1 00:00:01,000 --> 00:00:05,000 Kiernan Ryan: I think there's something rather interesting about the development of Macbeth's… 2 00:00:05,000 --> 00:00:12,000 ..characterisation by Orson Welles, at the start he's youthful and charismatic… 3 00:00:12,000 --> 00:00:19,000 ..and athletic looking, every inch the warlord, the successful glamorous warlord, 4 00:00:19,000 --> 00:00:21,000 and once he attains to the crown… 5 00:00:22,000 --> 00:00:26,000 (Kiernan Ryan) after the murder he becomes in a very Citizen Kane-like way, rather bloated, 6 00:00:27,000 --> 00:00:31,000 (Kiernan Ryan) heavy drinking, slightly comical sinister monster… 7 00:00:31,000 --> 00:00:33,000 (Kiernan Ryan) a point that's underlined very dramatically, 8 00:00:33,000 --> 00:00:37,000 (Kiernan Ryan) this is a good example I think of the subtle use of sound in movies, 9 00:00:37,000 --> 00:00:40,000 (Kiernan Ryan) by a kind of pumping tuba. 10 00:00:41,000 --> 00:00:52,000 (tuba on film soundtrack) 11 00:00:55,000 --> 00:00:59,000 (Kiernan Ryan) And so in that regard at least, you can see potentially tragic contrasts… 12 00:00:59,000 --> 00:01:04,000 ..between the kind of man he started out being, and the sort of bloated buffoon in a way, 13 00:01:05,000 --> 00:01:09,000 or rather… sinister and lethal bloated buffoon that he winds up being. 14 00:01:10,000 --> 00:01:13,000 Sue Wiseman: Interestingly actually after that rather wonderful banquet scene… 15 00:01:13,000 --> 00:01:17,000 ..there is a moment where the question of what Lady Macbeth has become and… 16 00:01:17,000 --> 00:01:22,000 ..the question of what Macbeth himself now is - this kind of rather bloated figure… 17 00:01:22,000 --> 00:01:26,000 ..who is also I think in the banquet scene, been a tragic figure, 18 00:01:27,000 --> 00:01:30,000 (Sue Wiseman) they're sitting alone together and when he's saying he's gonna do in… 19 00:01:30,000 --> 00:01:35,000 (Sue Wiseman) ..all the McDuffs, and he sits there and he's this very solid kind of, 20 00:01:37,000 --> 00:01:40,000 (Sue Wiseman) ..the whole of his body sort of one pendulous thing sitting on this kind of… 21 00:01:41,000 --> 00:01:45,000 this end of the bed posture isn't it, like we're locked in this terrible relationship… 22 00:01:45,000 --> 00:01:49,000 ..I was gonna tell you about my death, and she is increasingly… 23 00:01:49,000 --> 00:01:52,000 ..she says "oh, you'll see to it will you", and then she moves right off… 24 00:01:53,000 --> 00:01:56,000 (Sue Wiseman) ..and in a way that' s the last time we see them together, 25 00:01:56,000 --> 00:01:59,000 (Sue Wiseman) and that's the point at which they both become those things… 26 00:01:59,000 --> 00:02:02,000 (Sue Wiseman) ..that they're going to be to the end. -(Keirnan Ryan) That s right, yes, 27 00:02:02,000 --> 00:02:04,000 they're strange and isolated and on a one way track collision course with… 28 00:02:04,000 --> 00:02:06,000 ..their own private obscure tragedies, yes. 29 00:02:07,000 --> 00:02:11,000 Stephen Regan: We do see some very striking uses of cinematic technique in the… 30 00:02:11,000 --> 00:02:14,000 ..Orson Welles Macbeth, particularly the dissolves, the way in which… 31 00:02:14,000 --> 00:02:18,000 ..certain images just turn into a very fluid state. 32 00:02:19,000 --> 00:02:23,000 Sue Wiseman: Yes that's the area in which the film organises ambiguity as opposed to... 33 00:02:24,000 --> 00:02:27,000 ..the black and white imagery which creates contrast. It seems to me that... 34 00:02:28,000 --> 00:02:32,000 ..the hallucinatory quality of Macbeth's own life and the way his life is turning into… 35 00:02:32,000 --> 00:02:36,000 ..a phantasmagoria, is really beautifully conveyed by the dissolves, and there's… 36 00:02:36,000 --> 00:02:42,000 ..a wonderful moment when he's thinking about the murder of Banquo and Fleance, 37 00:02:43,000 --> 00:02:48,000 and there's a tree branch and that dissolves into the murderer sitting on the tree branch, 38 00:02:48,000 --> 00:02:55,000 and it creates a lovely kind of set of questions about what he is acting out, 39 00:02:55,000 --> 00:02:58,000 and how far fantasy is motivating that in that point. 40 00:02:59,000 --> 00:03:03,000 (Kiernan Ryan) Yeah, I think that' s a wonderful example of the way cinematic technique... 41 00:03:03,000 --> 00:03:07,000 ..in this case the use of montage and dissolves, can really capture the use of that… 42 00:03:08,000 --> 00:03:11,000 ..the pre-figurative use of that same technique in Shakespeare s own poetry… 43 00:03:12,000 --> 00:03:16,000 ..which is notorious for the way it can slip and slide and slither from one idea, 44 00:03:16,000 --> 00:03:21,000 one connotation or association or image to another within the space of a single line, 45 00:03:21,000 --> 00:03:24,000 I think that's really marvellously caught, that's a terrific example I think of... 46 00:03:25,000 --> 00:03:31,000 ..finding a cinematic equivalent for the poetic resonances of Shakespeare's language. 47 00:03:32,000 --> 00:03:47,000 (dramatic film music) 48 00:03:49,000 --> 00:03:52,000 (Stephen Regan) It's fascinating as well how through cinematic technique we see… 49 00:03:53,000 --> 00:03:56,000 (Stephen Regan) ..a comment not just on Shakespeare's age, but on our own, 50 00:03:56,000 --> 00:04:01,000 the way in which cinema seems to pre-figure so much of what is happening in our own time. 51 00:04:02,000 --> 00:04:08,000 Not surprisingly the Orson Welles Macbeth drew on fears of fascism prevalent in the 1940s, 52 00:04:08,000 --> 00:04:12,000 as much as on issues of kingship in Shakespeare's own time. 53 00:04:13,000 --> 00:04:17,000 Roman Polanski was just a child when the Welles' Macbeth was being made, 54 00:04:17,000 --> 00:04:23,000 but his version of Macbeth also seems to show us specifically 20th century power struggles.