Shakespeare’s ‘Scottish Play’ hit cinema screens in all its gory glory 1971. But was the world ready for Polanski’s bloody vision?

Hazy dawn light. An overcast sky, gradually, but only slightly, brightening to reveal three shuffling forms coming into view. Two old dames. One young. Our three witches, bearing a severed arm. Committing it to the ground with blood and spit Polanski has set his scene. A Macbeth like no other

A box office bomb on its release, Roman Polanski’s 1971 adaptation of William Shakespeare’s classic tragedy Macbeth has deservedly undergone a reappraisal in recent years. It came to fruition in what some would now call a simpler time. Relatively recent, but still a world away from the times we’re living in now, where all vices are catered to within a click of a button. As aware as we were of the darkness of the ‘Scottish Play’, audiences of the early 1970s were not ready for it to be as dark as Polanski made it.

His Scotland is a bleak and weather-battered hell. Macbeth (a never-better Jon Finch) is mired in the mud and blood of the battlefield from the start – a Norwegian/Irish attempt to take the land by force has been suppressed by the brave and honourable Macbeth. Stark shots of a gallows, complete with writhing bodies, are some of the first we see. The traitorous Thane of Cawdor has, unknown by Macbeth, been relieved of his title, and will soon be executed. Our Macbeth and his close friend Banquo (Martin Shaw) are riding away from the battle when they happen upon the three sisters we have already met but they are seeing for the first time. Their proclamations of Macbeth’s greatness astound both men, but it comes to pass that they had correctly seen the future – Macbeth is named Thane of Cawdor. This sets in motion a frantic unravelling of a man who was only just coming into his greatness, but who is unable to cast off a base nature, in pursuit of a throne soaked in blood.

The film was equally cursed and blessed by the benevolence of Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Productions, who funded the movie when Paramount, Universal and MGM passed. This was apparently an attempt by Hefner to turn his hand to high art. While the source of funding was less than ideal, I guess we have to appreciate that without Hefner’s funding, the film simply wouldn’t have been made. But Hefner’s involvement ensured that, on release, much bad press was focused on the film’s ‘nudity and graphic violence’. Maybe no member of the press pack was aware that the source play is a bloodbath in itself. British renowned theatre critic Kenneth Tynan co-wrote the screenplay with Polanski – Polanski being impressed with Tynan’s knowledge of Shakespeare’s work, and Tynan being impressed with Polanski’s vision for the play. Polanski had wanted to work on a Shakespeare film way back when he was a student in Poland and seemed to find a soulmate within the creative process who was as gutsy he was in the adaptation.

From the start, the project was beset by production issues, with the British weather, and even more so by the petulance of its director. Polanski at this point in his career was highly marketable, with the successes of Repulsion and Rosemary’s Baby under his belt. Which in no way helped mitigate his highly demanding behaviour on set. At one point financiers insisted that he be fired, not least because the film was over-budget, requiring both Polanski and Hefner to top up the pot and get the thing completed.

Jon Finch with Roman Polanski behind the scenes

When Hefner’s involvement was announced in the August of 1970, The Evening Standard were straight of the starting gate, predicting that the production would be a hotbed of sleaze and violence. Critics also made a lot of Macbeth being the first film Polanski directed after the brutal murder of his wife Sharon Tate in 1969. And it is definitely worth giving a thought to how his first-hand experience of this brutality fed into his depiction of Duncan’s murder. It remains, to me, an important film and one unfairly diminished in the canon of adaptations of the works of William Shakespeare. It doesn’t shy away from the horrors of the source text. The slaying of everyone in Macduff’s household, including his young son, seems to be appropriate for a stage play, yet when Polanski shows it as it was written, it’s a black mark against him. Why? It’s meant to be horrific, because Macbeth is unravelling. He’s elbow deep in gore by this point – his wife, who urged him on in his first act of treachery – the slaying of Duncan – is unable to wash the ‘filthy witness’ from her hands. She’s mentally tortured beyond endurance by her wickedness, and in the end her beauty cannot save her.

After the commercial failure of Macbeth, Polanski rose to the top again with the classic Chinatown (1974). In 1977 his career suffered a dramatic blow when he was arrested and charged with drugging and raping a 13 year old girl. He fled to Paris and remains a fugitive from the American justice system. Which has in no way affected his ability to direct critically acclaimed films such as Tess (1979) and The Pianist (2022). Considered as problematic by some as shamed director Woody Allen, actions in his private life continue to dominate the minds of many, to the detriment of his creative output.

Along with Francesca Annis, Jon Finch’s youth and beauty (he was 29, she was 26 at the time of filming), shook up how the doomed Macbeth and his wife were depicted for a generation. The exceedingly private actor — the son of a merchant banker from Sussex — was in the right place at the right time, meeting Roman Polanski on a plane when the director was in the process of casting the movie.

Finch had played in amateur stage productions, television and in two Hammer horror movies, but Macbeth was his breakout role. Though a great career beckoned Finch’s wasn’t a life of much ambition, with the actor himself stating that he made a film a year to enable himself to live comfortably. He worked with Alfred Hitchcock on Frenzy (1972) but had to resign from Alien (he was originally cast in John Hurt’s role) due to illness and turned down the role of James Bond, which later went to Roger Moore. He married actress Catriona MacColl in the 1980s, but they later divorced after five years of marriage, Finch later had a daughter from another relationship. His final film role was the Catholic Patriarch of Jerusalem in Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven (2005). Jon Finch passed away in 2012.

An actress from her teens, Annis raised eyebrows with her ‘naked sleepwalking’ scene in Macbeth. She went from strength to strength after working with Polanski, with a stellar range of roles encompassing stage, film and television.

In my own personal opinion, I’m glad that the film has enjoyed a critical appraisal. Because I think it is a minor masterpiece. The casting — with Jon Finch and Francesca Annis playing against the historical norm as a younger and beautiful couple — is inspired. It feels new, yet acutely traditional. It’s wonderful to look at. And the set pieces — far from being gratuitously violent — are appropriate.

Literary critic Sylvan Barnet wrote that the younger protagonists suggested “contrast between a fair exterior and an ugly interior”. It was also noted by several critics at the time that the horrors that we see over the course of the film do not end there. The end of the film has a deeply envious Donalbain, brother to the newly crowned king Malcolm, meeting with the weird sisters. He is suggestible and vulnerable and ripe for corruption, and Polanski doesn’t hesitate in suggesting that the horrors of ambition, lust and envy will not necessarily end at the denouement of the film. So much for neatly-wrapped up endings – Polanski gives us no such comfort.

Header image: Macbeth (Columbia Pictures, 1971) Directed by Roman Polanski. Photographed by Gil Taylor