Review of Macbeth on film

This review appeared in Secondary English (NATE), October 2002

The bfi has produced a 50-minute video of clips from three filmed versions of Macbeth and an accompanying teachers' pack. Tom Cornford, and actor and educational practitioner at the Globe Theatre, has been taking a look at how these will help teachers enhance students' understanding of the play and develop their critical awareness of film technique.

Macbeth is, as Jerome Monahan says in his introduction to the bfi pack, 'an ideal play for the classroom'. It seems also to be ideal for the camera. The reasons it lends itself so well to both treatments will be familiar to teachers: it is free from the complications of sub-plots; its narrative is tight and focused; and it does exactly what it says on the tin � it gazes unrelentingly on one man. It is Monahan's contention that this pack and video, used 'in parallel to more traditional teaching of the text', will both 'help to develop film literacy and enhance the understanding of the play itself'. To that end, he has chosen three filmed versions of the play: Orson Welles' 1948 interpretation, the televised film of Trevor Nunn's Other Place production (1978) and Channel 4 Learning's 1998 film directed by Michael Bogdanov.

Teachers might well gasp at the exclusion of Polanski's 1971 film, but on this point, Monahan is clear. At the bottom of his list of 'important high order skills' that these materials may develop is: 'to take the range of Macbeth versions used in school well beyond reliance on Polanski's'. I must say that the idea that not watching Polanski's film develops an 'important high order skill' appeals to me. I often find it difficult to dislodge students from the impression that Polanski's film is an uninterpreted and entirely reliable vision of the play. Monahan discourages such uncritical readings by spending a great deal of time developing students' understanding of the film-making process.

It is not until Unit 10, in fact, that the television should be switched on. The first nine units of this pack are intended to 'build students' anticipation' and their knowledge of film- making, as well as introducing cinematic terminology. This seems to me to be a very sensible approach and typical of the focus on critical thought which characterises the whole pack. That is not to say that Monahan is intent on making life difficult for students. The opening units clarify rather than complicate; and accessibility seems to be the raison d'etre of at least one of the versions he has chosen: Bogdanov's for Channel 4 Learning. This features well-known actors with voices which (unlike the rather strange 'Scottish' of Welles' and the RSC received pronunciation of Nunn's) won't alienate a school audience. The story is clearly told, the cutting pacy, the settings and costumes stylish and the fight sequences convincingly violent. That said, despite Sean Pertwee's Macbeth firing on the ghost of Banquo and some use of computer animation to generate the apparitions, it doesn't pack the punch of any theatrical version of the play that I have seen, or either of the other films available here.

Monahan occasionally lets slip that he too does not value this film above the stock that it is printed on. He refers to it as being 'quite clumsy' at times, and at the start he suggests that 'it will be intriguing to see whether students' preferences alter as their film analysis skills broaden and their sensitivity develops'. This points towards what seems to be the main reason, other than accessibility, for its inclusion: to exemplify the argument that you only get out what you put in. Bogdanov frequently uses jump-cuts to clarify the story (to Macbeth dressed in combats when he is first referred to by the witches, and to Duncan's barge entering under Lady Macbeth's battlements, for example). This may help groups who find the language difficult, but we should not think that these visual aids explain the language to us; rather, they explain it away. Performing Shakespeare's plays at the Globe forces actors and audience to rely wholly on the language � the cast are on a bare stage and often obscured by two large pillars. The corollary of this is that the power of the language is released. If the play is turned into an action movie, then all too often the language is inhibited by the images. Bogdanov's easy symbols (Greta Scaachi speaking through the flames of her husband's burning letter, Macbeth and the murderers kitted out in sunglasses, the witches robbing soldiers' corpses) are no match for 'pity, like a naked new-born babe, striding the blast or heaven's cherubims horsed on the sightless couriers of the air' blowing 'the horrid deed in every eye' so that 'tears shall drown the wind'.

Trevor Nunn's production at The Other Place in Stratford did not suffer from this problem. It was performed on a circle of 20 feet in diameter and without scenery, allowing the language free rein. While not on stage, the actors sat on packing cases around the edges. The claustrophobia and intensity generated by the production have frequently been commented on. The audience felt uncomfortably close to the action, and the actors did not have the release of an exit from the playing space. The filmed version uses close-ups and tight camera angles in a partially successful attempt to reproduce this effect. Monahan also comments that the importance of the idea of witnessing in the play was highlighted by the ever-present actors and that sadly this has been lost in the film. I must say that I agree. This version is caught between the two stools of theatre and film and suffers as a consequence. Efforts have clearly been made to draw us into the action � both Ian McKellen's Macbeth and John Woodvine's Banquo talk directly to the camera, for example � but theatre happens in the here and now, and that immediacy is all but lost in the transition to celluloid. The bottom line is that film is, as Monahan amply displays, dependent on much more than great performances, and here the actors appear to be imprisoned in the small screen. One only wishes that they could burst out. There is, however, much to be said for this version � the text survives fairly intact, it boasts an extraordinary cast, and if you can't see the play live, this is the next best thing; the only problem is that it shows just how far from the real thing that is.

Orson Welles had also produced a theatrical version of the play, set in the voodoo traditions of Haiti, but it was not his intention to transfer that or any other stage interpretation to film. He shot his film in an astonishing 21 days, using actors from his Mercury theatre troupe and a B movie set. His version stands out because of the self-consciousness of his filmic technique. Monahan points out that much of the work of post-production, if skilfully done, will not draw attention to itself. Such stealthy technique stands in stark contrast both to Welles' film and to performances at the Globe. During the banquet scene in the Globe staging, Macbeth describes himself to the Murderer.

Now comes my Fit again: I had else been perfect; Whole as the Marble, founded as the Rock, As broad, and general, as the casing Air: But now I am cabin'd, crib'd, confin'd, bound in To saucy doubts, and fears.

At this moment, standing on the Globe stage, Macbeth is both next to pillars which appear to be made from 'marble' and 'rock' (but aren't) and surrounded by an audience with whom he is losing touch and who are beginning to embody his 'doubts and fears'. The theatre � with its interchangeably welcoming and threatening atmosphere � thus becomes a metaphor for Macbeth's state of mind, and the character knows, in the recesses of his consciousness, that he is being played. In Welles' film, it is the patterns created by light on celluloid which provide the metaphors. His Macbeth contemplates 'this my hand', and, as Monahan says, 'the distorting effect of Welles thrusting his hands down at the camera makes them huge and grotesque'. Monahan does not quite go far enough here. Welles' effect makes the hands appear 'huge and grotesque'; it changes the way in which we look at them rather than changing the hands themselves.

This an exact parallel with the way that language changes the way in we see things when the play is performed at the Globe. In Act I we are presented with two very different descriptions of Macbeth's castle. Duncan tells us that 'this castle hath a pleasant seat', and Banquo notices the 'temple- haunting Barlet [�] where they most breed and haunt, I have observed the air is delicate'. Lady Macbeth has just drawn our attention to a very different type of bird: 'the raven itself is hoarse which croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan under my battlements'. The fact is that while Lady Macbeth, Duncan and Banquo are talking about the same castle, they see it very differently. This is one of countless examples of what Orsino calls 'a natural perspective that is and is not': in the theatre things are and are not what they seem. The play is thus constantly aware of the changeable nature of what we glibly term 'reality', and the same is true of Welles' film.

Welles opens with the witches' incantation from Act IV, clouds of smoke and a prodigiously boiling cauldron. The earth of his set 'hath bubbles as the water hath' so that the action is played out on a landscape which seems to be made of the same element as the witches' brew. The constantly changing smoke is echoed in the play of light and shadow creating equivocal shapes on the rocks and buildings of his set as well as the faces of his actors. The images thus constantly remind us of the shifting, unknowable natures of the play's characters. Macbeth is isolated in blackness calling out to the witches, and both Lady Macbeth and Macbeth's musings are played out over footage of swirling vapours. The play's language is thus re-energised and challenged by Welles' images.

If it did nothing else, this pack would be worth its price for allowing us even partly to appreciate the greatness of Orson Welles' film. It does, however, do much more than that. The pack is full, informative and clearly laid out. It provides a number of fascinating beginnings: with the knowledge they have gained here and the right equipment, students could produce their own film of a scene, for example. It would also be easy to adapt the pack for groups of different ages and/or abilities. Monahan is always open-ended in his questions, refrains from judgmental criticism and is rigorous in encouraging enquiry into all of the details of a film's production. This pack can only encourage imaginative and innovative performance-based teaching of Shakespeare and, as such, I welcome it wholeheartedly.

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Tom Cornford is an actor and educational practitioner. He works regularly for Shakespeare's Globe. Macbeth on film, written and compiled by Jerome Monahan and edited by Wendy Earle, costs £27.99 (inc. VAT) and can be ordered from bfi Education Resources on 0870 241 3764.