Admission $2.50
Macbeth is one of Hollywood's greatest “experimental films.” Among its stylistic eye-openers was a single take that occupied an entire reel of film, but this 10-minute scene was one of several missing from American release prints of the film. UCLA film archivist Charles Hopkins writes, “Near the end of his first, meteoric career as a Hollywood wunderkind, Welles conceived the idea of a production that would restore Shakespeare's tragedy to its roots in Scottish pre-history.... Even in 1948, the typical ‘A' picture had a shooting schedule of two months and a budget of a million dollars or more; but Macbeth was shot in just four weeks on a quarter-million dollar budget. For maximum authenticity, Welles and the other actors spoke their lines in a thick Scottish burr; but a new sound track dubbed into standard English was quickly prepared when audiences objected.... The film was also shortened by seventeen minutes before it went into general release, and a special overture and exit music were eliminated.... The restoration of Macbeth to Welles' original conception was one of the UCLA Film Archives' first projects when we began a major preservation program in 1978.”