Macbeth

Dusky oranges yield to arctic blues, the witches' sticks pierce the first image in anticipation of hurlyburly to come. The Scottish moors, or somewhere less earthly? "This place is too cold for Hell!" Roman Polanski's worldview of brutish power-plays is at home in Shakespeare's medieval times: A soldier surveys the charred landscape after battle, walks up to a fallen enemy and delivers a few extra ax thwacks for good measure. There are no knights, the suits of armor are rusty and blood-spattered. Violence comes easily to Macbeth (Jon Finch), who "play'dst most fondly" for the baleful prophecy. No al fresco composition is without darkening clouds, no occasion for vivid widescreen slaughter is wasted—the murder of Duncan (Nicholas Selby) is a grisly close-up surrounded by dismembered sentries, the betrayed Banquo (Martin Shaw) materializes at the banquet like one of Goya's goblins. Matchless camerawork reminiscent of Preminger (Saint Joan) takes it all in, following characters up and down stairs and corridors, floating on their malice. "Horror horror! Confusion hath made his masterpiece." Sharon Tate's murder inevitably looms in these visions, the smoky sabbath is an unholy dilation of the wrinkled Satan-worshippers of Rosemary's Baby, there's no mistaking the Mansonite whiff of the raid on Macduff's (Terence Bayler) clan. Lady Macbeth (Francesca Annis) is at her most touching while sleepwalking nude, an oneiric tremulousness to set against the mirrors, grinning jesters and ferocious zooms of the protagonist's remarkable cauldron hallucination. (Boorman in Excalibur takes notice.) The sword-clanking finale is a clear-as-a-nightmare culmination of the barbaric aesthetic: The crown goes on the head, the head comes off. "I've almost forgotten the taste of fear," confesses the usurper besieged. Polanski could never forget. Cinematography by Gilbert Taylor. With John Stride, Stephan Chase, Paul Shelley, Maisie MacFarquhar, Noelle Rimmington, and Elsie Taylor.