Shakespeare’s play Macbeth has been done many times on stage, and many times on the silver screen. Read reviews of the very best Macbeth movies below – specifically Roman Polanski’s 1971 Macbeth movie, and Trevor Nunn’s 1978 version of Macbeth on the big screen.
Macbeth Movie 1971: Roman Polanski
It is surprising that so few films have been made of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, given that the play is such an exciting drama, filled with all the ingredients that would keep an audience on the edge of their seats.
Certainly, when Polanski’s 1971 Macbeth movie came out in 1971 it was a blockbuster. The cinemas filled up with group bookings by schools as teachers crocodiled their students to the local theatre. It met the cinematic expectations of movie-goers of the time, with its extreme and vivid violence, nudity, close-up face to face fighting and special effects. Read full review
Macbeth Movie 1978: Trevor Nunn
Nunn’s 1978 Macbeth movie is not cinematic in any way – it’s theatrical, a television version of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s stage production – but nevertheless a brilliant film.
The actors sit in a large circle and come forward for their performances. Most of the time, you are unaware of the circle of actors as the filming is always close-up with the focus on the characters, isolated and lit, with darkness all around them. The language of the play indicates the perpetual darkness, as this is a vision of Hell. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth have turned their castle into a hell, and when Duncan enters beneath its portals, that’s what he is going into. Read full review
Macbeth Movie 2015: Justin Kurzel
When a film writer adapts a Shakespeare play for the big screen, she has to make it of much shorter duration, invariably having to cut up to half of the beautiful poetry that makes up the Shakespeare text. That in itself causes a huge landslide of the original meaning, that inevitably obscures or conceals, or at least changes, Shakespeare’s intentions. Read full review
The Tragedy of Macbeth 2021: Joel Cohen
Joel Coen’s 2021 film “The Tragedy of Macbeth” is a tale of two stories – Shakespeare’s and Coen’s – and the result is a remarkable film. If the point of thousands of directors and actors telling the Macbeth story over four centuries is that there are always new things to see in new productions and that directors and actors have the opportunity to reveal them, this film hits the mark. Read full review
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how is the trevor nunn version in comparison to shakespeares text?
The Trevor Nunn version is basically a faithful version of Shakespeare’s play, using the original text.
I am always surprised that the filmed version with Antony Sher and Harriet Walter directed by Gregory Doran seems never to be mentioned in these evaluations, because it is just excellent. Maybe it’s because it is difficult to find online. But it can be found and rented on Vimeo. Also sometimes it can be seen using your public library card.
Obviously it’s a matter of taste, but at least in my opinion, I think it (the version with Antony Sher as Macbeth) is the best, certainly leagues better than the one with Fassbender. Although it doesn’t have the beautiful cinematography of that film, what it does have is superb acting and adherence to the script, and a very fresh interpretation. I really can’t say enough good about it.
I do agree that the versions directed by Trevor Nunn and Roman Polanski are also very, very good, each in its own way.
There’s quite a few more versions, surely? Orson Welles’s for one.