I saw this CBC (the Canadian public broadcaster) production of MacBeth as a young child and I have never forgotten it.
Like almost everyone else, I saw it on an old, rabbit-eared B&W TV which made the stark visuals work especially well. I was too young to have an opinion about whether the witches should have been played like old hags or (as here) disturbing young women, but they certainly scared the bejesus out of me when I was young, and re-watching it 57 years later brought all the creepy back.
In 1961 terms, this was a modern production and interpretation, and along with Connery (before Bond, but after Darby O'Gill and the Little People) as a youngish MacBeth, it had a pretty high-powered Stratford Festival Cast, and like many CBC and BBC Shakespeare productions, one of the purposes was obviously to create a version that would work to introduce young people to the play.
At this point it seems the opposite of modern, of course, and the quality of the video alone would probably disqualify it for that or almost any other purpose. But if you can manage to watch it as it might have seemed to a television audience in the early 1960s - maybe put on a pair of horn-rimmed glasses - you probably won't be disappointed.
Like almost everyone else, I saw it on an old, rabbit-eared B&W TV which made the stark visuals work especially well. I was too young to have an opinion about whether the witches should have been played like old hags or (as here) disturbing young women, but they certainly scared the bejesus out of me when I was young, and re-watching it 57 years later brought all the creepy back.
In 1961 terms, this was a modern production and interpretation, and along with Connery (before Bond, but after Darby O'Gill and the Little People) as a youngish MacBeth, it had a pretty high-powered Stratford Festival Cast, and like many CBC and BBC Shakespeare productions, one of the purposes was obviously to create a version that would work to introduce young people to the play.
At this point it seems the opposite of modern, of course, and the quality of the video alone would probably disqualify it for that or almost any other purpose. But if you can manage to watch it as it might have seemed to a television audience in the early 1960s - maybe put on a pair of horn-rimmed glasses - you probably won't be disappointed.