1. CORSO TANDEM Aggiornamento per docenti delle scuole
FROM TEXT TO SCREEN
Teaching English Literature and Culture
through Films
16/11/2017
(Lesson 6)

3. Macbeth: Act I Scene I First scene –
Three witches, also called weird sisters, enter the stage in a thunderstorm and have a short dialog in the play

4. “MACBETH”- J. Kurzel (2015)
Initial scene ( )- operation of ADDITION;
First image: a dead child in white clothing lying on a funeral pyre;
Macbeth and Lady Macbeth grieving for what appears to be their own child and consummating the ritual of the pyre.;
COLORS: darkly somber rite - wintry mountainside where the only color is the yellow-orange-red flame of the funeral pyre;
There is no explicit information about the Macbeths having a child in the original play (just two text passages);
Personal view of the director;

5. “I have given suck, and know how tender 'tis to love the babe
that milks me.”
(Macbeth, act 1, sc. 7, line 54)
Macduff answers the message that Macbeth killed his family:
“He has no children.”
(Macbeth, act 4, sc. 3, line 83)

6. Lady Machbeth
Kurzel wants to humanize Lady Macbeth: she is depicted as a mother at first;
First image of Lady Macbeth attending her little child’s funeral;
Because she has failed at rearing children, she must find another way to gain power and prove her devotion to her husband: urging Macbeth to take the crown for himself ;

7. Lady Macbeth
In Shakespeare’s play: she first appears on stage as she opens and reads a letter from Macbeth, who is travelling home from battle;
Macbeth’s letter describes his encounter with the Weird Sisters and their prediction that he will become King;
Pivotal moment: her reaction to the letter establishes Lady Macbeth’s position and reveals her true character to the audience
Cinema adaptation: each director interprets his Lady Macbeth’s reaction differently.

8. The witches (movie version)
Kurzel adds a fourth witch and a static infant to the group of Weird Sisters;
The witches come into the shot directly after several traumatic events: the Macbeths’ infant’s funeral, the battle scene in which Macbeth’s son dies, Lady Macbeth seeing the apparition of her late baby, and Fleance witnessing men murder his father;
The witches are visible just to the affected characters;
Unlike Shakespeare’s witches, Kurzel’s witches are not linked to any supernatural or magical source;
suggesting that they exist merely in the characters’ minds.

9. The witches (opening sequence)
The weird sisters, but there is a fourth person, a little girl;
They witnessed the funeral scene from a distance;
They discuss when and where they will next meet,
as one sister delivers:
“Fair is foul, and foul is fair. Hover through the fog and filthy air,”
a tear falls from her eyes (the tragic scene has emotionally impacted her, too)
The dialog is almost exactly the same as in the play.
There is only one different word: “Upon the battlefield” instead
of “Upon the heath,”they will meet Macbeth directly after the fight
on the battlefield;

10. The witches: Act I Scene I
ACT I  SCENE I A desert place. 
[Thunder and lightning. Enter three Witches]
First Witch When shall we three meet again In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
Second Witch When the hurlyburly's done,
When the battle's lost and won.
Third Witch That will be here the set of sun
First Witch Where the place?
Second Witch Upon the heath.
Third Witch There to meet with Macbeth.
First WitchI come, graymalkin!
Second Witch Paddock calls
Third Witch Anon!
ALL Fair is foul, and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air.

11. The Battle ( )
Operation of ADDITION: Kurzel dramatizes battle scenes that were originally off-stage;
cinematic techniques to emphasize the emotion and spectacle of battle:
color saturation – intensifies the heat of the battle;
Slow motion – shows ferocity and agony;
apparition of the witches: Macbeth ceases fighting entirely as his eyes meet the weird sisters’, while the action continues to rage around him;
None of the other soldiers notice the four witches (the witches are apparitions, formed in troubled minds);
Macbeth looses his second child;

13. The witches’ prediction (10.20-13.50)
Apparition of the witches in front of Macbeth and Banquo after the battle;
It seems they want to comfort Macbeth;
They deliver their lines through a voice-over;
Images of Macbeth’s future coronation as the oldest one touches Macbeth’s face;
As the witches disappear into the fog, the two men seem to laugh it off: maybe they’re both hallucinating;
The witches seem hallucinatory apparitions: they don’t have any power over destiny or connection to the supernatural world. Macbeth personally fulfilss his destiny.

15. Act 1, Scene 5, Lines ( )

16. Lady Macbeth soliloquy (18.30- 20.46)
Setting : small community church filled with relics, images of the Virgin Mary as well as iconographic representations of Hell;
She sits in the candlelit room to read the letter from her husband;
entire aesthetic makes the reading a religious experience for her;
does not display characteristics of the typical Christian Lady seeking refuge in a chapel;
a woman seeking Divine approval for murder:through this act she becomes the divine;

17. Act 5 Scene 1 (The Sleepwalking scene)
Enter a Doctor of Physic and a Waiting Gentlewoman.
[…]
Gentlewoman
Neither to you nor anyone, having no witness
to confirm my speech.
Enter Lady [Macbeth] with a taper.
Lo you, here she comes. This is her very guise and, upon my life, fast asleep. Observe her, stand close.
Doctor
How came she by that light?
Why, it stood by her--she has light by her continually, 'tis her command.
You see her eyes are open.
Ay, but their sense are shut.
What is it she does now?
Look how she rubs her hands.
It is an accustomed action with her to seem
thus washing her hands. I have known her continue in this a quarter of an hour.

18. Hark, she speaks: I will set down what comes
Doctor
Hark, she speaks: I will set down what comes
from her to satisfy my remembrance the more strongly.
Lady Macbeth
Out, damned spot! Out, I say. One, two, why
then 'tis time to do't. Hell is murky. Fie, my lord, fie, a soldier and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?
The Thane of Fife had a wife, where is she now?
What, will these hands ne'er be clean? No more o'that, my lord, no more o'that. You mar all with this starting.
[…]
Here's the smell of the blood still: all the per
fumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh.
This disease is beyond my practice, yet I have
known those which have walked in their sleep who have died holily in their beds.
Wash your hands, put on your nightgown,
look not so pale. I tell you yet again, Banquo's buried, he cannot come out on's grave.
To bed, to bed, there's knocking at the gate.
Come, come, come, come, give me your hand--what's done cannot be undone. To bed, to bed, to bed.
Exit.

19. Act 5 scene 1: the movie version
Lady Macbeth soliloquy;
“Out, damned spot! Out, I say. One, two, why then 'tis time to do't. Hell is murky. Fie, my lord, fie, a soldier and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?
The Thane of Fife had a wife, where is she now? What, will these hands ne'er be clean? No more o'that, my lord, no more o'that. You mar all with this starting.
Here's the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh.
Wash your hands, put on your nightgown, look not so pale. I tell you again, Banquo is buried. He cannot come out of his grave.
To bed, to bed, there's knocking at the gate. Come, come, come, come, give me your hand--what's done cannot be undone. To bed, to bed, to bed.”

20. Act 5 scene 1: the movie version
(min )
The sleepwalking scene turns into a soliloquy which takes place in the chapel; (traditional use of the Church)
The Doctor and Gentlewoman’s lines over Lady Macbeth’s unstable behaviour are cut from the text;
The director makes the decision not to show Lady Macbeth’s hands at all here;
Focus on her gaze – directed at something we cannot see;
‘These hands’ are not Lady Macbeth’s but those of her child.
the camera cuts to what occupies Lady Macbeth’s attention: the ghost of the child they buried

22. Lady Macbeth by R. Polansky (1971)
Young, fair, gentle woman with red, long hair in her radiant blue dress; (18: )
Reading Macbeth’s letter, she is happy with the news, as she sits down on a step and marvels at the thought of her husband as king. Dogs come up to her, and she shares her joy by lovingly petting them.