Macbeth (Orson Welles, 1948)

Thankfully not as feyly mannered as Laurence Olivier's Hamlet of the same year, Welles's Shakespeare adaptation is nevertheless beset with vulnerabilities of its own. It may have been unacceptably cinematic for traditionalist critics at the time but in modern terms feels stiffly stagebound, the casting of Roddy McDowall as a pipsqueak Malcolm and Dan O'Herlihy as a cardboard cutout Macduff is ill-judged, and some of the attempts at expressionist cutaways fall flat on their face. Yet some really work too, and at least Welles in his pomp wasn't afraid to tweak a sacrosanct text. It ends up in overall credit largely because of his own towering performance as the frantic despot and that of Jeanette Nolan, a screen debutant, as his goading wife.

6/10