Word: macduff
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...with such moments that Kurosawa shows the eloquence of simple action. The classic scenes and images neither fall flat nor stick out as irrelevant set-pieces. The haggish forest spirit who replaces the Weird Sisters is as eery as they, with her boomy, slowed-down voice. Macduff's advancing army, seen through Fuji's mists, really does seem like a forest on the march...
Carl Nagin too, who played Macduff, has a good voice and a fine sense of timing. The form employed them well. Blau's Banquo has an air about him that suggests great insight and great sorrow...
...vital irreverence the director has translated Shakespeare's words into Japanese images, Shakespeare's lords into Japanese barons. Even in Shakespeare's plot, Kurosawa has condensed detail, juggled scenes, chucked the sentimental excrescences-among them, thank heaven, the soap-operatic murder of poor little Baby Macduff. Kurosawa's intention is plainly to hack off the Gothic foliage of Shakespeare's fancy and compress his tale into that traditional form of Japanese theater known as noh. As in those vast dance-dramas of destiny, Kurosawa's actors run to the grand mythological gesture, speak...
...effects can also be heightened by outdoor production. During one festival performance of Macbeth, deep grey thunderheads compiled themselves overhead as Birnam wood moved to high Dunsinane hill; the branches of the plane trees around and above the stage began to sway and whip; and when Macbeth finally faced Macduff on the ramparts, it was a battle fought in lightning and horizontal rain...
...long Malcolm-Macduff-Ross scene in England is masterly writing; but it is difficult to bring off, and is usually radically cut. Here is almost intact, and expertly played by James Ray, Richard Waring, and Patrick Hines...