William Shakespeare's Macbeth has been screened numerous times, featuring many of the biggest names from stage, film, and television.
Adaptations of Shakespeare's plays and other works have been featured in nearly 500 films and/or videos world-wide. That makes Shakespeare the most filmed playwright of all time! Here are the best, and most noteworthy, versions of Macbeth that can help you study and better understand the play.
Performances[edit]
- Macbeth (US, 1908, Silent)
- J. Stuart Blackton director
- William V. Ranous as Macbeth
- Louise Carver as Lady Macbeth
- Macbeth (US, 1916, Silent, imdb)
- Herbert Beerbohm Tree as Macbeth
- Constance Collier as Lady Macbeth
- Macbeth (US, 1948)
- Orson Welles director and as Macbeth
- Jeanette Nolan as Lady Macbeth
- Hallmark Hall of Fame Macbeth (TV, US, 1954, imdb)
- Maurice Evans as Macbeth
- Judith Anderson as Lady Macbeth
- Hallmark Hall of Fame Macbeth (1960, imdb) - Emmy Award-winning remake, featuring an all-British supporting cast, and filmed on location in England and Scotland.
- Maurice Evans as Macbeth
- Judith Anderson as Lady Macbeth
- Play of the Month: Macbeth (UK, TV, 1970; USA, TV, 1975)
- John Gorrie director
- Eric Porter as Macbeth
- Janet Suzman as Lady Macbeth
- Macbeth (US and UK, 1971)
- Roman Polanski director
- Jon Finch as Macbeth
- Francesca Annis as Lady Macbeth
- Macbeth (TV, UK, 1978) - film of the Royal Shakespeare Company's Other Place production.
- Trevor Nunn, director
- Ian McKellen as Macbeth
- Judi Dench as Lady Macbeth
- Macbeth (UK, 1981)
- Arthur Allan Seidelman director
- Jeremy Brett as Macbeth
- Piper Laurie as Lady Macbeth
- Macbeth (TV, Hungary, 1982)
- Béla Tarr director
- György Cserhalmi as Macbeth
- Erzsébet Kútvölgyi as Lady Macbeth
- BBC Television ShakespeareMacbeth (TV, UK, 1983) - released in the US as part of the 'Complete Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare' series.
- Jack Gold director
- Nicol Williamson as Macbeth
- Jane Lapotaire as Lady Macbeth
- The Animated ShakespeareMacbeth (TV, Russia and UK, 1992)
- Nicolai Serebryakov director
- Brian Cox as the voice of Macbeth
- Zoë Wanamaker as the voice of Lady Macbeth
- Macbeth (UK, 1997)
- Jeremy Freeston and Brian Blessed directors
- Jason Connery as Macbeth
- Helen Baxendale as Lady Macbeth
- Macbeth (TV, UK, 1998)
- Michael Bogdanov director
- Sean Pertwee as Macbeth
- Greta Scacchi as Lady Macbeth
- Macbeth (Video, UK, 2001) - film of the Royal Shakespeare Company's Swan production.
- Gregory Doran director
- Antony Sher as Macbeth
- Harriet Walter as Lady Macbeth
- Richard Armitage as Angus
- Macbeth (Australia, 2006) - film set against the backdrop of a violent gang war in Melbourne, Australia.
- Geoffrey Wright director
- Sam Worthington as Macbeth
- Victoria Hill as Lady Macbeth
- Macbeth (TV, UK, 2010) - television adaptation of Royal Shakespeare Company's stage production
- Rupert Goold director
- Patrick Stewart as Macbeth
- Kate Fleetwood as Lady Macbeth
- Macbeth (UK, 2015)
- Justin Kurzel director
- Michael Fassbender as Macbeth
- Marion Cotillard as Lady Macbeth
Are these the 10 best Shakespeare screen adaptations? Promoting its review of the new movie version of Macbeth. With the success of movie versions greatly depending on how they deal with. Oct 01, 2015 Directed by Justin Kurzel. With Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Jack Madigan, Frank Madigan. Macbeth, the Thane of Glamis, receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders his king and takes the throne for himself. Joe MacBeth (UK, 1955) is a film noir resetting of the story as a gang war in Chicago. Ken Hughes director; Paul Douglas as Joe MacBeth; Ruth Roman as Lily Macbeth; Throne of Blood (a.k.a. Cobweb Castle or Kumonosu-jo) (Japan, 1957) is an adaptation of the Macbeth story to a Japanese setting. Nov 30, 2015 Macbeth On Screen: 7 Great Film Versions Of Shakespeare's Classic Tragedy. Welles had previously mounted a production of “Macbeth” at the.
Adaptations[edit]
- Joe MacBeth (UK, 1955) is a film noir resetting of the story as a gang war in Chicago
- Ken Hughes director
- Paul Douglas as Joe MacBeth
- Ruth Roman as Lily Macbeth
- Throne of Blood (a.k.a. Cobweb Castle or Kumonosu-jo) (Japan, 1957) is an adaptation of the Macbeth story to a Japanese setting.
- Akira Kurosawa director
- The first series of The Black Adder (TV, UK, 1983), written by Richard Curtis and Rowan Atkinson, is a parody of Shakespeare's plays, particularly Macbeth, Richard III and Henry V.
- Men of Respect (USA, 1991) is a retelling of the Macbeth story as a Mafia power struggle in New York City, in modern English, but closely tracking the original plot.
- William Reilly director
- John Turturro as Mike Battaglia
- Katherine Borowitz as Ruthie Battaglia
- Scotland, Pa. (USA, 2001) is set in and around a fast food restaurant in the 1970s.
- Billy Morrissette writer/director
- Maura Tierney as Pat McBeth
- James LeGros as Joe 'Mac' McBeth
- Christopher Walken as Lieutenant McDuff
- Kevin Corrigan as Anthony 'Banko' Banconi
- Andy Dick, Timothy 'Speed' Levitch, and Amy Smart as the three bohemians
- Maqbool (India, 2004) is a Macbeth adaptation set in the Mumbai underworld.
- Vishal Bhardwaj director
- Irfan Khan as Mian Maqbool (the Macbeth character)
- Tabu as Nimmi (the Lady Macbeth character)
- ShakespeaRe-ToldMacbeth (UK, TV, 2005) is a modern adaptation by Peter Moffat, set in a Glasgow restaurant.
- James McAvoy as Joe Macbeth
- Keeley Hawes as Ella (the Lady Macbeth character)
- Richard Armitage as Peter Macduff
- Teenage Gang Debs (USA, 1966), setting the theme around a teenage girl who joins a street gang.
- Sande N. Johnsen director
- Diane Conti as Terry (the Lady Macbeth character)
Theatrical performances within films[edit]
Another way in which film-makers use Shakespearean texts is to feature characters who are actors performing those texts, within a wider non-Shakespearean story. In Opera, the 1987 Italian giallo horror film written and directed by Dario Argento and starring Cristina Marsillach, Urbano Barberini, and Ian Charleson; young opera singer Betty (Marsillach) is reluctantly thrust into the lead role in Verdi's Macbeth. During her first performance, a murder takes place in one of the opera boxes. Mysterious murders continue throughout the film as Betty is stalked and those around her meet their unfortunate end. During the final performance of the opera, the killer is revealed, and Betty must confront her past in a terrifying climax.
See also[edit]
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Macbeth_on_screen&oldid=847951172'
Promoting its review of the new movie version of Macbeth, the Daily Telegraph asked, on its front page: “Has Shakespeare ever been better on the big screen?”
Such a question is clearly intended to provoke a response, and the gist of mine, revealed in the personal Top 10 below, would be: yes, but not very often. In the arbitrary rules to which such surveys are prone, I have decided that a play can only be represented once (which turns out to be especially foul and unfair for Macbeth) and that directors are restricted to a single entry, in order to prevent the list being dominated by multiple cinematic Bardists such as Kenneth Branagh, Julie Taymor, Orson Welles and Laurence Olivier, although the last has the bigger problem of having been omitted completely.
I appreciate that this decision is controversial but my conclusion, after literally re-viewing the work, is that Olivier’s filmed Shakespeares have suffered from either changes in taste – which now rightly questions white actors making up for Othello – or by a subsequent superior piece: Branagh, though sometimes criticised for shadowing Olivier’s career, overshadowed him with movies of both Hamlet and Henry V.
The endurance of Shakespeare in theatre is mainly attributable to the magnificence of his language and the talent-defining roles offered to performers. But while the latter factor also applies to the cinematic versions – the desire of actors to record great stage roles is one reason that the shows have been filmed so often – the poetic speech can become problematic on screen, with the success of movie versions greatly depending on how they deal with the verse and soliloquies.
Conversely, though, the playwright’s structural decisions anticipated by three centuries many standard elements of film’s visual grammar – such as cross-cutting and location-hopping – and the Stratford dramatist’s frequent use of 17th-century special effects, such as ghosts and magic, has become progressively more appealing to a medium which, through digital technology, is ever more suited to illusion.
After which prologue, comes the countdown.
10.The Tempest (2010)
Among the visualisations of the island-exiled magician Prospero, I struggled to separate two finalists. In his magnificently wacky 1979 punk version, Derek Jarman applied casting (poet Heathcote Williams, singer Toyah Willcox) and soundtrack (Stormy Weather) unlikely to be found at the National Theatre, at least at that time. In contrast, Taymor made only one radical alteration for the 2010 version – Prospero becoming Prospera, played by Helen Mirren – otherwise offering a classically well-spoken and artily filmed account of the play which showcases Mirren’s vocal colours and Taymor’s visual panache and places it above the director’s other Shakespeare-based works, Titus (1999) and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2014).
9. Othello (2001)
With the screen portrayals of the persecuted moor of Venice by Olivier (1965), Welles (1952) and Anthony Hopkins (1981), all disqualified by my law against cosmetic assistance, the bench-mark for naturalistic Othellos was Laurence Fishburne, opposite Kenneth Branagh as the scheming lieutenant Iago, in Oliver Parker’s Othello (1995). But, while that is the strongest account of the recognised text, the themes and implications of the play are most powerfully expressed for me in two modern-day updates both first seen in 2001: the Hollywood teen-flick O, which shifts the action to a high-school basketball team, and an adaptation made for ITV television under the original title, scripted by Andrew Davies. In the latter, Commander Othello is the first black leader of the London police force and Iago the frustrated deputy who connives against the boss and his wife, Desdemona. Powerfully acted by Eamonn Walker, Christopher Eccleston and Keeley Hawes, this is the Othello that most makes the play live for today.
8. Julius Caesar (1953)
US actors often draw a blank with iambic pentameters (with the recent exception of Kevin Spacey on stage) but Marlon Brando, in the days when he was still taking acting seriously, is an impressive Mark Antony in Joseph Mankiewicz’s vision of the Shakespeare work that has always spoken powerfully to the US, thanks to that country’s history of assassinations. A bonus is that the cast also includes John Gielgud as Cassius and James Mason as Brutus.
7. Chimes at Midnight (1965)
Non Fiction. Fiction. Menu. Book authors list.
Although vulnerable to a stewards’ inquiry from purists on the grounds that it is not a Shakespeare play as such, Orson Welles’s anthology of scenes from four plays featuring Sir John Falstaff, with himself as the gluttonous knight, achieves the unlikely paradox of being a scholarly romp. It just edges, in the specialised category of history play mashups, The Hollow Crown (2012), the BBC’s medley of the Henries and Richards, with Simon Russell Beale a tremendous Falstaff.
Nck box download area. 6.Coriolanus (2011)
The recent popularity of filmed Shakespeare has been encouraged by the prevalence of English classic actors who also have Hollywood heft: Branagh, Mirren, Ian McKellen and, in this case, Ralph Fiennes, who chose to make his movie-directing debut by filming himself in a version of a play (WS’s second-best Roman political tragedy after Julius Caesar) in which he had appeared on stage. Cannily adapted by screenwriter John Logan, this Coriolanus, set in a present-day Italian state, is spoken with great clarity by a cast that also includes Vanessa Redgrave, and the battles are viscerally thrilling, with the presence of Gerard Butler from the 300 franchise acknowledging that the more combative plays in the canon may draw in some action-movie 15-24 audiences.
The 10 best modern takes on Shakespeare – in pictures
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5. Macbeth (2015)
In answer to the Telegraph question: not, in my opinion, the best filmed Shakespeare ever, but impressively straight in at No 5 on release. While the war sequences nod vigorously (as with No 6) to the blood-thirsty younger audience, director Justin Kurzel also intelligently develops themes in the text of bereavement, trauma and faith, although relocating several interior scenes outdoors in order to show off the Scottish landscape. Michael Fassbender’s Macbeth achieves the perfect combination of clout and doubt, while Marion Cotillard is clear and moving despite the decision to downgrade the role of Lady Macbeth, possibly from a misguided fear of perpetuating a stereotype of the controlling wife. Though last to the party, this account easily takes the prize from the Orson Welles version of 1948 and Roman Polanski’s splatter-movie adaptation of 1971.
4. 10 Things I Hate About You (1999)
Super-purists might object to the inclusion of projects that replace the original text and even the title with contemporary language. This Gil Junger romcom, though, is a brilliantly original re-imagining of The Taming of The Shrew, as Heath Ledger’s Patrick Verona reluctantly woos the Kat Stratford of Julia Stiles in a story that miraculously transfers to a US high school the courtship conventions and contests of the original.
Movie Versions Of Macbeth Free
3.Hamlet (1996)
Best Movie Versions Of Macbeth
Teachers and students of A-level Englishmust annually give thanks to Branagh for a screen Hamlet that is unusually complete (justifying its four-hour length) and delivers narrative and language with immaculate classical clarity, not least in the director’s own handsome, haunted performance in the title role. Able to call in favours from all parts of the showbiz spectrum, Branagh casts actors you might expect (Derek Jacobi, Judi Dench) alongside many you wouldn’t: Jack Lemmon, Robin Williams, Ken Dodd. The great US novelist John Updike credited this film with inspiring his Elsinore-sequel novel, Gertrude and Claudius.
2.Romeo and Juliet (1996)
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Among productions that modernise the setting but preserve the original words, Joss Whedon’s low-budget Much Ado About Nothing (2012) is easily beaten in the final runoff by Baz Luhrmann’s invigorating shifting of the story of the Montagues and Capulets to the gang wars of Venice Beach, California. It can be argued that the Australian director had the advantages of a recognisable cinematic genre (teen tragedy) and the example of West Side Story, but his consistent finding of plausible modern interpretations for both story and speech manages to be simultaneously radical and respectful.
1.King Lear (1971)
Movie Versions Of Macbeth 3
The biggest loser from the stipulation that each play is represented only once is Akira Kurosawa, whose 1985 film Ran enthrallingly exported King Lear to the world of Japanese warlords. However, the clear victor in this category – and the whole competition – is Peter Brook’s magnificent black-and-white film adaptation of his 1962 RSC staging, with Paul Scofield as the king whose regime is ended by Daughtergate. Nine years closer to Lear’s likely real age than when he played the role on stage at 40, Scofield brings a musicality and depth of meaning to every line and also scores points between the words with scorched or scorching glances and grimaces. Fassbender, in the new Macbeth, looks to have learned from Scofield’s stillness and chilly diction.