- published: 11 Aug 2015
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Macbeth is a 1971 British-American drama film directed by Roman Polanski, based on William Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Macbeth, about the Highland lord who becomes King of Scotland through treachery and murder. It features Jon Finch as Macbeth and Francesca Annis as Lady Macbeth. For cinematic purposes, passages from the original play were cut for time and some soliloquies changed to inner monologues for the sake of psychological realism.
When Roman Polanski's pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, and several of his friends were all senselessly murdered by members of the Charles Manson cult at the director's house in Beverly Hills on the night of August 9, 1969, he quit his current film project, The Day of the Dolphin, and sank into deep psychological depression, blaming himself for the tragedy.
After months of grieving Sharon's death, he set to adapting Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Macbeth, but major Hollywood studios refused to finance it. His financial savior was friend Victor Lownes, a senior VP of Playboy Enterprises in the U.K. who persuaded Hugh Hefner to finance the film. Some construed Playboy's involvement as the reason for Lady Macbeth's nude sleepwalking scene; however, Polanski and co-scenarist Kenneth Tynan said they had written the scene before their association with Hefner. British producer Andrew Braunsberg also provided financial support and executive guidance.