Siberian Lady Macbeth

Shakespeare at substantially more than a mere geographical remove: Wajda's Yugoslav production is based on Russian novelist Nikolai Leskov's imaginative transposition of the tragedy, while the catalogue of crimes passionnels at its heart suggests nothing so much as Eastern bloc Cain: 'The Swineherd Always Rings Twice' perhaps. Katerina, brooding mistress of the village mill, coolly despatches father-in-law and long-absent husband to instal hired hand Sergei at her side; shading motivation and psychology away from femme fatale typing, only to be betrayed by her own emotional investment. Wajda, carefully composing in 'Scope, tops his functional naturalism with a bleakly symbolic retributive coda, in the first of several 'exile' parentheses in his more fruitful interaction with postwar Polish history.