A Study Of Macbeth From The Language Arts To The Visual Arts

The movie adaptation of classic literary works has become a universal cultural phenomenon; in this wave, Shakespeare has turned into the focus of many directors. As textual forms have been converted into digital video formats after professional shooting and manufacturing, accompanied by modern media, what ensues is the popularity of classic literature, it endows the investigation of the film adaptation with feasibility and necessity.As different media of art, the constituent elements have similarities between the theater and the film, which offer a possibility for the adaptation between the two artistic paradigms. As a classic work of Shakespeare’s “Four Tragedies”, Macbeth has been adapted into movies in succession by the directors in Asia, America and Europe. Films of the Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, the American directors of Orson Welles and Roman Polanski are more successful. This thesis will take Polanski’s film as the main text for research, simultaneously accompanied by the comparative analysis of the films adapted by Kurosawa and Welles, which aim to interpret the rearrangement of the visual media.Macbeth directed by Polanski presents the scenes of Shakespeare’s original play; it involves the desert, the castle and the palace. It also creates a tragic atmosphere by deducting the theme that ambition destroys humanity. He makes some fine scenic arrangements: Macbeth is indifferent to Scott’s hanging body after the Prince Canonization ceremony; the oddity of thunder and lightning appeared on Duncan’s welcome ceremony; Fleance sings for the public at the banquet held in the castle of Macbeth; Lady Macbeth motivates her husband to murder the king at the dance party; Malcolm forces Macbeth to pour the wine; Macbeth dreams his crown has been taken away before his assassination of Banquo; Macbeth’s head has been cut down and fell from the wall after his duel with Macduff. In addition, it adds Donalbain who explores his fate from the witches in the ending.Polanski makes a careful recreation in the audio-visual production, when the camera lens is towering over into the desert scene, it accompanies by the mournful bugle call. As Macbeth is witnessing Cawdor’s hanged corpse, it inserts the rapid and urgent drumbeat. Then Macbeth returns home after the Prince Canonization ceremony, it adds the melodious and cheerful Scottish wind whistle. At the welcome banquet, Macbeth sees the spirits of Banquo, it configures the deep repressed music. In addition, Polanski configures the film’s screen colors cleverly, on the feast held in the castle, the light and shade jumping gives prominence to Macbeth’s inner anxiety. When Macbeth and his wife are plotting the assassination on the bed, the pink light indicates the ensuing bloodshed. In addition, the movie adopts dark black screen to show the mystery of the witches’ cave.In the process of “presentation” and “creation”, it’s inevitable for the director Polanski to be adversely affected by the mechanism of the mass culture industry. He has inserted pornography and violent scenes into the film, which triggers criticism from the critics and the moviegoers. There are some specific issues in the adaptation of different media, such as the subversion crisis of the depth mode triggered by the pluralistic interpretation system, the entertainment, violence and pornography issues triggered by the popular culture mechanism. So it needs a further discussion of how to adapt the theatrical texts for film successfully, which is how to make “presented” and “transcendental” treatment of Shakespeare’s original drama. The adaptation of different media has a specific meaning, which can be respectively expanded to the creators, the viewers and the cultural dimensions. Therefore, we also need face the fact squarely and resolve the ensuing negative issues in the analysis of the possibility and necessity of the adaptation between different media as well as its specific meaning.