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A Performance of Macbeth (1979) (TV) More at IMDbPro »

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11 out of 13 people found the following comment useful :-
superb, 23 July 2003
Author: didi-5 from United Kingdom

Ian MacKellen is quite possibly the greatest Macbeth ever to appear on film. He is absolutely brilliant in this record of the RSC's Other Place production, which chops up the text and does magical things with it. He knows when to use the verse Shakespeare gave him, and what to do with it. Perfectly complementing him is Judi Dench (great in the sleepwalking scene), a small and fragile she-devil. John Woodvine is a majestical Banquo - you truly believe he is the head of a long line of kings - while Ian MacDiarmid is a memorable Porter/Ross. Roger Rees is good value as Malcolm (despite the awful pullover), and Bob Peck is a calm Macduff, only stirred into action by his personal tragedy.

We can get under the skin of these characters, we believe in them. Although this is sourced from a stage production, it uses film to a great advantage and adds layers of atmosphere in its simple and effective setting. Highly recommended.

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8 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
Macbeth, 20 July 1999
Author: Tim Cox from Marietta, OH

Dead solid perfect handling of the Shakespeare chiller with greats McKellan and Dench giving their all in stellar performances. A brilliant scene involving Dench as Lady Macbeth in a breakdown that is so haunting, but so incredibly real. She lets out this god awful scream that frightens but also conveys to us beautifully the emotion and loss that this character has just endured. An astonishing achievement.

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6 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
A Masterpiece!, 27 December 1999
10/10
Author: peacham from Wilkes- Barre pa.



Trevor Nunn has done somthing I never dreamed could be possible.He has staged the perfect Macbeth! Sir Ian McKellen and Dame Judi Dench, (in my opinion the world's greatest actors)have given the performances of a life time. McKellen's slow decent into Madness is so emotionally powerful that you wonder if anything can equal it,the only thing that does is Dench's own mad scene. Nunn has taken Shakespeare's text and stripped it to its bare emotions,the film is one raw nerve after another from the appearance of the witches and their well acted trances,to the image of the saintly,almost pontifical King Duncan praying after battle. Ian McDiarmid also deserves high praise for his dual role of the austere Thane of Ross and the drunken,almost effeminate Porter. This film is an experience that,once seen,you will never forget.In fact you will want to watch it over an over again. In short,this is Perfect Shakespeare.

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4 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
Truly Painful to watch, 21 November 2008
2/10
Author: David Wampach from United States

I am an English/Drama teacher, I just showed this to my seniors. I admit there are few good versions of Macbeth on film. However, this made my skin crawl. After spending five weeks in class reading the play, my students actually enjoyed it and understood it. With Ian McKellan and Judi Dench, I was certain this would be top quality, but sadly I was wrong. The costumes were nonsensical. The actors moved between hideous over-acting and don't-care-just-pay-me-already-under-acting. I almost wondered if they were on some form of hallucinogenic drug while performing. I have never been more disappointed by something I thought spark further interest for the students. As someone who has directed Shakespeare, I understand the limited use of props and background, however the whole thing looks a bad early MTV music video. I expected Gary Neumann to come out and sing "Cars." Say what you want about the bizarre Roman Polanski version, at least that one is inspired by some form of creativity.

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4 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
can't get much better than this, 5 June 2002
9/10
Author: Sylvia Marciniak (sylviastel@aol.com) from United States

Dame Judi and Sir Ian McKellen are unforgettable in their roles as MacBeth and Lady Macbeth. It is the best version and I plan to show this film to high school students in the future. It is amazing at how little props can mean and scenery. The actors have chewed it up to focus on the tragedy of Macbeth. Also performing is TV Cheers actor, Roger Rees in one of the supporting roles. Griffith Jones who is still kicking in his 90s plays the old King Duncan. This low budget version was first shown on British television which caused Dame Judi Dench to stop watching herself on television because she would only criticize herself for not being good enough. I don't know what that means to an accomplished actress like Dame Judi Dench. How good do you have to be to remembered in the same category as Dame Peggy Ashcroft, her mentor, Damme Ellen Terry, and Sarah Siddons?

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3 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
Stunning, 24 October 2004
Author: partnerfrance from France

This is probably "Macbeth" as Shakespeare really saw it produced -- no fancy scenery, no elaborate sets, just stunning actors conveying everything Shakespeare intended to convey by the power of their own speech and actions.

The defining moment for me is the banquet scene, where McKellan manages to go from icily cynical schemer to stark raving maniac on seeing Banquo's ghost, and then back again to schemer and then yet back again to broken, frightened shadow of a man by the end of the scene, without for a moment over-acting and without us, the viewer, even seeing Banquo's ghost.

The only false note I think the production had was Judi Dench -- as others have said here, she is of course a splendid actress and her sleepwalking scene was wonderful. But part of what drives Macbeth in the play is Lady Macbeth's threat to withhold sexual favors and her denigration of his masculinity if Macbeth doesn't act more "like a man" and go through with the murder of Duncan (conveyed in this version by her avoiding Macbeth's attempted kiss in the "milk of human kindness" scene), and frankly in this production Dame Judi lacked the sex appeal that would make this viable.

Still, a bravura performance and certainly the best Macbeth I have seen filmed.

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4 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
Best Version, 20 October 1999
10/10
Author: Novastar (dj.novastar@dial.pipex.com) from England

I have seen a fair few versions of this play but this one knocks every single one out the way. There is no better way to get the full experience of this work apart from performing it yourself. Every performance is spot on, the camera work divine and all done so that no aspect of the theatrical performance is lost.

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4 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
Primarily for ardent Shakespeare fans, 11 November 2007
6/10
Author: bandw from Boulder, CO

This is about as spare a production of a Shakespeare play as you are likely to get. It is really more of a reading of the play than a performance. It is listed as being in color, but the colors are so muted that I had to check that my TV was not broken, since it looked pretty much like black and white to me.

Anyone coming to this production cold is going to be quite confused and will most likely abandon the effort.

The acting is stagy - you might say that this film sets the standard for the definition of that word. This will definitely not be for all tastes. As good an actor as McKellen is I could never connect with him in this performance, though he does do a great job on some of the soliloquies, particularly the one ending with "it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing." I was much more engaged by McKellen during his talks about the performance on the DVD extras than I was by his performance in the film. Dench's Lady Macbeth was too shrill for me.

There are some interesting innovations, like "Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble," being sung as a Gregorian Chant throughout most of Act IV, Scene 1. Other scenes did not work as well for me, such as the opening shot where the camera pans around the circle of actors. Having some text describing the characters that the actors were portraying would have been helpful, but I saw little significance to this as it is. And the loud organ music I found distracting and inconsistent with the production.

There are some casting problems. Roger Rees as Malcomb, dressed in his knit turtleneck sweater, looks more like he just came out of a fraternity party than being the leader of a large army.

Purists will hurl stones at me for saying it, but I much prefer Polanski's cinematic. "The Tragedy of Macbeth."

McKellen is quoted as saying that this is Shakespeare on the cheap. I think that the statement "You get what you pay for," might apply here.

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1 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
This Version of "Macbeth" Miles Above and Beyond All Others, 6 July 2006
10/10
Author: GalaxyGal from Tyngsborough, MA, USA

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Truthfully, I am a witch (a beginner, but learning) because of "Macbeth." Against a backdrop of personal tragedy, I heard a recording of and read the play when I was 10, and dragged my mother to the Roman Polanski movie (in 1971). Mom wasn't prepared for naked witches.

The reason I wanted to be a witch then was personal power; it took me about 25 years to grow up and realize that power isn't the essence of witchcraft--wisdom is. From power comes only the abuse of power and the obliteration of the self. From wisdom comes power and the discernment to recognize that 9 of 10 instances are not worth using that power on. Okay, that's the end of the witchcraft testimonial.

This is the most minimalist, claustrophobic, monochrome, and noir-lit production of "Macbeth" I've seen, and I mean that in a good way. All the action takes place within a large circle on a dark stage, with the actors sitting on cubes around the circumference. The costumes are dark and minimalistic--they're of any (historic) period and all periods.

This filmed production's advantage over a live performance in a theatre is that the camera focuses on the actors, with master shots of two or more persons and tight head-and-shoulder closeups for soliloquies. The viewer can see the characters' emotional turmoil in the actors' eyes; and we know that the eyes are the windows into the soul. Trevor Nunn's design and direction moves this play from the realm of 'tragedy' to the heights of 'possession by the gods of drama'.

Ancient Greek actors often wore masks while acting their tragedies, and I have a theory why. To project the emotional turmoil, to subsume one's own personality to larger-than-life characters, to make the playwright's words live and breathe, in essence, to make the play an offering to the gods and Muses, the actors had to do an early form of 'method' acting. If they *had* performed without masks, I think the audience would have been taken aback by the sheer power of some of those performances--or, I may be reading too much into ancient drama.

Without prosthetics, makeup, or lighting effects, the three actresses who play the Witches bar no holds and set no limits to what they do to become their characters, startling the audience and making them cringe and squirm. It's as if their faces 'morph' and they physically *change* because they're unrecognizable in the minor roles they also play.

The same is also true of Ian McKellen and Judi Dench; from the end of Act I, Macbeth and his Lady start a slow slide from sanity to insanity, as their consciences render punishment. Ian McKellen as Macbeth is happy but cautious when he's reunited with his wife (Act I, Scene 5), he has no plans to take action until he examines his options; Lady Macbeth instigates Duncan's murder precipitously, with dire consequences. In the medieval world, not only was it a crime to kill a person, but to kill a God-anointed sovereign was a crime and a sin against God. (Elizabeth I was outraged when her Privy Council carried out Mary Queen of Scot's execution; it wasn't that Mary was Liz's cousin, but that she was a God-anointed sovereign that bothered her so much.)

In reading about witchcraft around the world, something interesting stuck that comes to mind when I watch this "Macbeth." In Haitian voudoun, congregants communicate with the loa (sing. & pl.), the gods, during a drum-propelled rite of frenzied dancing and other, ordinarily dangerous, acts; these men and women are protected from harm because the loa inhabit and control of their bodies temporarily. In "Macbeth," the actresses playing the Witches, Ian, and Judi appear at times to be "ridden by the loa," possessed by pagan gods--or the Muses, notably in A.I, Ss. 1, 3, 5, 7; A.II, S. 2; A.III, S. 4; A.IV, S. 1; A.V, Ss. 1 & 5. In A.III, S. 4, the Banquet scene, you aren't seeing Ian McKellen, the guy who played Gandalf, Magneto, and James Whale--you're seeing a man whose guilty conscience is causing a complete psychological breakdown, followed by Judi in A.V, S. 1, the sleepwalking scene; the minds of these characters are falling apart from trying to hide their knowing crime and sin.

This production has turned Shakespeare's "Macbeth" into a weapon that stabs one's eyes, ears, and mind with horrific actions and images. Don't watch it in a dark room, and don't watch it alone. I give it 10 of 10 stars.

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1 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Perhaps the finest recorded version of 'Macbeth', 29 March 2001
10/10
Author: thatbookguy (thatbookguy@yahoo.com) from Wichita, KS

Possible to find a "perfect" adaptation of a Shakespeare play? If this production isn't it, I don't know what is. The entire script is used to full effect, with magnificent performances all round. Shakespeare's portrait of human evil has never looked better.

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