Joe MacBeth (1955)Shakespeare (more-or-less) in modern gangster setting. Lily MacBeth pushes her husband Joe to rub out the reigning crime boss and become the new "kingpin" himself. Success is short- lived, ... See full summary » Director:Ken Hughes |
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"Macbeth" is one of my favorite of the Bard's plays, so I was curious to catch this on TCM.
Unbelievably, the play is listed here on IMDb as by Shakespeare but practically none of his dialog survived. And while an effort is made to parallel Shakespeare's tragedy, so much is distorted and left out that comparisons are pretty ludicrous.
There are a few nice touches here. I throughly enjoyed the characterization and dramatic demise of gluttonous Duch, and the climactic murder of the Duke was very chillingly executed.
The denouement of this film seemed far more sloppily done. The movie makes no attempt to deal with the dire "of no woman born" and marching-forest predictions of "Macbeth." And it ends on a particularly weak note involving the butler. Who cares?
I can't say I'm sorry I saw this, but, along with Mack and Lily, it left me cold.