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from behind the tills. Unfortunately, it too overstays it's welcome and in time also becomes redundant.

Sadly, this is the highlight of the whole film, after which it takes an even bigger nosedive. In English the title means Everything's Alright', which certainly can't be applied to this film.

Roman Polanski thinks he has the power to rewrite Shakespeare. His The Tragedy of Macbeth is a step in the right historical direction, but is by no means flawless. Made in 1971, it is loosely based on Shakespeare's classic play Macbeth, but Polanski has taken the liberty of added a few of his own scenes, creating a gritty Medieval Scotland in bleak and grisly detail.

Polanski's version sees Scottish lord Macbeth (Jon Finch) murder the king and ascend the throne. His wife (Francesca Annis) goes mad as a result of her guilt complex, and the dead king's son MacDuff (a dubbed Terence Bayler) conspires to expose MacBeth as the murderer he is. Look past the blood and gore, and the butchering of a Shakespeare classic, and the film is mildly entertaining.

It was Polanski's first film since Charles Manson murdered his pregnant wife, actress Sharon Tate, and many parallels have been drawn between his private life and the film's content. It certainly compelled him to create a much more violent representation of the play.

For example, the scene in which Macbeth murders King Duncan was not in Shakespeare's original. The violent knife attack on the sleeping king suggests what Polanski would like to do to Manson, given the chance. When crew members suggested to Polanski that he film was too unrealistically gory for it's own good, he replied "I know violence, you should have seen my house last year."

Indeed he has projected this violence onto the screen rather too vividly with dismembered bodies, decapitation and the gruesome and deeply disturbing murder of MacDuff's children played out for all they are worth. The massacre of the MacDuff household is without doubt the most uncomfortable and truly grotesque scene in the film.

With rumours of near death experiences of crew members and vicious bear attacks, the backstage shenanigans would have made for a much more exciting and entertaining storyline than his somewhat dull 140 minute rehash of a Shakespeare classic, made more bloody and gory than the author had intended. Polanski has such a large ego it's a wonder he didn't call it The Tragedy of Polanski since it reflects his life anyway.

Soldados de Salamina is an unusual film about the search

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