Macbeth

Welles’s ambition in Macbeth was to restore Shakespeare’s tragedy to its roots in Scottish legend; his achievement is an experimental fusion of the Bard and the B picture. The film establishes authenticity not in its settings but in its tone and mood, creating a world infused with witchcraft and portent. It includes a number of eye-opening stylistic flourishes, including a single take that occupies an entire reel of film, that were unseen by American audiences at the time of its original release. This print, painstakingly restored by UCLA, reincorporates that extraordinary missing scene, along with several minutes of overture and exit music and the original Scottish-accented soundtrack. The actors’ mock-Celtic burr was originally deemed too alien for US ears, but it is “so right,” as Welles said, “for all that gooseflesh and grue.”