The Tragedy of Macbeth (1971)

Within the Athens & Epidaurus Festival framework and the «Shakespeare in the City» tribute.

Director: Roman Polanski
Cast: Jon Finch, Francesca Annis, Martin Shaw
Duration: 140'

Two years after the savage assassination of his wife, Sharon Tate, Roman Polanski adapts one of Shakespeare’s most famous tragedies in all its brutality and violence.

Even though such an adaptation is hard not to be considered as a desperate effort from the director to exorcise his own personal demons, it is worth confronting this blood-shed and dark «Macbeth» as a film fully in compliance with the director’s concerns and pessimistic worldview, but also as an excellent transfer of the famous play into the silver screen.

Totally respecting the Shakespearean vision, Polanski realistically films with as much authenticity as possible interchangeably natural locations of wild beauty and semi-lighted gothic sceneries, bringing out all the claustrophobia and the severity of the play and portraying the heroes as lost souls, victims of dark forces and prays of their own disastrous illusions.

The result is unforgettable.

Loukas Katsikas