Director: Paul Almond
Main Cast: Sean Connery, Zoe Caldwell, William Needles, Ted Follows
"The Scottish lord Macbeth, chooses evil as the way to fulfill his ambition for power. He commits regicide to become king and then furthers his moral descent with a reign of murderous terror to stay in power, eventually plunging the country into civil war. In the end, he loses everything that gives meaning and purpose to his life before losing his life itself. Macbeth, based on the play by Shakespeare, was produced in 1961 and it was a TV movie with Sean Connery as the lead character. It's not entirely a visually striking film but it does have that eerie atmosphere that makes the movie. It's gloomy which is perfect for the plot of the movie. Macbeth, is an eerie film, a film about murder, witches, and how power corrupts a person. Still to this day there are leaders that will kill for power as it was in the Medieval world. But we must remember that Macbeth is not the only accomplice, Lady Macbeth, she also hungers for power and 'helps' her husband obtain that power by using her words of crazed wisdom. So this production in particular, for being not a cinematic film isn't bad."
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Director: George SchaeferMain Cast: Maurice Evans, Judith Anderson, House Jameson
"Breaking with their usual videotape tradition, the producers of NBC television's Hallmark Hall of Fame decided to commit its 1960 production of MacBeth to film. Maurice Evans stars as the fatally ambitious Scots warrior, with Judith Anderson as Lady MacBeth and Malcolm Keen as Duncan, whom MacBeth murders in order to further his own advancement. The production was a restaging of Hall of Fame's live presentation of the play, which was telecast in 1954. So impressed were Shakespeare scholars by Evans' interpretation of Macbeth that few complaints were made about the rather ruthless cutting of the Shakespearean text. This George Schafer-directed MacBeth was eventually released theatrically in Europe, its running time expanded by outtakes and newly filmed footage." - www.allmovie.com
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