Jeanette Nolan

Ford may have made it for a quick buck—or perhaps as a favor to Columbia chief Harry Cohn—but the impact of the resulting film is far more that of a provocative drama than a tossed-off oater.

The graphic intensity of Orson Welles' black-and-white 1948 film of Macbeth, then, isn't merely for show, but a carefully considered symbolist staging for screen, meant to complement the Bard's immortal poetry.