‘The Tragedy of Macbeth’ is Joel Coen’s Latest Opus, Drawing Direct Inspiration From Orson Welles

You might notice something very unusual when you fire up The Tragedy of Macbeth, the latest movie from Joel Coen now on Apple TV+. Aside from major movie stars like Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand, Coen and his cinematographer, Bruno Delbonnel, have shot the entire movie in crisp, digital black-and-white, in the square, Academy aspect ratio. Coen is the latest to join the recent fad of big-name auteurs making boxy, monochrome movies in the last year, from Zack Snyder to Rebecca Hall to Wes Anderson. 

Coen is activating some very specific references, though. He filmed the entire movie on soundstages, unlike the location work of such Macbeth adaptations from Akira Kurosawa (Throne Of Blood) Roman Polanski (whose gory 1971 Macbeth is problematic), and Justin Kurzel. Coen and Delbonnel’s images swirl with fog. They employ high-contrast, low-key lighting that evokes both German Expressionism and film noir. Add that to the square, black-and-white format, and it becomes clear that Coen is drawing inspiration from one film, and one film only: the 1948 version of Macbeth adapted and directed by none other than Orson Welles. 

Coen hasn’t specifically cited Welles’s film as an influence, but anyone who has seen the Welles version couldn’t miss the link if they tried. Welles shot his movie in black-and-white and Academy ratio, the standard image format of the classical Hollywood era. He fills the frame with smoke and shadow, lighting the sets like an Expressionist nightmare. He confines the entirety of the action to two soundstages. Heck, even his 107-minute running time basically matches Coen’s version!

And yet, not too many critics have cited the specific ways in which Coen has cribbed from Welles. It makes some sense, for the differences are what put each movie’s value into sharp relief.

The circumstances of their production are certainly different. Shot in less than a month for an inflation-adjusted $11 million, Welles’s Macbeth is a grungy, dirty beast of a movie, quite deliberately so. Welles wished to evoke the wet muck of a primeval Middle Ages, and explore how such conditions might drive two ambitious people to murder. 

Welles made Macbeth quickly, but he uses an absence of resources to his advantage by creating a heavy, tactile environment. The castle looks as though it has risen out of the mud. Every surface is damp, puddles strewn across the floors. The smoke that surrounds the Weird Sisters carries physical weight, as if it were pulling the characters into it. (This gravitational pull is something that Kuroswa picked up on for his 1957 adaptation, Throne of Blood.)

The dank, physical oppressiveness that Welles evokes is absent in Coen’s version, who had a lot more time and money—and much bigger movie stars—than Welles did. If we consider Welles, Kurosawa, Polanski, and Kurzel together, Coen has arguably made the cleanest version of Macbeth ever! The sets, costumes, even the faces of the actors practically shimmer within Delbonnel’s 4K palette. The fog has a certain weightlessness, floating in and out as if on a timer. The castle towers over everyone, its walls completely blank. Not a drop of mud or moisture can be found anywhere.

Welles got his start in theater, and knew better than anyone how to direct a play. Coen, on the other hand, has never directed for the stage. The Tragedy of Macbeth actually began as a desire of McDormand for Coen to mount a theatrical version for her, but he steered her toward a film production. From this basic information, one would think that it would be Coen who would be more attuned to the specifically cinematic possibilities of adapting Macbeth, whereas Welles might fall back on more theatrical techniques. 

It is in the differing textures of their images that make us draw the opposite conclusion. Coen certainly brings lots of cinematic flourishes to The Tragedy of Macbeth, but the staging within the castle walls serves to remind the audience of the play’s theatrical origins. The very cleanliness of the sets, costumes, and makeup feel born of a minimalist stage production. 

The screenplay follows suit. Shakespeare’s text is largely preserved in its original form. Soliloquies are rendered diegetically, as if Washington and McDormand were delivering them to a crowd. 

Welles, on the other hand, makes you feel like your hands are dirty. As Macbeth, he and Lady Macbeth (Jeannette Nolan) give their soliloquies in voiceover, pure thought made audible. The text is radically reoriented, with whole blocks of dialogue removed, and perhaps most radically, lines of dialogue moving from one character to another. Such brazenness allows for Welles to create a constant sense of movement and rhythm that is far more cinematic than theatrical. 

None of this is to say that Coen has made a leaden, stagey movie. Indeed, The Tragedy of Macbeth fits rather nicely in the tradition of movies that play with theatricality, like those of Danish master Carl Dreyer. Auteurists looking for linkages with Coen’s earlier work will certainly find them, too. But by using the tools made available to him by Welles, Coen has somehow made both a more and less modern Macbeth than his predecessors, all these decades later.

Evan Davis is a writer living in New York City. Follow him on Twitter @EvanDavisSports