Julius Caesar

Contrary to the impression left by many reviews of the film, the great distinction of Julius Caesar is not the obvious success of Marlon Brando's diction lessons. Far more remarkable is the film's faithfulness to Shakespeare. As this suggests, Julius Caesar is perhaps even more notable for what it is not than for what it is. The film leans over backward to avoid any suggestion of spectacle, and there are no panoramic shots of Rome, no overblown crowd scenes, no technicolor sunsets to draw attention from beauty of language and intensity of feeling. Although the scenario discards some minor scenes, few of the cuts are unkind, and the film happily needs credit no-one with "additional dialogue." There is no pretentious introduction to ease the audience into Shakespeare, and with Brando excellent as Antony, there is no desperate bid for box-office appeal in the casting. Essentially, what producer John Houseman and director Joseph Mankiewicz have done is to film the play, with a superlative cast to project its poetry. The result is a distinguished American trespass on the Olivier preserve of the Shakespeare film.

Tampering hardly at all with the pace of the play, the film moves slowly with a growing sense of impending tragedy toward the crescendo of Caesar's murder. From there, the film hurtles through the intense drama of the funeral oration, the quarrel in Brutus' camp, and the suicides of the "honorable men." Even the early scenes, however, are far from static because of the brilliance of James Mason's performance as Brutus and John Gielgud's as Cassius. Mason's portrayal of the incomparably noble man, whose decisions invariably prove fatal, has a grandeur which over-shadows the other principals. But the character has a distinct headstart, for alone of Julius Caesar's major roles, Brutus is free of the contradictions often unresolved in the other characters. Gielgud's Cassius, the perfect embodiment of "the lean and hungry look," is a fascinating mixture of virtue and venality. The same quality, however, is more obscure in the characters of Antony and Caesar. In the case of Antony, played by Brando with an undercurrent of sensual violence, the obscurity is increased by the sole episode which the film adds to the play--a scene in which Antony stares almost mockingly at a bust of Caesar and then seats himself in a chair as though it were a throne. In the case of Caesar, Shakespeare's portrait is curiously ambiguous--on the one hand noble, on the other blustering and vain. Calhern's interpretation emphasizes the latter qualities and even goes beyond them. Ineffectual and exuding senility, his Caesar is the one lamentable portrayal in the film.

In the minor roles, Edmond O'Brien is particularly convincing as Casca, infusing his lines with a natural fluency, while Deborah Kerr (Portia) and Greer Garson (Calpurnia) make the most of what are essentially bit parts.

When all is over, however, one last dilemma remains: what is MGM going to do with all those plaster busts of Louis Calhern?