(µIn 1968, three years before Polanski’s Macbeth premiered, Franco Zeffirelli directed two young and unknown leads (Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey) in an intimate adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, a production which attracted a great deal of critical attention for the realism of its portrayals, costumes, and settings. The Zeffirelli film marked a profound change in the way Shakespeare’s works were produced for the screen. Previously, Shakespeare plays were presented as movie “spectaculars” (even if their budgets were sometimes less than munificent) – the point seemed less to tell a story than to impress the audience with the importance of the work. Many employed fanciful and extravagant sets and costumes (e.g. A Midsummer Night’s Dream [1935], As You Like It [1936] – one production, Olivier’s highly acclaimed 1944 adaptation of Henry V, went so far as to begin and end the action on an “authentic” Elizabethan stage, moving to a realistic setting only for the battle of Agincourt sequence). Most featured declamatory, un-cinematic acting and leisurely editing; the photography tended to be static or self-conscious, and the scores more ponderous than memorable. The underlying message was clear: these were not just movies, these were Art. Breaking with that tradition, Zeffirelli’s film looked and told its story like a movie, with quick cutting, natural acting, an intensely romantic score, and award-winning photography. In doing so, it paved the way for Polanski’s dark and sensual depiction of medieval Scottish warfare, assassination, and betrayal. Polanski meticulously researched the history and background to his story and strove for realism in his telling of it. His witches, as seen in the clip from 1.1, engage in historically accurate witch practices (for example, the cart they pull is a typical “ritual vehicle” used in such rites), and the actresses portraying them are local Scotswomen. Similarly, Lady Macbeth’s nude sleepwalking (seen in the clip from 5.1), though controversial at the time of the film’s release, reflects the actual sleeping practices of the 11th century: the historical Lady Macbeth almost certainly did not wear a nightgown. Polanski used this foundation of historical accuracy to support a nightmarish structure of betrayal and fear. Indeed, Polanski had previously demonstrated a cinematic interest in insanity and the occult – two of the more powerful themes of Shakespeare’s play – in works such as Repulsion (1965) and Rosemary’s Baby (1968). He was certainly no stranger to terror and madness: he grew up in the horror of Nazi-occupied Poland, and Macbeth was his first feature film following the brutal murder of his wife, Sharon Tate, by the Charles Manson “family.” The combination of clinical detachment and felt despair resulted in a film that is in some ways darker than Shakespeare’s original drama. •1.1 – Shakespeare’s play, as usually presented on the stage, opens with thunder and lightning: dramatic effects intended to grab the audience’s attention immediately. Polanski, however, chooses to establish an atmosphere of violence and horror with an accumulation of subtle details that are unavailable to stage directors. On a desolate, seemingly peaceful beach, someone scratches a sign in the sand and a young woman begins to dig out a hole, both ostensibly innocent and playful acts. Gradually, as the three women come into frame and begin their rite, the horror of the moment finally emerges: a coil of rope proves to be a noose; a benign looking parcel is unwrapped, revealing a severed human hand. Polanski uses the final lines of Shakespeare’s scene (“Fair is foul. . .”) as the first lines heard in the film, a chant that concludes this increasingly horrific rite. Only at the last do the witches converse, in quite matter-of-fact tones, about their plans to meet Macbeth. These witches do not vanish supernaturally (as in so many stage productions); rather, they stroll off down the wet strand as chilling coils of fog gradually roll in. By so combining the commonplace and the macabre, Polanski’s opening scene creates an atmosphere of tension and dread as effective cinematically as lightning and thunder would be theatrically. •1.7 – In the extract from 1.7, Polanski overcomes what is often a stumbling block in Shakespeare films: the soliloquy. This moment when a character directly addresses the audience can, in the theater, possess a startling power as the audience suddenly finds itself implicated in the action. The immediate presence of the actor, however, is not available to the film director, and such stage moments are usually translated in film as “voice-overs,” where the words are heard but the actors do not appear to speak them. For the filmgoer, a soliloquy becomes a voyeuristic experience at best, and at worst an awkward passage when the artifice of film becomes all too apparent. Polanski chooses to exploit the voyeuristic effect in this clip: we are intimately close to Macbeth (Jon Finch), close enough to hear him thinking, and then to see him speaking when his thoughts become agitated enough to escape his lips. As the soliloquy slips back and forth between muttered speech and overheard thought, the struggle raging in Macbeth’s conscience is skillfully revealed. Polanski further exploits the camera’s intimacy in the remainder of the scene, as Lady Macbeth (Francesca Annis) tries to convince her husband to kill Duncan. On stage this scene is often presented as being just outside the banquet hall, where the audience can hear the sounds of the ongoing feast. Polanski, however, uses tight close-ups and a moving camera to bring the plotters directly into the banquet hall itself. The enormity of the proposed crime is powerfully reinforced, because we can hear the murder plotted even as we see the intended victim innocently enjoying the hospitality of his treacherous hosts. Subtle tricks of lighting compound the effect when the shadow of Duncan’s crown falls upon Lady Macbeth just as she finishes quietly exulting in the perfection of her plan. And her treachery is highlighted all the more when she smiles and willingly accepts the king’s invitation to dance, a moment only made possible by this cinematic staging. •2.3 – The opening of 2.3 is the only intentionally comic moment in the play, and one that usually falls flat for modern audiences, relying as it does on a knowledge of early Jacobean politics and 400-year-old word-play. Polanski chooses to downplay the comedy and instead uses this scene to provide a commentary on the nature of tragedy in the real world. He opens the scene on the startled face of a rooster and pans across darkness to reveal the emerging porter, his nose almost as fiery as the cock’s red crown and wattles. The camera follows the porter from one end of the castle courtyard to another, maintaining a discreet distance as the man pauses to relieve himself against the courtyard wall before he proceeds across the muddy expanse to answer the knocking at the gate. The bulk of the porter’s obscure references have been cut, and the resulting impression is of a somewhat dim and coarse functionary, unbefitting his role as doorward to Macbeth’s castle. This impression is strengthened by Macduff’s treatment of him: Macduff’s “Was it so late friend, ere you went to bed. . . ?” is delivered in a scolding fashion, and the porter’s jape concerning drink’s power to provoke (delivered with appropriate gestural amplification) is uttered hurriedly as the porter scuttles back across the courtyard, following a disgusted Macduff eager to be rid of his presence. What might have served as comic relief for Shakespeare’s audience is here a pointed reminder that moments of high drama and significance do not happen in a world apart, but in the very midst of the trivial and ordinary. •5.1 – This scene is perhaps the most famous (and parodied) scene in the play, and its familiarity challenges any director who tries to convey the shock of insanity suddenly revealed. Polanski knows that we know that Lady Macbeth will go mad, and he plays upon our expectations. First, he prepares us for her final scene with a brief invented sequence inserted in the midst of 3.6 (not shown here): Lady Macbeth, doing needlework in a corner as the Lords talk, suddenly sees a spatter of blood on her hand, which vanishes as she beholds it. We are not expecting this hallucinatory moment, and Polanski’s use of the special effect provokes our curiosity and anticipation – what cinematic legerdemain will he employ when we get to the sleepwalking scene itself? Nothing so obvious, it turns out. We first see the Doctor, and then the Waiting-Gentlewoman, shot as though from an eavesdropper’s point of view, their faces glimpsed and obscured as their observer moves behind a wooden screen. Only gradually do we realize that the point of view is Lady Macbeth’s. We expect a Lady Macbeth whose “eyes are open” but whose “sense are shut,” but it is through her supposedly senseless eyes that we are seeing: is she mad or isn’t she? Polanski understands how madness connects to reality, how it does not so much create a new world as transform the one that is already there, and he gives us that experience through Lady Macbeth’s eyes. The next surprise (and one that received much attention at the time of the film’s initial release) is the revelation that Lady Macbeth is naked. Although historically accurate as far as 11th-century Scotland is concerned, this staging is probably unique in the play’s performance history: it startles us, but it also arouses our pity as we behold Lady Macbeth unclothed, vulnerable, and cold amid the shadows and flickering firelight. Polanski plays with the transforming power of madness throughout the scene. As Lady Macbeth sits at her table and feigns washing her hands, we see how in her madness she sees and sees not: when the Doctor holds his hand before her eyes to test her senses, she swats it away with a sudden motion as though it were an annoying insect. And later, as in her ramblings she calls upon her husband to come to bed, it is the Doctor whom she tenderly but firmly pulls toward her sleeping alcove. Polanski thus successfully evokes the pity and terror that lie at the heart of this scene not by surprising effects but by a careful and intimate portrayal of the small details that constitute the true face of madness. . 'Palex ' .Palex . ≤Palex ≤ ¬Palex ¬œPalex œÈPalex ÈÒPalex ÒˇPalex ˇGPalex GMPalex MNPalex "NflPalex fl‚Palex ‚ Palex !Voyager !ÇPalex ÇÑVoyager Ñ öPalex ö £Palex £ ØPalex Ø æPalex æ
