Throne of Blood

Kurosawa's adaptation of Macbeth is reckoned by many, Peter Brook among them, to be one of the very few successful efforts at filming Shakespeare. Translating the familiar story to medieval Japan, with Macbeth as the samurai Washizu (Mifune), the adaptation deletes most of the minor characters, transforms the witches' scenes into a magical encounter with an old woman spinning in a forest glade, perches 'Cobweb Castle' high in the hilly moorland where the clouds roll by like ground-fog, and conceives a stunningly graphic fate for the usurper, clinging stubbornly to his promise of glory even as he is being turned into a human pin-cushion by volleys of arrows. It's visually ravishing, as you would expect, employing compositional tableaux from the Noh drama, high contrast photography, and extraordinary images of rain, galloping horses, the birds fleeing from the forest; all of which contribute to the expression of a doom-laden universe whose only way out for its tragic hero is auto-destruction.