Day 27: Shakespeare on film: A Playboy Macbeth??

I was searching for the definitive "Macbeth movie" and I came up a little short. Is there one? I'm not sure. But here are some of the ones I came across...

Scotland, PA (2001)

Scotland, PA (2001) was a modern retelling of Shakespeare's tragic play, following the life of Joe Mcbeth, a line cook at a greasy spoon called Duncan's. Of course his wife has big plans for how he can advance his career...

I remember really wanting to see Scotland, PA when it first came out and now I wish I had because it's kind of hard to find online. Bummer.

Laurence Olivier's Macbeth (never filmed)

Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth in 1955, a stage production that never made it to screen

Apparently an English professor has just stumbled across Olivier's long lost screenplay for his version of Macbeth, written over 50 years ago. Will someone now film it? Interesting...

Macbeth (1948)

Orson Welles' low-budget Macbeth, which was filmed in just 23 days

Apparently Orson Welles called his film a "violently sketched charcoal drawing of a great play" so it sounds just awful.


Macbeth (1971)

Movie poster for Roman Polanski's 1971 Macbeth

Did you know that brilliant filmmaker and horrible human being Roman Polanski made a film version of Macbeth? I sure didn't. It was the first film he made after his pregnant wife Sharon Tate was brutally murdered by the Manson family, and it was financed by Hugh Hefner and Playboy. Some say that's why he included so much gratuitous nudity (Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking scene is done completely in the nude, even though the play specifically mentions her wearing a nightgown, but whatever). The real controversy was the amount of brutal violence he chose to include, which was a lot, even for Macbeth.