Macbeth

A return from war, a prophecy from three witches, and a king murdered. What follows is not a throne but insomnia. It was Roman Polanski's first film after the murder of Sharon Tate, and most critics tied the violence in it directly to that. Polanski chose the British theatre critic Kenneth Tynan to write it with him; Tynan said Polanski had exactly the right combination of fantasy and violence. Paramount and Universal turned the project down. The 2.4 million dollar budget came from Hugh Hefner's Playboy Enterprises. Polanski cast parts usually played old with young actors: Jon Finch was 29 and Francesca Annis 26. Lady Macbeth delivers the sleepwalking speech nude, which Polanski and Tynan defended on the grounds of how people actually slept in the medieval period. The box office was a disaster, losing about 3.5 million dollars. Pauline Kael accused it of reducing Shakespeare to the banal theme that life is a jungle; Roger Ebert gave it four stars and wrote that the king is revealed as a scared kid. Its standing rose over time. The National Board of Review named it the best film of 1972 and Rotten Tomatoes now sits at 78 percent. Who it is for: viewers who want Shakespeare bloody and ugly. Who it is not for: anyone looking for the dignity of the stage. This Macbeth is built out of dirt, muck and cold.