Word: banquo
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...Tynan-Polanski adaptation contains some arresting notions. Ross becomes the third murderer of Banquo, and Donalbain (whom Shakespeare banished to Ireland early in the action) here reappears at the end of the play, riding across the grim countryside to seek counsel from the three witches. This ominous epilogue neatly evokes the idea of a cyclical, irresistible destiny...
...king. But he had every right to expect that he would be anyhow, for it must be remembered that in 11th-century Scotland the kingship was an elective office and that Duncan's public announcement making his son Malcolm the heir-apparent was actually illegal. When Macbeth and Banquo first hear the Witches prophecies, they laugh at them until the noblemen enter to prove the first prophecy true. Later, when Lady Macbeth is egging her husband on, Colicos not only says, "Prithee, peace," but also strikes her to the floor in anger. This man is no willing regicide. When...
...until Kemble's production of 1794. Nonetheless, it is wrong. And director Houseman was right to substitute a weak red spotlight instead (which has the added virtue of avoiding a decision as to whether one of the two appearances is the ghost of Duncan rather than of Banquo). The apparitions are hallucinatory and visible only to Macbeth. It makes no more sense to bring in a ghost visible to all the banqueters and to us than to lower a dagger on a string for the earlier soliloquy (and the true ghost appearances in Hamlet and Julius Caesar...
...historical Banquo was actually an accomplice in the murder of Duncan. In the play he was transmuted into a figure of unswerving loyalty and integrity, thus becoming a foil to the character of Macbeth. Here, as John Devlin plays him, he comes off rather colorless. Ernest Graves' Duncan, though gray-haired, is younger than usual--which is in keeping with Colicos' Macbeth, since the two are first cousins. John Cunningham's Malcolm is crisply spoken, but too priggish for my taste; I almost regret that he does gain the throne...
...film's major virtues are Kurosawa's, not Shakespeare's. Even with a normal-size screen, the camera, rarely moving in for a close-up or even a medium shot, tracks and frames the characters for a succession of strikingly beautiful compositions. And Kurosawa's time dilation--Macbeth and Banquo galloping endlessly in and out of the fog, or Duncan's pallbearers marching heavily up to the gates of his castle--shows the power that Hollywood in catering to the shortest common attention span, has sacrificed...