In the wake of Sharon Tate’s grizzly murder in his Los Angeles home by members of the Manson family, Roman Polanski produced one of his most violent and angry films. Giving emphasis to some of Shakespeare’s more gruesome images, such as the birth of Macduff (“from his mother’s womb untimely ripp’d”), Polanski offers a pointed, contemporary revision of the Bard’s shortest tragedy. Although the play’s fantastic elements remain intact, the film’s ominous on-location exteriors infuse the material with a stark realism.