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.
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| Release date: | October 13, 1971 |
| Directed by: | Roman Polanski |
| Rated: |  |
| Runtime: | 140 Minutes |
| Producer: | Andrew Braunsberg, Timothy Burrill, Hugh Hefner, Victor Lownes |
| Music by: | Third Ear Band, The Third Ear Band |
| Cinematography: | Gilbert Taylor |
| Screenplay by: | Roman Polanski, Kenneth Tynan |
| Adapted from: | Macbeth |