Word: macduff
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After Lady Macbeth's mind has cracked under the strain, Macbeth nearly throttles the Doctor for his inability to cure her. Gradually he becomes more and more disillusioned. When the last charm proves hollow and Macduff relates his Caesarean birth, Colicos does not yell his reply ("Accursed be that tongue that tells me so."), as usually done, but rather delivers it very effectively at a soft level...
Finally, with his entire world crumbled about him and without the slightest glimmer of hope left, Macbeth still insists on summoning up his transcendent courage to meet his death with honor. Fine enough, but Houseman carries the idea too far, and the result elicits smiles. Shakespeare specified that Macduff was to kill Macbeth off stage and then enter with the tyrant's head. Instead, we see the entire duel. Macbeth even picks Macduff up and swings him on his shoulders. Macduff while up there pulls out a dagger and stabs Macbeth in the back. But Macbeth is too strong...
...makes Ross surprisingly credible. His first entrance is on the run; and he kneels before King Duncan more out of exhaustion than deference. Only in the course of his lengthy report does he gain his breath, stand up, and gradually inject his words with increasing enthusiasm. Tom Aldredge's Macduff is properly honest and resolute. But when, before the climactic duel, he says, "I have no words;/My voice is in my sword," one wishes the statement were literally true, for his vocal delivery through-out the play is throaty and gargly...
Jerry Dodge's drunken Porter is a commendable cameo. And he gives an admirable solution to one textual problem. Just before Macduff and Lennox enter through the gate, the Porter has the line, "I pray you, remember the porter." A number of scholars claim this is meant as an aside to the audience--which seems pretty silly. Dodge, however, saves the line until Macduff enters, and then speaks it with one palm extended, thereby turning it into a request for a tip in return for having roused himself to open the gate at an ungodly hour...
Throughout the film (his 17th), Kurosawa took liberties with the Shakespearen plot--Macduff hardly matters, and his wife and children don't exist at all--but it is at the climax that he deviates most widely and most successfully. The minutes during which Macbeth is killed are literally the most terrible I can recall on the screen. Japanese directors seem peculiarly able to treat extremes of violence, neither leering nor covering up the gore. In Throne of Blood, as in Ichikawa's Fires on the Plain or Kobayashi's Harakiri, the violence leaves one shaken and, in something close...