Macbeth (1916 film)

Macbeth is a silent, black and white 1916 film adaptation of the classic William Shakespeare play, Macbeth.

It was directed by John Emerson, and released on June 4, 1916 in the United States, and on February 26, 1917 in Japan. This version of Macbeth was produced by D. W. Griffith, with Cinematography by Victor Fleming. The film starred Herbert Beerbohm Tree and Constance Collier both famous from the stage and for playing in Shakespearean parts. Although released during the first decade of feature filmmaking, it was already the seventh version of Macbeth to be produced, one of eight versions that would be produced during the silent film era. In the companion book to Kevin Brownlow's Hollywood The Pioneers television series, Brownlow states that Sir Herbert Tree failed to understand that the production was a silent film and that speech was not needed so much as pantomime. Tree, who had performed the play numerous times on the stage, kept spouting reams of dialogue. So Emerson and Fleming simply removed the film and cranked an empty camera so as not to waste film when Sir Herbert kept reading his lines. It is considered today to be a lost film, as no known copies of it are in existence. The running time is 80 minutes.

Cast and crew

Further reading

• Buchanan, Judith (2009). Shakespeare on Silent Film: An Excellent Dumb Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ch. 6. ISBN 0-521-87199-9

External links

• Macbeth at the Internet Movie Database
• Film versions of Macbeth