Joe MacBeth

This 1955 version of Shakespeare's 1606 play was a project to be directed by William Dieterle from a script by Phillip Yordan and starring Robert Cummings. But Orson Welles filmed "Macbeth" (1948) and Kurosawa soon followed with "Throne of Blood" (1957). It's what directors do when their careers are on thin ice. Welles and Kurosawa managed fealty to the original, but this attempt to make the story appealing for the film noir-relishing masses by updating it to a Chicago gangland yarn is distinctly inferior. The actors are fine, but the audience is not committed--or even sensible--to concepts like the divine right of kings or the Elizabethan chain of being, so it loses it's power to involve and move us. At times silly, it's easy to see why Dieterle moved on.