Director: Orson Welles
Cast: Orson Welles, Jeanette Nolan, Dan O’Herlihy, Roddy McDowall
Have I Seen it Before: Never. I know. I’m a fraud. Do I turn my credentials into you or is there some kind of central office to which I need to mail it.
Did I Like It: I mean, right out of the gate, I’m thinking… Gee, he even managed to give the witches Scottish accents. As the film proceeds, nearly every character (maybe not so much Dan O’Herlihy’s Macduff, but you can’t win them all). You don’t see that in every filmed adaptation of the Scottish play. Hell, at times it feels like the Scottish accent is the single most misappropriated in the history of the motion picture, but then again, that might be mostly tied to Sean Connery and his vague insistence to never play a Scotsman, but instead play every other nationality on the Earth as if they were Scottish.
Here in this film, the big budgets of the studios had departed, and were never to quite return (with the possible exception of Touch of Evil (1958), but this is where the least spoken about parts of Welles’ genius (and he was a genius, despite what the vagaries of Hollywood might have tried to do to it) comes into full, undeniable bloom.
Even when the money had run out, and the eyes of power not only ignored Welles but were content (and not entirely incorrect) in their assessment that they had destroyed him, he was still committed to making a film that always engages, and often surprises. Welles is—from the film’s first few moments—reaching for something a bit better than the average, and in ways that people would have never noticed/forgiven him. This is a b-movie in the resources brought to bear, but that doesn’t mean it has to accept its lowly status. It will always reach to be one for the ages. Failure is acceptable (it does not fail), but it would be in accepting limitations that things become irretrievably lost.
One note? While Mercury stalwart Jeanette Nolan equates herself well as Lady Macbeth, I can’t help but wonder if Welles had only met Eartha Kitt earlier. Had she played the character, the film just might have been as memorable (if not necessarily better) than Citizen Kane (1941).