Production
The film was shot on leftover sets for the westerns that were normally made at Republic Studios.
In order to accommodate the tight production schedule, Welles had the Macbeth cast pre-record their dialogue. However, he later expressed frustration with the film's low budget trappings. In regard to the costumes, which were rented from a company called Western Costume, Welles felt he was poorly clothed. In an interview with biographer/filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich, Welles remarked: "Mine should have been sent back, because I looked like the Statue of Liberty in it. But there was no dough for another and nothing in stock at Western would fit me, so I was stuck with it."
Welles also told Bogdanovich that the scene he felt was most effective was actually based on hunger. "Our best crowd scene was a shot where all the massed forces of Macduff's army are charging the castle", he said. "There was a very vivid urgency to it, because what was happening, really, was that we'd just called noon break, and all those extras were rushing off to lunch."
Welles shot Macbeth in 23 days, with one day devoted to retakes.
Read more about this topic: Macbeth (1948 Film)
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—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“An art whose limits depend on a moving image, mass audience, and industrial production is bound to differ from an art whose limits depend on language, a limited audience, and individual creation. In short, the filmed novel, in spite of certain resemblances, will inevitably become a different artistic entity from the novel on which it is based.”
—George Bluestone, U.S. educator, critic. “The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film,” Novels Into Film, Johns Hopkins Press (1957)
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