- Let's hope he slips up soon.
- In one way I rather hope he doesn't. We haven't had a good juicy series of sex murders since Christie. And they're so good for the tourist trade. Foreigners somehow expect the squares of London to be fog-wreathed, full of hansom cabs and littered with ripped whores, don't you think?
Frenzy, Alfred Hitchcock (1972)
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On Roman Polanski's Macbeth (1971)
A box office bomb on its release, Roman Polanski's 1971 adaptation of William Shakespeare's classic tragedy Macbeth has deservedly undergone a reappraisal in recent years.
It was equally cursed and blessed by the benevolence of Hugh Hefner's Playboy Productions, who funded the movie when Paramount, Universal and MGM passed. Without the funding, the film wouldn't have been made. With it, much bad press was focused on the film's 'nudity and graphic violence', seemingly influenced by the perceived proclivities of Hefner himself.
The production was beset by production issues, with the British weather, and even more so by the petulance of its director. Polanski at this point in his career was highly marketable, with the successes of Repulsion and Rosemary's Baby under his belt. Which in no way helped mitigate his highly demanding behaviour on set. At one point financiers insisted that he be fired, not least because the film was over-budget, requiring both Polanski and Hefner to top up the pot and get the thing completed.
In my own personal opinion, I'm glad that the film has enjoyed a critical appraisal. Because I think it is a minor masterpiece. The casting - with Jon Finch and Francesca Annis playing against the historical norm as a younger and beautiful couple - is inspired. It feels new, yet acutely traditional. It's wonderful to look at. And the set pieces - far from being gratuitously violent - are appropriate.
Critics have made a lot of Macbeth being the first film Polanski directed after the brutal murder of his wife Sharon Tate in 1969. And it is definitely worth giving a thought to how his first-hand experience of this brutality fed into his depiction of Duncan's murder. It remains, to me, an important film and one unfairly diminished in the canon of adaptations of the works of William Shakespeare.
After the commercial failure of Macbeth, Polanski rose to the top again with the classic Chinatown (1974). In 1977 his career suffered a dramatic blow when he was arrested and charged with drugging and raping a 13 year old girl. He fled to Paris and remains a fugitive from the American justice system. Which has in no way affected his ability to direct critically acclaimed films such as Tess (1979) and The Pianist (2022). Considered as problematic by some as shamed director Woody Allen, actions in his private life continue to dominate the minds of many, to the detriment of his creative output.
Along with Francesca Annis, Jon Finch's youth and beauty (he was 29, she was 26 at the time of filming), shook up how the doomed Macbeth and his wife were depicted for a generation. The exceedingly private actor - the son of a merchant banker from Sussex - was in the right place at the right time, meeting Roman Polanski on a plane when the director was in the process of casting the movie.
Finch had played in amateur stage productions, television and in two Hammer horror movies, but Macbeth was his breakout role. Though a great career beckoned Finch's wasn't a life of much ambition, with the actor himself stating that he made a film a year to enable himself to live comfortably. He worked with Alfred Hitchcock on Frenzy (1972) but had to resign from Alien (he was originally cast in John Hurt's role) due to illness and turned down the role of James Bond, which later went to Roger Moore. He married actress Catriona MacColl in the 1980s, but they later divorced after five years of marriage, Finch later had a daughter from another relationship. His final film role was the Catholic Patriarch of Jerusalem in Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven (2005). Jon Finch passed away in 2012.
An actress from her teens, Annis raised eyebrows with her 'naked sleepwalking' scene in Macbeth. She went from strength to strength after working with Polanski, with a stellar range of roles encompassing stage, film and television.
It would be great to know whether there are outtakes or other behind the scenes footage of Macbeth and this could be released along with a director's cut. I'd watch the hell out of it all.
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Jon Finch-Sarah Miles "Lady Caroline Lamb" 1972, de Robert Bolt.
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