Throne of Blood (Criterion/Janus Films)
Macbeth is my all-time favorite Shakespeare play so when I was asked to program The Film's the Thing: Shakespeare on Screen , I knew I would have to include a film version of this tragedy about "this dead butcher and his fiend-like queen." As a teenager maybe I was drawn to it because of the blood or because it was Shakespeare's shortest play but I would prefer to think that it was because Macbeth is a fascinating character, not the typical protagonist of a Shakespeare tragedy.
In selecting which film Macbeth to show, I was torn. Roman Polanski directed a brilliant version in 1971 with Jon Finch in the title role. Then there was a hilarious revisionist take that turned the McBeth's kingdom into a fast food empire in Scotland, PA. There was even a mob version back in 1955 called Joe Macbeth. But in the end I went with Japanese director Akira Kurosawa's samurai take on the play, Throne of Blood (Thursday October 4 at the Museum of Photographic Arts ). The film will screen at 7pm but please arrive early to catch the witches making incantations in the museum atrium. Plus UCSD professor Stefan Tanaka and I will introduce the film and hold a Q&A after the screening.
Kurosawa released Throne of Blood in 1957, the same year he adapted Gorky's The Lower Depths. It would prove to be the first of his three Shakespeare adaptations. He turned Hamlet into a social melodrama in The Bad Sleep Well , and made King Lear into Ran with sons instead of daughters. (I hope to show Ran in a future Shakespeare series.) But already Kurosawa had a mature grasp of Shakespeare's themes and a visual confidence and innovation to bring the play to life on the screen.
