Word: orson
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Macbeth (Mercury Production; Republic), as Actor-Director Orson Welles tells it in this movie, is not quite the great tragedy of a noble man gone wrong; it is more the story of a dead-end kid on the make. Like an energetic small boy tinkering with an alarm clock, Orson breaks down the drama into bits and pieces-and cannot seem to fit it together again. Nonetheless, it is an interesting, unconventional...
...gives it the dignity of classic tragedy. Welles has kept the claptrap, but his Macbeth is no once-honorable soldier whose muddled aspirations trap him into a crime against himself (the murder of King Duncan, in the play, also destroys the murderer's ability to live with himself). Orson has robbed the play of tragic impact by substituting a conniving heel who kills as he climbs...
...Orson's fascination with the echoes of his own voice on the sound track (a hangover from Citizen Kane) sometimes makes his Macbeth resemble an unmannerly uproar in a coal mine. The on-again-off-again use of a Scotch burr by some of the actors, including the star, does not help; but the production's main fault is that Welles and his leading lady (Jeanette Nolan) play their roles, for most of 95 minutes, at the top of their lungs...
...those rare moments when Orson swaps his own resonant roars for the sounder music of Shakespeare (as in the reading of "Tomorrow, and tomorrow . . ."), he is very good indeed. More often, he shares with the rest of his cast a tendency to throw good Shakespeare after...
...slightly different line, dance humorist Iva Kitchell is currently performing at Jordan Hall. The world of the cinema offers a little of everything this weekend, with a selection from Sabu to Shakespeare playing in the vicinity. The latter is represented with two productions, Laurence Oliver's magnificent Hamlet, and Orson Welles' less successful Macbeth, playing at the Astor and Esquire respectively. Sabu gets in his licks with the return to town of his ancient classic Drums, which is billed with yet another tale of the Black Heart of Africa, Alexander Korda's Four Feathers...