A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

This is one of the scariest movies of all time. It is one of the best witch horror movie I have ever seen. The 1948 version is a little bite better. This it is a great movie. 7.5 is underrating. William Shakespeare was one of the best writers of this time. And this is his one of his best. See this movie it is a great movie. Jon Finch was a great actor. Francesa Annis is a great actresses Roman Polanski is a great film maker. This movie has a great story line. It also has great acting. This a great movie. It is a must see. Great movie great movie great movie. I give it 10 out of 10. See it see it see it see it see it see it see it.

Not badly done at all. Peter Finch is a handsome young MacBeth, always responsible except when he's nuts. And Francesca Annis is a toothsome redhead. "Back in the day," this would have been shot under in Hollywood sunshine, full of scintillating seas and glorious gorse. But the director places the story where it belongs, in a Scotland of lowering skies, one that is dark, windswept, rainy, and almost barren.It's always interesting to see how movie directors handle the soliloquies. The conventions of the stage rarely work. Polanski gives the actors interior monologues. Lots of emotional close ups, not befitting a stage. It all works pretty well.MacBeth is a likable play, party because it's masterfully done -- the unlikely rhymes still raise my eyebrows -- but also because it's short and because the narrative is clear. The Bard could write some clunkers. I wonder if anyone can really sit through "Love's Labour's Lost" and truthfully claim he enjoyed it. No problem with MacBeth though, and nothing obscure about what's going on. If "Hamlet" was about a man who could not make up his mind, "MacBeth" is about a man whose reach exceeded his grasp -- and who went to hell for it. MacBeth has his head lopped off -- maybe twice, according to the play. WS needed a good copy editor.Oh, how we recognize that motive, the lust for power. It shows up in our technology. All of the Volkswagon Beetles of 1960 have been replaced by SUVs too massive to fit into the garage. A .38 special is infra dig. We want .44 magnums. Nor is the play politically correct in any way. It takes Lady MacBeth one second to decide that the King has to be slaughtered so her husband can rule. Okay, so the current king has just promoted MacBeth and given him a title. But "Thane of Cawdor," my foot. It's the KING who has the power.Of course the king's isn't the only death. The wily Lady MacBeth has framed the king's guards and MacBeth quickly slaughters them before they can be questioned. MacBeth is now King of Scotland but "uneasy lies the head that wears the crown," as someone once said. There is another threat. MacBeth's friend and rival -- Banquo, and his child must go too. The kid gets away but Banquo is assassinated in the woods. Banquo gets even later by showing up as a decomposing corpse at MacBeth's castle, Dunsinane, and spoiling a festive dinner.That famous scene is handled well enough although Polanksi brings nothing special to it, nor to the rest of the story for that matter. It's not distinctively Polanski's in any way, no "Chinatown" or "Rosemary's Baby." Visually, the most impressive scene is MacBeth's second visit to the Sinister Sisters in pursuit of some vision of the future. They slip him some psychedelic drug and things go round and round, to a point that surpasseth understanding -- mine anyway.Fortunately, Polanski works a little nudity into the play. When Lady Macbeth is wandering around in her sleep she's not wearing any clothes, a nice artistic touch. Too bad she talks to herself and spills the beans about her crimes in front of two gawking attendants. MacDuff's little boy is naked too and so are the Weird Sisters but they can be disregarded. One's testosterone level dwindles at the sight of those flabby, toothless, blind, cackling old women.MacBeth has still another impediment. There's MacDuff, next in line for the throne, now in exile. By this time, with so much blood having been shed, MacBeth's nobility and courtiers are beginning to wise up. They joke about MacBeth behind his back and wish him gone. But he's not gone yet. Now a tyrannical ruler, he must commit more and more murders to protect himself. MacDuff may be gone for the moment, but that doesn't stop MacBeth's lackeys from murdering MacDuff's wife and young son, while raping the maids and pillaging the house. That's a pretty rotten thing to do, when you get right down to it. Certainly MacDuff thinks so when he gets wind of it. He and his army set off in search of justice and revenge. MacDuff lays on. Boy, does he lay on.Polanski has a habit -- unfortunate in my opinion -- of tacking an unhappy ending on all of his movies, even a comedy like "The Fearless Vampire Killers." Well, MacBeth is already a tragedy so he doesn't have to tack an unhappy ending on it. Instead, he makes the entire story more hopeless. In the play, as I remember, Ross is only a minor figure, a messenger. Here, Ross (John Stride) is a buddy and supporter of MacBeth. He murders for MacBeth. But when towards the end, when he sniffs which way the wind is blowing, he deserts the king and hastens to inform MacDuff that the king has slaughtered MacDuff's family and servants. He's a sneaky character and he celebrates MacDuff's coronation with the same fake enthusiasm he did for MacBeth's. It is, as someone said, throwing a perfume on the violet. It's a double downer. Not only has MacBeth, the confused protagonist, given up the ghost, but now his successor, MacDuff has a mole in his midst. All that notwithstanding, it's a gripping tale made into a good movie.

Macbeth is the film which is more Polanski than Shakespeare from the late 70s. The story might be faithful to the play but there are few changes and few little disturbing points. It is starred by John Finch as Macbeth and Francesca Anis as Lady Macbeth. As Polanski directed it, the darker part of the play was shown much of it. For the family audiences or the student audiences the censored version should be shown. The plot is about a thane of Cawdor, Scotland whose encounter with the witches and support of his mistress let his ambition to misguidance. Therefore it leads through such tragedy that creates a disturbingly painful tone. The acting is the important part of the Shakespeare play. John Finch and Anis played justice to their roles. The disturbing point for us Asians is the nudity of the witches; the little child who was showering nude plus the epic battle scenes in which Macbeth's head was cut. The soliloquy was replaced as inner monologues to make it more realistic. The scenes foreshadow the cut from the text. There are some characters which were developed rather than the play. The music were suitable at the 70s but a weak point if you go to the post-modern period. The music shows the dramatic picture and the film made more historical. It shows from the protagonist's view as most Polanski's films do. The set design was rough and dry as the atmosphere of the play. The rain also symbolizes dark prediction of the film. Lady Macbeth's acting was brilliant. The direction was superb and the camera angle grabs the attention of the viewers. Overall, the story is more of the play but it's not for the family audiences. But it was the best Macbeth adaptation and there was no option to find the alternatives. It's a four hour film like Hamlet. It's also a must watch for adult Shakespearean viewers.

Annis's interpretation of Lady MacBeth should be understood as Polanski's interpretation of his late wife, Sharon Tate. In his interpretation of the MacBeths, Polanski sees MacB as a man who has married slightly above his station to the most beautiful woman in Scotland. Note that other characters, especially King Duncan are wholly besotted with her. In medieval times it was generally accepted that beauty was NOT SKIN DEEP and that any ugliness on the inside would manifest on the outside.The drawback is that MacBeth, while a terror in battle, has few social graces and the VIPs who come to visit really only come by to ogle his perfect wife. The wife, however, is manipulatively passive-aggressive and socially ambitious. Having come down in station to marry him, she is eager to find some way to re-ascend. MacBeth is frightful of losing her since she is the one thing he has that his superiors envy. Once her husband is finally the King, Lady MacBeth realizes she is no longer his top asset, and, though he undoubtedly loves her, she can no longer manipulate his sense of social inferiority.