their natural voices rather than the approximation of Scottish accents Welles had initially requested. This revised version was released by Republic in 1950. Reviews remained critical, though the film did manage to earn a small profit for the studio.

  In a 1953 lecture at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Welles offered a candid accounting of the whole experience. He said his purpose had not been to make a great film, which he acknowledged was an unusual admission. He had hoped that if the 23-day shoot worked, it might encourage other filmmakers to tackle difficult subjects at greater speed. He noted that not one critic anywhere in the world chose to praise him for the pace of the production. They found it scandalous. "Of course, they were right," he said, "but I could not write to every one of them and explain that no one would give me any money for a further day's shooting."

• 6. Welles Rewrites Shakespeare

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  Beyond the accent controversy, Welles made structural and thematic changes to Shakespeare's text that set his version apart. The witches were given considerably more screen time and significance. At the film's opening, they fashion a clay figurine in the shape of Macbeth, which serves as a symbol for his rise and eventual destruction. After Macbeth is beheaded at the film's end, the clay figure collapses by itself. The witches return for the final moments of the film, observing the drama from a distance and speaking the line "Peace, the charm's wound up." In Shakespeare's original play, this line appears in the first act.

  Censorship required the removal of all double entendre from the Porter's speech. Welles also introduced a character with no counterpart in the original play. The Holy Man, a priest who recites the prayer of Saint Michael, was added to carry a thematic argument that Welles considered central to his interpretation. He later explained that the witches represented a Druidical pagan religion being suppressed by Christianity, and that the struggle between the old and new religions was the main point of his production.

  Welles also made quieter alterations to the story's internal logic. There is a subtle suggestion that Lady Macbeth herself fatally stabs Duncan before Macbeth delivers his attack on the king. In Shakespeare's play, Macbeth is absent during Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking and madness scene. In Welles's version, he is present to witness it.

• 7. Restoration and Reappraisal

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  The truncated version of the film, trimmed at Republic's insistence and stripped of its Scottish accents, remained in release for three decades. It was not until 1980 that the original uncut version, with its Scottish-tinged soundtrack intact, was restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive working with the Folger Shakespeare Library.

  The critical reception that accumulated over time told a strikingly different story from the initial American response. French filmmakers and writers including Jean Cocteau, André Bazin, and Robert Bresson had celebrated the film at the time of its release, even as American critics panned it. Bresson wrote that his love of natural settings and natural light only deepened his appreciation for what he called the fake light and cardboard settings of Macbeth. Variety, at the time of release, described the production as comparatively inexpensive and acknowledged that the mood was as dour as the Scottish moors, while noting that Welles dominated practically every frame.

  On Rotten Tomatoes, based on 30 reviews, the film holds an approval rating of 87 percent, with an average rating of 7.4 out of 10. The critics' consensus on the site describes the film as haunting and eccentric, conceding the budget constraints but crediting Welles's performance and direction. The restoration ensured that the version Welles originally intended, with Jeanette Nolan's Scottish accent and all, is now the one most often seen.