A film adaptation of William Shakespeare's tragedy of the same name, it tells the story of the Highland lord who becomes King of Scotland through treachery and murder.

Jon Finch and Francesca Annis star as the title character and his wife, noted for their relative youth as actors.

Themes of historic recurrence, greater pessimism and internal ugliness in physically beautiful characters are added to Shakespeare's story of moral decline, which is presented in a more realistic style.

Polanski opted to adapt Macbeth as a means of coping with the highly publicized Manson Family murder of his pregnant wife, Sharon Tate.

Following troubled shooting around the British Isles mired by poor weather, Macbeth screened out of competition at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival and was a commercial failure in the United States.

The witches and the spirits they summon deceive Macbeth into thinking he is invincible, as he cannot be killed except by a man not born of woman and will not be defeated until "Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane."

The English forces invade, covering themselves by cutting down branches from Birnam Wood and holding them in front of their army to hide their numbers as they march on Macbeth in Dunsinane.

[8] Author Ewa Mazierska wrote that, despite supposed realism in presenting soliloquies as voiceovers, Polanski's Macbeth was "absurdist", not depicting history as an explanation for current events, but as a "vicious circle of crimes and miseries".

Each coronation occurs after the predecessor is violently dispatched, and guests and hosts always betray each other, with Polanski adding Ross leaving Fife's castle doors open.

[9] Deanne Williams read the film as not only Polanski's reflections on the murder of Sharon Tate, but on wider issues such as the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Vietnam War.

[14][15] Literary critic Sylvan Barnet wrote that the younger protagonists suggested "contrast between a fair exterior and an ugly interior".

[18] Barnet also wrote the changed ending with Donalbain meeting the witches replaced the message of "measure, time and place" with "unending treachery".

[16] Film historian Douglas Brode also commented on the added ending, saying it reflected Polanski's pessimism in contradiction to Shakespeare's optimism.

[19] Director Roman Polanski had been interested in adapting a Shakespeare play since he was a student in Kraków, Poland,[10] but he did not begin until after the murder of his pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, and three of the couple's mutual friends by members of the Manson Family at his house in Beverly Hills on the night of 9 August 1969.

[21] While in Gstaad, Switzerland during the start of 1970, Polanski envisioned an adaptation of Macbeth and sought out his friend, British theatre critic Kenneth Tynan, for his "encyclopedic knowledge of Shakespeare".

[26] Likewise, consultations of academic research of the Middle Ages led to the depiction of the nobles, staying at Macbeth's castle, going to bed on hay and the ground, with animals present.

[27] The added importance the film gives to Ross did not appear in the first draft of the screenplay, which instead invented a new character called the Bodyguard, who also serves as the Third Murderer.

[46] Polanski personally handled and demonstrated the props and rode horses before shooting, and walked into animal feces to film goats and sheep.

[52] For the film score, Polanski employed the Third Ear Band, a musical group which enjoyed initial success after publishing their album Alchemy in 1969.

[54] In the scene where King Duncan is entertained as Macbeth's castle, lutes are played, and Fleance sings "Merciless Beauty" by Geoffrey Chaucer, though his lyrics did not fit the film's time frame.

[24] Upon release, Macbeth received mixed reviews, with much negative attention on its violence, in light of the Manson murders, and the nudity, blamed on its Playboy associations.

[57] In contrast, Roger Ebert gave it four stars, writing it was "full of sound and fury" and "All those noble, tragic Macbeths – Orson Welles and Maurice Evans and the others – look like imposters now, and the king is revealed as a scared kid".

[65] Roger Greenspun, for The New York Times, said that despite gossip about the film, it is "neither especially nude nor unnecessarily violent", and that Finch and Annis give great performances.

[66] Literary critic Sylvan Barnet wrote that, given Shakespeare's writing, it was arguable "blood might just as well flow abundantly in a film".

[16] Troy Patterson, writing for Entertainment Weekly, gave the film a B, calling it "Shakespeare as fright show" and Annis a better fit for Melrose Place.

[67] The Time Out review states the realistic acting did not do justice to the poetry, and the film "never quite spirals into dark, uncontrollable nightmare as the Welles version (for all its faults) does".

[24] In his 2014 Movie Guide, Leonard Maltin gave the film three and a half stars, describing it as "Gripping, atmospheric and extremely violent".