Abstract
Most people are tempted to get on the critical bandwagon which attends Roman Polanski's cinema and to announce from there that his version of Macbeth (1971) is another in a continuing series of intensely personal cinematic statements Polanski has made about the violence which pervades the human condition. Beginning in 1958 with his allegorical short subject "Two Men and a Wardrobe," evident also in his implicitly violent first feature film, Knife In The Water (1961), in Repulsion (1965), his study of psychological obsession, in Rosemary's Baby (1968), his study of literal obsession, and clearly dominating Chinatown (1974), his study of individual and social decay, there recurs in the work of this director a preoccupation with man's destructive tendencies toward other men. Formalist critics may delight in examining the Polanski canon because of the patterned consistency evident there. Biographical critics are likely to relish analysis of his career because of the undeniable relationship between his life and his art.
Recommended Citation
Middleton, David
(1979)
"The Self-Reflective Nature of Roman Polanski's Macbeth,"
University of Dayton Review: Vol. 14:
No.
1, Article 15.
Available at:
https://ecommons.udayton.edu/udr/vol14/iss1/15
