Centuries of cultural trickle-down have proven that William Shakespeare‘s tragedies to be his most endlessly adaptable works. On occasion, this is down to his magnificent command of the english language —though it’s not strictly de rigeur, some filmmakers have airlifted verbatim passages of his dialogue straight out of his original texts. Shakespeare is eternal —his inspired turns of phrase have permeated common vernacular so deeply that we allude to the Bard every day without even realizing it. But another dimension of the enduring appeal of the Big Three — “Hamlet,” “Macbeth” and “Romeo And Juliet“— is the ease with which they’re translated into contemporary contexts.
Those three tragedies revolve around universal themes that can be tailored to fit modern tastes or the milieu of the director’s choosing. The process of coming into one’s own, excessive ambition’s deleterious effects on the soul, and the agony of forbidden love all transcend the Europe of yore. Though Justin Kurzel stayed faithful to the source material when crafting his new adaptation of “Macbeth” (read our review here), his approach is only one fork off of a road rich with splintering paths. Kurzel retained the spirit of the original, but amplified the violence that the script mostly leaves implicit: namely, he staged battle scenes that Shakespeare had left offstage with a gruesomely cinematic bent.
Before Kurzel looses his tempestuous vision, The Playlist has assembled a look at seven other takes on “Macbeth,” ranging from the reverent to the imaginative. By the pricking of our thumbs, freely interpretive revisions on a fully enshrined classic of the stage this way comes.
“Macbeth” (1948)
“Citizen Kane” lives on as such a massive achievement that it often threatens to eclipse the rest of Orson Welles’ sterling filmography. Among his lesser-known gems is this Old Hollywood adaptation, sticking with the original setting and leaving Shakespeare’s dialogue mostly intact (though critics of the film wanted to have Welles’ head for his having tinkered with the script, relatively slight as they may seem to a modern audience). Welles had previously mounted a production of “Macbeth” at the ripe age of 20 called “Voodoo Macbeth,” which transported the royal schemings to a Caribbean island and swapped out the Scottish witchcraft for island black magic. But he went straight down the middle for his big-screen tango with the Bard, taking the title role for himself and retaining the regal backstabbing. Welles himself gives a towering performance, and the larger-than-life Jeanette Nolan makes for an agreeably wicked Lady Macbeth, though it’s tempting to imagine what the film would’ve looked like had Welles been able to land Vivien Leigh, his first choice for the role. With only a shoestring budget, Welles was able to complete shooting on the film in just over three weeks —the final product still looks timeless and priceless.