Word: macbeth
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Shostakovich it was a second fiery purification. In 1936, his clangorous Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk offended Stalin's ever-pricked ears, and the Pravda denunciation that followed kept Shostakovich under a cloud for five years. But this time the guilty composers did not need to suffer so prolonged a darkness. The road to quick redemption had been charted by another great Soviet artist, Cinema Director Sergei Eisenstein. Several times damned for deviation (notably for Ivan the Terrible), he always recanted, begged forgiveness, and put a little more pig iron in his next picture...
...Double Life (Universal-International). By popular tradition, all good actors "live" their parts.* Matinee Idol Anthony John (Ronald Colman) loses himself in his roles more thoroughly than most. Fortunately, he never plays Macbeth; it's dangerous enough when he becomes Othello...
Other would-be Pagliacci jumped at the idea. Minerva Pious, weary of Pansy Nussbaum, was a creditable Lady Macbeth. Ezra Stone, still unhappily and profitably playing Henry Aldrich at 30, would try Shylock. Jack Pearl would try King Lear; Morey Amsterdam was set to do Cyrano. Henry Morgan agreed to do a show, but couldn't decide on a role: "Anything but Shakespeare . . . I told them to get me something where a guy goes crazy. With a little nudge I can go out of my mind quite easily...
Huxley, beginning to breathe hard, offered the Macbeth tag, Sleep No More. When U-I still wasn't satisfied, he gave up. Then the studio went to work on the problem. How about The Unguarded Heart? Huxley winced. How about Art of Murder? Huxley shuddered. Or Black Velvet? Huxley beat his temples. Well, then: Vengeance? Or Woman of Vengeance? Huxley's wife tried to calm him down. All right, A Woman's Vengeance...
Appalling and terrible, Medea is somehow yet understandable and real-her emotions less hidden in the mists of the past than an Oedipus' or an Antigone's. And with a temerity as notable as her talent, Actress Anderson (Macbeth, The Three Sisters) brought those emotions spectacularly out into the open. She flung aside both classic control and realistic restraint. She played Medea half in the grand manner, half in the Grand Guignol manner; she used every wile of body and face, every art of voice and gesture, to produce something possibly mixed or impure-but definitely, undeniably overwhelming...