Macbeth e o cinema noir: Lady Macbeth como uma femme fatale?

Abstract

The relevant position achieved by Shakespeare’s work has instigated many rereadings of his plays, presented in various forms, such as stage productions, literary criticism, and audiovisual adaptations. In this article, we analyze a film adaptation of Macbeth , focusing on the construction of the character Lady Macbeth. Since the film we analyze – Joe Macbeth – seems to adopt some features associated to film noir , we would like to know how the conflict be tween the roles of men/women, one of the themes usually connected to noir , affects the representation of the Shakespearian character. In this perspective, we intend to evaluate if the reconfiguration of the character would represent one of the feminine ste reotypes of noir, or if the constitution of Lady Macbeth rejects the elements that build such archetypes. The analysis is based on the debate about the constitution of film noir proposed in Mascarello ( 2006), and on Hordnes (1998), Blaser (2008) e Cowie (1 993) approach of male/female roles in such genre .